I’ve mostly been on boats in the UK, though occasionally been on pleasure boats abroad, such as cruise to Egypt, channel ferry, and a passenger pleasure boat through Paris. I wasn’t set up with time lapse equipment at those times, so sadly no footage. However, Kevin a fellow time lapse boater, sent me a link to his trip on a French passenger boat, so thought I’d share it.

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A bright Sunday morning, and relatively quiet. Although the canal goes through Warwick, it skirts round the centre so shielding you from most of the city. So you’ve cast off and steering on a pleasant morning watching the world go by and enjoying a coffee. A couple of locks appear accompanied by a pub, The Cape of Good Hope, and you’ve exchanged pleasantries with a few oncoming boats - oh a nice day to cruise. Off around the corner of Budbrooke Junction we travel and then some more locks appear. A few locks, can’t harm, so through one … lock number 26 Hatton Bottom Lock. Oh, must be a few together then, oh yes I can see a second just ahead. Through the second we went, unaccompanied as it seems to be no boats around, then round the corner where we see the 3rd, 4th, and 5th!

Well onwards we press, looking forwards to the next lock. Up the 6th, 7th, and 8th. We seem to be in our stride now, so on to the 9th, 10, and then into the 11th - the half way point in this lock flight. We then hear a couple of shouts from behind and see a boat coming up a couple of locks behind us! Neither of us are accompanied, so we wait - may as well lock up together for the remaining ten locks. Apparently they’d spied us, but were unable to catch us up close enough to be heard. Hmm, I guess we were too much looking forward, than back! Two boat crews make locking easier, which is good because these ten lock are close together. With one crew opening a gate whilst the other goes onto the next we make short shift work of these. Once through we bid farewell to the other boat as its time for us to stop for lunch, quiet well timed because its started to rain. So we sit inside watching the ducks go by and have a leisurely lunch. Once the rain stops, we set off through the cutting to Shrewley Tunnel. The showers return once through the tunnel, but not enough to dampen our enthusiasm to carry on. Its just me, my mac, and a tiller against the rain onslaughts.

The showers don’t last too long and we’re soon approaching Kingswood Junction. Time to leave the Grand Union Canal for the Stratford-on-Avon, with its narrow locks and barrel-roof cottages. This seems to be a quiet section of canal, with the only boat we met was at the first lock when we turned onto the canal - though we did see another several locks down who moored for the evening before we reached them. Once we got to Lowsonford, the first place with a pub after coming onto the Stratford, we too decided to moor for the night.

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(youtube lower quality alternative)

For our May 2008 canal cruise we planned on going from Calcutt to Tewkesbury by going down the River Avon and back up the Severn. Day 0 we arrived late at the boat and decided to just pop up to The Boat Inn at Stockton. I had set up the time lapse camera yesterday, but its only a small section.

Saturday morning, we set off to head down Stockton Locks. A few boats had passed whilst we were having breakfast, but it was still fairly quiet as we head towards the locks. These locks are wide locks and its more fun sharing, so maybe there will be a boat waiting when we arrive? There was, in fact there were two, which is unfortunate as it means they pair up and head into the lock. Still, as this is a fairly popular section another boater arrived just as we’d readied the lock, so we could share, hurrah!

This canal originally had narrow 7ft locks, but new wide locks were built later to allow both boat and butty to travel through paired up, and so speed up passage through. Oo, just on cue, up pops a boat n’ butty through a lock. Well that was well timed. The old narrow locks are no longer used, but remain visible alongside the wide locks - they mainly just had a wall built at one end and convert it into an overflow. Quite a few of the old narrow locks have concrete slabs placed over the lock chamber itself, which I guess stops accidentally falling in. The exception, to which, will be shown on the next days cruise - we had some gongoozlers on the Hatton flight, a couple (in their 50’s?) with two grandchildren explaining how a lock works. The woman steps backwards from the head of the wide lock and straight into the canal above the lock chamber of the old narrow lock. All was well, save for the obvious embarrassment of the woman in question, and the children had stifled grins obviously relishing the tales they could now embellish upon when they returned home, and again the next school day.

After Stockton flight comes Bascote Locks which includes a staircase pair built 1933-7.

“A lock staircase, or riser, is defined as two, or more, adjacent locks where the upper gates of one lock serve as the lower gates of the next. This means that there are no pounds between locks and on leaving one lock the next lock in the staircase is entered immediately.” (from staircase locks)

We had been following a pair of boats through the locks all morning, and mostly having to set them again unless we found an oncoming boat. After Welsh Road Lock we stopped for lunch on board.

After a leisurely lunch, we spy a boat (nb tricky) coming down the lock behind, and as they were unaccompanied we got ready to set off and then follow them, which they were happy with. After passing through Radford Bottom Lock we spy the Prince Regent Trip boat moored awaiting its next cargo or tourists and sightseers. The weather is now gloomy and overcast and no doubt rain will be on the way at some point. Although we get a short shower, we manage to get to Leamington Spa, and moor in the spaces outside “The Moorings” pub. Looks a nice place for an evening meal.

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(or if you prefer here’s the lower resolution youtube version)

You can, if it lets you, get carried away producing or improving any video project you are working on - usually there’s a deadline by which you need to finish them. Not so with my video’s, so I could take forever re-tinkering with them, however I’ve tried not to. Producing these time lapse video’s has been a learning process and can easily be shown by viewing the videos. The actual time lapse sequence method remains the same but my earlier ones simply had static titles on, where as later ones incorporated a moving canal map.

Whilst archiving some old photo’s, I realised I still had all the project files for one of the past days, so I thought I’d have a tinker. Just a few hours work but hopefully improves it. I’m not likely to redo all the days - after all I’ve two weeks of new stuff from my cruise down the Avon to do, but thought it’d make a nice distraction.

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GU Canal D11 Lock, Sink, and Tunnel to Braunston

Day eleven of my September 2007 cruise down the GUC sees us almost back to base. As a side note I finished this video in early April, but no idea why I forgot to actually put up an entry for it here?

It was a sunny but blustery day, so we head off up the Grand Union Canal passing Weedon before we see our first boats out to Braunston. Warm autumn days are a great time to be out on the cut, there are less boats out and you can just travel without a sole around. Of course you can get the timing wrong and end up with several days of rain when you’ll either push on through or sit inside looking at the world around. Luckily today was fine and sunny, though we pass a sunken cruiser, or as many refer to them “Tupperware boat”, with its top open - has it sunk under heavy rain or did it have a leak and its been left open as the owner grabs all their belongings and ‘abandons ship’.

Next up are the first locks of the day, Buckby Locks. As we empty and ready the first lock, a boat comes round the corner - ah help, may as well beckon them in, much easier to ascend wide locks with two boats. An American couple on a hire boat NB Poppy rounding off a trip to the UK. Once through we both carry on heading towards Braunston Tunnel. Its now 1pm, and time for lunch at some point. The southern side of the tunnel is all in cuttings, so rather than moor here, we carry on through to the side. We passed a couple of boats inside, though I could tell the first was a boat, but the second looked more like the northern portal, although the engine noise said otherwise. Passing in tunnels is part of the canal experience, but you’ll be amazed at the number of boats you see waiting until they think its clear - I wonder if they panic when half way through they see an oncoming boat decide to start on into the tunnel?

There’s plenty of space above the north portal to moor, but as much of its in shade with a seemingly permanently muddy towpath we set off through the first lock with NB Poppy before parting company whilst we moored for lunch on board. The canal in September isn’t as empty as I first thought, or Braunston is so special it always has a healthy volume of boat traffic, as when we set off lo-and-behold another boat pops round the corner. Well we were about to set off, so I asked their skipper if they wanted to lock share (after all they may already be paired with another lock-partner from Buckby), and off we set down Braunston Locks. A surprise at the first lock was a BW employee painting the gates - well BW painting the lock gates wasn’t a surprise, makes me sound as if I believe they “don’t do maintenance”, but that the guy was painting the gates and letting boats still use the lock. He hung from one arm almost oblivious to the gates opening and closing and the stream of boats passing through - though I did try my best to ensure I didn’t knock him off as we passed.

When you’re out and about on the cut and see other boats, you often make assumptions. With hire boats you’ll treat the steerer as if if its their first time out, unless you find out otherwise, and those on their own boat having at least some skill. I’ve passed oncoming boats at crowded moorings with inched to spare, and usually most boaters are okay with close encounters. Obviously not all, the boat we were lock-sharing with went close to the lock gates whilst waiting for the occupant to rise up, but then had to reverse as the steerer of the boat in the lock refused to leave until they reversed. There was plenty of room and the lock was in-line with the canal (so it wasn’t as if there was a tricky manoeuvre to be done), it turned out to be another Ownerships boat - there goes my believe that even shared-owners can steer too.

Lastly we come to the camera shy boater. Once into Braunston we found a space through the bridge-hole and behind a line of boats. Once we were firmly tied up I went inside and was about to stop the boat-cam when someone pops out of the boat in-front and sets off. Obviously just coincidence, though he sets off quickly and doesn’t look behind him - which is a pity especially as a boat came through the bridge behind us and was almost forced into the bank opposite as they had to quickly slow to avoid colliding with them.

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Hello from afloat. We started out on 2nd and headed up through Warwick, in the rain, down the Stratford and on to the Avon.

Luckily the rain stopped after a couple of days giving us 10 days of glorious sunshine. My camera has been taking pictures, but we’ve been delayed a couple of days with engine trouble. Still afloat and realised I can post from my phone. So maybe I can blog whilst afloat rather than just retrospectively!