Cruising in the slow lane.

[weavis]

The most enjoyable boating inland in the UK or France.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=speWOYaS7Ik

[Mike OReilly]

Very nice. Looks like a life I could get into .

Here in Canada we don’t have the same extensive network of canals, but there are a couple of really good systems which I would love to spend time exploring. The Rideau Canal, running from Lake Ontario to Ottawa and the Ottawa River, and then then Trent-Severn Canal from L. Ontario to Georgian Bay.

Love to get a little putt-putt boat (small power cabin cruiser) and spend a few months exploring these canals someday.

The Trent boasts the tallest lift lock in the world, and also has the Big Chute, a railway “lock”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1aT...&frags=pl%2Cwn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy7O...&frags=pl%2Cwn

[GordMay]

On the Trent-Severn Waterway, the Kirkfield Lift Lock is a hydraulic lift that raises or lowers a 'tub' of water, including any boats in it. Further west, boats travel on the Big Chute Marine Railway, held in slings.

The Rideau Canal was added in 2007 to the UNESCO World Heritage List.
☞ http://smallpond.ca/jim/misc/canoein...n_Map_side.pdf

[JPA Cate]

Well,

Thanks, guys. Interesting viewing.

Ann

[weavis]

One of my happiest water experiences was on a canal boat...
just seemed so natural. Even my dad, for I was a very young man at the time, loved it, and he doesn't like the water for sailing or paddling or anything...

[TrentePieds]

When I was young and callow, I lived in a road called Callow Hill Road in the charming little village called Alvechurch, just south of Birmingham. I worked a few miles away in Stoke Prior whence this pic comes:

/www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpreviews.123rf.com%2Fi mages%2Fdavidmartyn%2Fdavidmartyn0804%2Fdavidmarty n080400074%2F2790168-narrow-boat-barge-the-worcester-and-birmingham-canal-stoke-prior-worcestershire.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.123 rf.com%2Fphoto_2790168_narrow-boat-barge-the-worcester-and-birmingham-canal-stoke-prior-worcestershire.html&docid=ZkMzocOYSkrdMM&tbnid=T2A KiHpBkHiu0M%3A&vet=12ahUKEwjF_su4r6biAhUKXK0KHd5ZA iw4ZBAzKGIwYnoECAEQYw..i&w=1300&h=866&itg=1&bih=43 4&biw=911&q=stoke%20prior&ved=2ahUKEwjF_su4r6biAhU KXK0KHd5ZAiw4ZBAzKGIwYnoECAEQYw&iact=mrc&uact=8

Only a mile from my work was this lovely little pub, right by a set of locks on the Birmingham-Worcester canal:.

https://www.google.ca/search?sa=X&dc...PPTz4oOsxubKM:

Many a lunchtime pint have I taken there to the annoyance my emplyer, Lester G. Harris (Brushmaker to Her Hajesty the Queen) who was a devout Quaker. I recall very well arriving back to work together with a couple of mates, all of us nicely tiddly, and finding that the annual photograph of the entire works' crew had not yet been taken because we weren't there. Lester was not amused :-)!

It's an odd thing: As the end of my sailing days looms, it is not my native land I get nostalgic for, but England. Odd place, England. Draw a line from King's Lynn to Cardiff. South of that line, you have one kind of people, north of that line, quite another kind. When I hear the Geordie dialect spoken with a really broad accent, the pull to go back there becomes nearly irresistible :-)!

TP

[TrentePieds]

Well, the pic bombed, so here is a substitute. The notion of speeding up the clip is rather awful, but there are a few places where the "cinematographer" reverts to normal projection speed. These places will give an impression of the idylls of the Worcestershire countryside around Stoke Prior and Alvechurch.

The canal goes all the way into central Birmingham, and all the way through this huge and rather ugly conurbation you will find idyllic, rustic place along the towpath.

But, alas, "the old grey mare..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAAkyddKH4Q

TP