Canal Day 6 - Idiots With No Imagination

Why do paddle boarders come on canals? Have they no imagination?

A lot of you have followed my journey this week and commented about how calm and serene everything looks. I'm in a 25 ton steel vessel with the stopping power of a marble on lino, and a mincer on the back end. 

Most of the canals are edged with concrete or rock. A narrowboat is not aerodynamic, when the wind hits the side of it it moves it.

I remember once being at the helm and navigating a narrow, rocky corner when I encountered a family of canoeists. Hell. I pushed the tiller as hard over as I could and prayed. They lived to canoe another day!

These narrowboats get hired out to novices, worse than that, hen parties! We are oddities on the cut. As experienced as we are after 15 consecutive years of boating, we wear life jackets. Yes, you can stand up in the canal, but not in locks and not if you bang your head on the way down. We have fun but we are elderly and careful.

This is the life we love and we'll be Carrying On Up The Cut for a long time to come, even though I look nothing like Barbara Winsor!

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