"Beginning of Narrowboat Cruise" a Droitwich Travel Page by grandmaR

In the early 60's I started reading books by Emily Kimbrough. Several of her books dealth with canal boats, one in France, one on the Thames, and one was about a narrowboat hire in England and Wales. Ever since I read her books, I've wanted to do that. So when we decided to visit our daughter who is on a 3 year job exchange, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to have a narrowboat holiday. My son-in-law could help us with the boat, and could go to pubs each night, and it would be a different way of looking at the country.

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Our boat (the shorter one)

Hiring the boat

Initially I wanted to go across the big aqueduct in Wales (see Trevor), but since my son-in-law couldn't spare a whole week, there was no way we could do that in a long weekend. So I hired a boat through Hoseasons through a hire company called Brook Line in Dunhampstead. This town is so small that it is not listed on the Virtual Tourist as a destination. So I've written it up under Drotwich which looks like the closest place to it. It had the advantage of being fairly close to our daughter's house in Cheltenham. We hired a small boat of about 43 feet that slept 5. This boat was about as long as our sailboat, and half as wide. For a tour of the boat, see the travelogue. In the picture, our boat is moored with another larger boat next to it, and you can see another boat in the canal.

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Narrowboat yard

Going to Drotwich

We decided to go up to Drotwich and turn around at the canal junction (most of the canals are too narrow to turn), and there was a narrowboat repair yard there where I took this picture.

For the rest of the cruise, see Tibberton and Worcester.