New narrowboat adventures – new blog

My old boating blog is on an outdated platform, so I thought I’ll start a new one for a big adventure in 2025/2026. I have been wanting to do this trip for years and this year I can finally make it happen.

I have always wanted to take my boat over the Pennines to Yorkshire. There are three canals over the Pennines, The Leeds & Liverpool (by far the longest), the Rochdale and the Huddersfield. When I researched it, I found that only the Leeds & Liverpool canal will let 60ft boats pass all the way to connect with the Yorkshire navigations. So that’s that decision taken for me then.

My plan for 2025 is roughly to go to the North of England from London via the Thames, the Southern and Northern Oxford canal, Coventry canal, Trent & Mersey and Macclesfield canal. On the way I might divert to a couple of arms that I haven’t been to before. During the winter a lot of the system shuts down due to lock maintenance, so I am planning to over-winter on the Macclesfield canal, which I am told has good fuel boat coverage. Plus it is in a stunning area on the edge of the Peak District with good connections to Manchester and other towns in the greater Manchester area.

Once the canals reopen in early spring 2026 I want to make my way to Wigan via Manchester to join the Leeds & Liverpool canal. Then it’s the long climb up and down the Pennines through 91 miles, 86 locks and goodness knows how many swing bridges (which are a nightmare for single-handed boaters actually) to Leeds. From Leeds, there are a large number of canals and rivers to explore. One of the places I definitely want to visit is York, which involves cruising the tidal river Ouse. Tidal – not my favourite, but has to be done if the reward at the end is York!

In order not to have to retrace my steps back over the Pennines, the only other way to rejoin the Midlands canals from Yorkshire is to brave the tidal river Trent. This is the scariest part of the plan as it involves reading charts to not get stuck on a sandbank for example!

After that I will be back in familiar territory and there are a few options which way I want to make my way home to London.

This sounds like a well thought-out plan, but these days it is hard to actually plan anything on the canals long term. Currently the Macclesfield canal is closed due to an embankment collapse, where the canal has watered the fields below. On the Leeds & Liverpool every day a different swing bridge breaks (and gets fixed usually) and this canal notoriously suffers from lack of water due to the bad state of some reservoirs. So I will have to be flexible. But in any case it will involve some new territory for me, which is exciting.

The biggest adventure for me is to be away from London and without a home mooring over the winter. I don’t have a car, so I rely fully on the service of a fuel boat and that the canal doesn’t freeze over for too long, so that I can move and get water for example. The Macclesfield canal is quite high up in the Peak District, so I expect much colder weather than in London.

I am setting off in mid-May 2025 so subscribe now to catch the first update from the mighty river Thames. I promise I won’t bore you with what I had for lunch. I usually write about interesting encounters I had en route, a bit about the canal and area I’m in and, well, anything else that I find interesting (sorry, had to have this disclaimer!). You can of course unsubscribe any time.

And if anybody is interested, the posts of the old blog are all linked from here: /https://trainingcanalboat.co.uk/index.php/blog-posts/