The canals in Britain were built in the late 18th and 19th Century the boats, known as narrow boats (for obvious reasons) were often only around 2-2.5 metres wide, although often up to 18 metres long.
There are 2000 miles of interlinked canals and rivers in the UK that are looked after by the Canal & River Trust. The Trust was only recently created by the UK Government specifically to take over the responsibilities of managing and maintaining these historic waterways from the public organisation known as British Waterways.
Canal & river cruising is quite popular and there are some 35,000 boats registered - the vast majority are equipped at least as well as a caravan and typically sleep 6 people.
A so-called full-length boat is 72ft long but most are in the 50-60ft range.The majority of the canals were dug-by hand 200 years ago and are 'narrow' in the sense that they are restricted to boats that are no more than 7ft in width. There are, however, so-called 'broad' canals that take boats upto 14ft beam and a number of linked rivers that take much larger boats.
In northern England the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the Huddersfield Canal cross the country while others like the Bridgewater Canal to the west of Manchester form part of the Cheshire Ring which is around 100 miles (160 kms) all round and others in the North West include the Llangollen Canal in North Wales and the Trent and Mersey Canal which goes from the River Mersey and the Cheshire Ring towards Birmingham where there are yet more canals including the Shropshire Union.
This description, doesn't do the true range of canals in the UK justice. The system is best view as a 2,000 mile interconnected network of canals and rivers that as part of the industrial revolution linked many major cities including Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, London, etc. As an example, last year my boat travelled from Birmingham down the Britain's largest river (the Severn), to Bristol via the Severn Estuary, along the Kennet & Avon canal to the Thames eventually leaving Thames and rejoining the canals in the centre of London and returning by a different route to the Birmingham area. Total distance covered around 500 miles over a period of 2 months.[/quote]
Although canal boating is not normally an activity associated with the same people who go to clubs in Ibiza, and is a fairly sedate pastime as most boats only move at about 6 mph (10 km/h) all ages take part in canal boating. The boats are only narrow because of the number of locks on the canals that cope with changes in gradient, especially on the cross country canals.
The maximum speed on most canals is 4mph. Speeds of 6mph are usually only permitted on wide rivers like the Thames, Trent, Severn etc. Four miles an hour might sound slow but it is equivalent to a brisk walking pace which gives time to enjoy the wildlife and beautiful and/or historic scenery of the British countryside.
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Search Google for Canal & River Trust or British Waterways to find many websites of interest and even my own: which is called waterwaywatch
Regards
Will Chapman
