Articles > Crusing The Grand Union Canal

If only we’d read the skipper’s handbook when we picked up our narrowboat then we wouldn’t be in the process of flooding half of Middle England:

“Beware of helpers! They are usually other boaters who want you through the lock as quickly as possible or gongoozlers who do not know how a lock works. You must keep control of the situation and insert (sic) your authority if necessary.”

Could Anita from Daventry really be a gongoozler, distracting us by offering to take photographs of the “crew” as we tackle our final three locks? Or am I having my usual problem inserting my authority? Whatever, on the penultimate lock of our five-day return journey to the Buckinghamshire village of Linslade, we’ve committed the treasonable offence of forgetting to close the paddle of the bottom gate. So, as we blithely pose for Anita from Daventry, water is gushing into the lock in which our narrowboat is sitting and just as quickly out of it into the holding area behind, threatening to wash away that cute white stone cottage beside it. Worse still, a crowd of tut-tutting locals is gathering to observe the ex-pat captain and his overworked crew (his mother and two old friends) frantically try to rescue the situation.

Perhaps we are due some drama. We’ve negotiated the remainder of our narrowboat trip up and down the Grand Union canal in the Heart of England seamlessly. Indeed, chuffing along at the pace of a reflective rabbit (no more than 6 kph), and passing through slumberous pastures and definitively English villages, we’ve become so wound down that the only thing that’s stressing us is the imminent end of our adventure. What will I do tomorrow, I’m wondering, when I can’t start the day with a gentle jog along the tow-path (once trotted along by horses hauling commercial barges), when we can no longer stop at will in the English countryside or at a welcoming canalside pub for an auspiciously-named ale like “Speckled Hen” or “Waggle Dance”?

I have to admit to some doubts when I discovered that the location for our canal cruise was the Grand Union canal, starting near Leighton Buzzard, around ninety minutes drive north of central London. Following the canal’s northward course on the map, I saw that it skirted the planned city of Milton Keynes - widely regarded as a 60s architectural monstrosity - and a swathe of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire you’d normally hurry past on the M1 motorway.

But my prejudice is quickly called into question. After leaving the Wyvern Shipping Company’s base in Linslade on a summery afternoon and following twenty minutes of boat and lock tuition - it takes a while to get the hang of the steering - our 57 foot (17.37m) narrowboat named “Pearl” is soon among fields of dazzling rape. Like waves and waves of yellow creating a surrounding ocean, the rape is the first of the striking features of this unheralded region. Another is the profusion of canal-orientated birdlife such as moorhens, coots, geese, and ducks, complete with teams of tiny offspring. Prince of all them, though, is surely the lofty heron, every centimetre a statue while stationary and at once cartoon-like yet elegant when launching itself into the countryside.

Our first mooring, reached after sharing the flight of three locks where we later have our mishap, with an experienced boater, is adjacent to the grassy verge in mid-country. Here, as on many subsequent evenings, we share a resplendent English evening with a few grazing cows, watching as the sun descends in a more-or-less cloudless sky and as the murky canal-water grows ever more brilliantly reflective.

From here we progress northwards, meeting the outskirts of Milton Keynes the following day - more tidy gardens and open parklands than monstrosity - and have our first pub lunch at the appropriately named Barge Inn. Thankfully, fears of English pub fare of yore (chicken in a basket or chicken in a basket) are immediately dispelled with offerings such as Wild Salmon and Broccoli and Brie in puff pastry. Indeed it is characteristic of all our pub dining that menus are imaginative, enticing and dare I say it, European, in flavour.

The middle days of our journey bring us two historical highlights as well as a demanding set of eight manually-operated locks on the way to and from the comely village of Stoke Bruerne in South Northamptonshire. The first is the excellent National Canal Museum, providing an evocative insight into the once-crucial transport system - fundamental to the industrial revolution - along which we are travelling. The museum leaves you in doubt that life on the canal in the old days was very tough. Especially if you were one of the men hired to “leg” a narrow boat through the second historical feature which we encounter the following day: the near 3.2 kilometre Blisworth Tunnel. Moving through this dank, dark, dripping tunnel, with the navigation lights of oncoming barges looming up like the eyes of a monster, is an eerie enough experience today. But how back-breaking it must also have been in the past for the two men propelling the narrowboat along its entire length, by pushing at its sides with their legs.

It is beyond the tunnel at Gayton Junction that we turn back and do it all again. It is not in the least boring retracing your route, rediscovering as you do certain landmarks from the opposite direction and in different light. By now we’re also well versed in the sociability of the canal, greeting fellow boaters effusively and ahm, chatting with passers-by at locks, where we are often the main attraction.

A narrowboat trip like this combines hours of deep relaxation with moments of arduous activity and gives you the chance to experience the real nuts-and-bolts England. It is perfect for a reunion with relatives and friends in Europe, or perhaps to repay their hospitality, by having them aboard your floating home. But please, if you do choose to cruise - though we just manage to rescue our crisis with basic lock science - remember to look out for potential “gongoozlers” at locks and to “insert your authority” at all times.

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