I love that the Trust is keeping these old boats working and that people come out to volunteer as crew. Not only do they help keep the old knowledge alive, the act of running these boats pays homage to those that came before, honouring those who made a life on the canals feeding the factories that made England the greatest industrial nation of the age.
The "kerthump-kerthump of a low-revving lump" is quintessential CTC. Along with the all-world content and quality of this channel, there is the very important aspect of documenting a unique way of life, and done with such aplomb as to astound even the most discerning viewer. David, you do a great service to the narrowboating community as well as your viewers. Well done sir, and much appreciated. You are inimitable. Cheers!
Wonderful report. I sometimes think these videos are better than when you were living aboard. So much interest and information and history of the canals. Thank you for sharing. Have a great day and stay safe.🙂🙂
This footage will be watched long after we're all gone. It's a great record of our times and you were right to concentrate on this kind of content. Think you might eventually break your view count record with this one.
Another excellent, and informative video David. I use the same 'coal' in my greenhouse fire. Toast and toasted sandwiches are extra special done on an open fire. If they fall in and get a bit charred, so much the better 😄😄😄.
What a glorious vlog David, showing us how these beautiful work horses of boats are still being used in the style for which they were built. Like many, we sailed past these two earlier this year at Alvecote and admired them close up so it was a treat to see them featured here in work mode. Thankyou as always for wonderful vlogs. X
Very interesting - as others have said, not just a CtC vlog, but a vital record of how canals were originally used and why they were built. And nothing quite like doing something to properly understand it. Oddly, for someone like me - an armchair canal enthusiast for some years - the thing that most struck me was the distance that can still be travelled by canal. Several tonnes of coal was transported right across/down the country, using a transport network most people don't even realise is there! The enthusiasts, the volunteers, the canal community in general, and especially the CRT, have done an amazing job in restoring and maintaining the canal system, so that, decades after it effectively went out of use, it's still functions as a nationwide transport network. It's almost impossible to imagine the same thing happening in any similar circumstances - a nationwide heritage railway, for instance! And yet, for the vast majority of people, it's just that old canal at the bottom of the street, or maybe the memories of a holiday once spent on a hired narrowboat. A whole intricate and hugely extensive other world - in plain sight, but almost unnoticed...
This is such an enjoyable video. Your production quality is equal to any Discovery Channel venture. I'm new to the channel and find it so relaxing after chores. Thank you. Kirk
Hi David lovely video again, I've had the privilege of seeing these boats in action as they passed along the canal between Ansty and Rugby while I was paddling the kayak they were lovely people on board and chatted while we passed each other. My family and I were at Braunston walking the canal sections out there and I'm sure we just missed these boats. Great footage much thanks Kev the Brinklow kayaker Hoping for some dry weather soon.😊
I must say that I still enjoy watching your show; even though you are not living on the canal anymore. I can feel the disconnect. Perhaps at some point you will have the best of both worlds; a home base and a narrowboat to cruise. I see the adverts creeping in during your vids too... Cheers!
A Really Good video 'Young Dave' .... Let's hope this one BOOSTS their Volunteer count - With All Viewers 'sharing' it on their various Social Media accounts 👍🤠
Many homes here in Central Pennsylvania still heat with raw coal ore. Granted, it is locally mined, really clean burning, hard anthracite coal, so quite possibly equal to or better than those UK briquettes.
Another good job Dave :) (gold star) I think there should be some type of youth program where maybe troubled kids get to work these type of boats. From what I saw there didn't look to be many people in their 50s. if nothing else just get the kids to do the lifting
Interesting video David. Thanks for sharing. Hope the weather was "kind" to you this week. We've heard about high winds and lots and lots of rain. Hope you are ok. Take care.
In the day, living space was not needed as a whole industry of pubs, company terminals and even people selling all sorts of food, drink and such from carts along the pathways. Even today, I bet hitching a boat ride from pub to pub would be a jolly nice holiday.
Oh my! As I have just brought some 1.3ft*1.3ft plates and 55lb sandbags into the garden, I know how much work is involved in just loading the two ships. You can forget about the gym. . .
Well... yes and no; other than the wood pellets, the smokeless fuels are indeed coal at heart (as explained in the video) albeit reshaped into briquettes with additional materials
Another good video, thank you! Two questions...1. Did the boats moor for the night on the demonstration voyage? And 2. Would the old line crews have run all night in the old days? I suppose the canals are not lighted today, but maybe they were before the war?
This wasn't a demo voyage - it's a trip the Trust do every year. The boats moor every night, often near a pub :). The canals aren't lit and never were, there is a headlight which works well in tunnels but not much use otherwise, in the old days "fly boats" carrying perishables might have run overnight but non perishable cargos would have moored overnight, probably starting and finishing in the dark in winter though.
Can someone help me, I've spent ages googling to no avail: What's the red blue yellow white triangles flag on the boat? The closest I've found is the maritime Zulu flag but that has black instead of white.
Very interesting. Good to see women.. I have a horse and move bags of Chaffe and feed of 20, 25 and 30kgs its all in the technique as she says and mostly bending knees..
What about the boat's trim? Cargo ships distribute cargo "evenly" throughout the ship, to keep a "balanced, even" trim. Does crew for a working take the same care of her trim?
The boats are pretty much square in profile so as long as the bags are laid even across the hold they settle evenly. It pays to have the motor slightly down at the head so the bow finds any scours or obstructions rather than having the boat ride up on to them - something that was rarely an issue when the canals were dredged regularly.
They should have a ramp to slide the bags down onto the boat or a truck with a crane to lower the pallet onto the boat in one go. Moving one bag at time by hand is very slow and inefficient. I can't believe no one there hasn't thought of a ramp.
We do use a top plank from the boat to slide the bags down from the wagon into the hold. At Braunston we were mob handed so this was not necessary. The limiting factor is the space in the hold for people to stand and stack the bags neatly. You could use a crane to lift a whole pallet off the wagon into the hold, but this would waste space in the hold and would in fact be slower than hand balling each sack.
Cheers but no. That widebeam's been around for years and they're always claiming it's totally self sufficient, happily ignoring the dismal lack of solar in winter and that widebeams on the Thames don't tend to move very much... I've done loads of videos about electrified narrowboats already though, with a more realistic focus on hybrid designs
@@CruisingTheCut Yeah, they didn't mention anything about a generator which I was curious about. 6 kW of solar and 90 kWh battery can do a lot but not everything. They did have a fire for the heat though so that is one huge energy need taken care of in the winter.
And what a delight it is as well - there's nothing like the dancing flames & the shimmering glow from a real fire and of course the heat generated is far greater than that of a room rad.
Brilliant David … sat next to those boats many an afternoon waiting for Rick Cooper ( when he remembered ) to transfer coal from his van into my transit van last winter. Has you know Rick was back chugging again after suffering a shoulder injury, the last time I personally saw him was at Mancetter and it was to be my last supply from him. So sad, but like the people in this video, people like Rick are essential to those of us living on the canals. Things I love about Canal life, these boats, our great heritage and burning dry wood and coal, on cold nights and in winter!
Hi. I've been a longtime fan. Finally connected. This episode was wonderful. My husband and I have a 1949 built sailboat, 40 foot sloop with a Tiny Tot coal stove for heat. We buy pea coal at our local steam train. We live in the US near the Essex Steam train station, so it's a great place to buy real coal. Funny, we live near Essex, which all of our town names came from you guys! We have the original Volvo Penta engine, and a battery, with oil lamps in the saloon, alcohol stove. Not fancy but wonderful. Thanks for such great videos on the water. I love it. Would love to rent a narrowboat-- on my bucket list!
Didn't actually preserve them,Many went to rack and ruin and many are that way today,Enthusiasts cleared them out and got them running similar to the steam Enthusiasts who saved some Locomotives
I'm Irish, so I'm totally all for a coal fire. You can't beat a good old open fire with coal or peat, especially on a cold wintry night. No lights, just the glow and flickering of the fire. It's a pity people are so sensitive nowadays that you had to say that. Anyway, loved the video..I'm still watching it! I think it's cool you can take part. I wonder would they accept an Irish lass. Thanks again for the video...I'll keep quiet and keep watching the rest 😊
I lived long ago on the NW coast of Scotland & fondly remember the smell of burning peat...not so much fun the digging, stacking to dry & carrying down from the hill!
It has nothing to do with sensitivity. It's the fact that population has skyrocketed so more people are heating their houses, and particulates pollution in densely populated areas is a recipe for all kinds of different problems. COPD, various cancers etc etc. If you live rural, it's no problem, the total amount of pollution will still be fairly low. But imagine nearly everyone burning coal and wood in a standard residential area - it gets really bad really quickly. Combine it with weird weather effects that we're seeing more and more often, and you risk another round of the Great Smog of 1952 that killed more than 10.000 people. Poland still has about half their houses fueled by coal furnaces, and it's one of the reasons why their air quality is among the worst in Europe. It's cold, hard science.
Of course afterburners on the chimneys (like a catalytic converter on a car) only need to be made compulsory to lower particulate emissions... or the new technology of extremely clean burning wood burners..... It's the money....always follow the money. @@mfbfreak
...I heat my home way out in Utah in the U.S. with a 1940's stove ...its good fun and forever learning how to burn it better cleaner and more efficiently !! >^- •^~~~/
Hello David. That was a memory from the 70’s. my friend and I had just started up a Scout Group in South |||Wales. We didn’t yet have tents or camping gear. We decided to hire two boats on the Brecon Monmouth canal. A couple of months before we went it was cancelled, the bank of the canal had given way. We found an ad in the Scouting magazine for canal hire on the Grand Union canal. We drove up to Braunston with two other leaders and their wives along with my brother and his mate. We had two boats, Ant & Axe, two 70ft boats with a cabin in the leading boat with a boatman and his lady and 12 scouts, the leaders and party had the butty boat, the one leader who brought his wife and kids had the boatman’s cabin. The boat was not vey comfortable. It had 12 beds in bunk formation, a chemical elsan, a sink and a 4 burner cooking range, table and chairs. The roof of our barges were blue glass binre pieces, every other one was placed on the next so the boatman or his lady, Sandy, could run from one end to the other at the lock when the barges would tie up abreast. I asked my mate why the kids take to their bunks when we tied up abreast. My friend told me the kids realised that Sandy was Commando, she didn’t wear underwear. Overall it was a great trip. I had taken two canoes and we used them very often.
Another absolutely cracking video! What a particularly lovely bunch of volunteers, especially good time to be reminded of the essential kindness and decency of many people when the 'bigger' picture might not look quite so rosy.
We saw them on their return journey just above marston doles on the Oxford. Was such a sight😍 being only 21 my dream would be to own an old working boat one day
Once again: thank you, David, for sharing an interesting video on an interesting topic. Yes, I remember you picturing a present-day coal (and more) vendor. Yes, I agree that this aspect of life is worth preserving. After all, it constitutes a parallel to the many heritage railways (though this is older): start counting those to fall asleep... Of course, the procedures and the vocabulary should be included in that preservation - just like those of the railways. Comparing waterways and railways, the Narrowboat Trust could eventually expand back in history and demonstrate horse-drawn transport. But that will require an additional army of volunteers and money. So this pair of narrowboats loaded at Braunston. Long tunnel! Wasn't that a tunnel without a towpath, where the boats used to be "walked" through? (If so, that would be proof of the impression your videos make.) That "walking" would have to be revived in that expansion, too. - Volunteers? This might be presented as part of a team-building course, to be booked by businesses and organisations... £££
I've been stuck in America for 45 years but just the sound of the Lister marine engine got me back to ten years of boating and doing restoration at Claverton, taking a 60 ft boat across Kildwick Moor in a thunderstorm, interrupting a fishing competition in Leeds, etc. This was a treat, and I'm lucky I found it. Thank you. Juliet Miller (former secretary of the Narrow Boat Trust around 1975)
whilst hard work, it is certainly nice to do it at a slower pace than modern day. Wonderful to maintain the history and traditions of old. Thanks for the great content. Cheers.
When visiting my grandma in Skipton in the 1960's, she would make tea & crumpets and I was in charge of the crumpets. I had a two foot long brass fork to hold the crumpets to the glowing coals in the open hearth and there's no better tasting crumpets (or toast for that matter, done the same way).
Not watched yet, saving for tomorrow be a nice treat with a cup of tea, just had to comment that I wouldn’t expect you to use an Atomic Kitten reference. I don’t hate it though.
