Adam's narrowboat adventure

By Adam Shaw

Buying a narrowboat can set you back up to £90,000

It would take two and a half hours to cover the couple of hundred miles by train from London to Stoke but four days to travel the first 45 miles back by narrow boat.

I'd been on canal boat holidays as a child but I wanted to see what, if anything, the canals now offered business and what contribution they made to the economy.

The plan was that we were going to go so slowly that we could also meet people on the way and find out how they found life on the canal.

The canals were the arteries of the industrial revolution. They helped spread technology and goods through the country and what I wanted to see was what was left of that industrial heritage and what role the canals still played in British business and industry.

Thursday

I arrived in the middle of the night and was dropped by taxi in the deserted car park of a dark and closed pub, to await the arrival of the director.

He came with a miners lamp strapped to his head and led me down a canal to our own boat - home for the next week.

There were five of us sharing the boat. The sixth, the producer Tracey, was staying at hotels along the route. Apparently someone had to and she drew the short straw.

Up at the back - sleeping on the table which converted into a double bed - was the boat owner, John.

Then were the cameraman Hume and soundman Adrian who seemed to have worked on every major comedy and soap in the past decade. Then at the front were me and the director, Rob.

There wasn't much privacy - thin plywood separated my head from the toilet and the bathroom was so small the director said to shave you didn't so much move you hand, as have to keep the shaver still and try and move your head around the blade.

I used to go on long boat holidays when I was a child.

My abiding memory was my dog jumping off rolling in cow poo and jumping back on. As there was no where to hide from a poo-covered dog on board - the family would then jump off with everyone shouting "Poo" or words to that effect.

My other memory was my dad, who insisted on driving on when it started to rain. "It will stop soon" he would say. We passed other boats which had sensibly moored to hide from the increasingly violent rain. Once we were soaked through and the sun was out - we would have to pull in and change clothes. This happened so regularly that we ran out of dry clothes and I still have a photo of my dad driving the boat wearing nothing but a raincoat and holding a glass of whisky.

Friday

We started with a celebrity. The first interview for day one was with a stunt dog along the towpath.

Lovely as she was, she didn't do any stunts for me, apart from licking my face and jumping around excitedly.

Although she did reprise her role in Casualty - where she played dead - although this time she kept one leg in the air while lying motionless on her back.

Nonetheless it was a fairly revealing interview and I now know what life is like as a famous dog.

The first sod of earth cut for the Trent and Mersey Canal was dug out by Mr Wedgwood.

He wanted the canal so his pots could be carried slowly but safely.

The Wedgwood factory is still there. It seems to concentrate on the more expensive pieces these days. But they allowed to me to make my own Wedgwood pot.

Fascinating fact of the day was that bone china is actually made with bone. I know this might sound as shocking as narrow boats are really narrow - but I had no idea that bone went into china.

To uncover more, we went to one of the only bone mills left in the country called Jesse Shirley.

A family-run business in which for generations the eldest boy has always been called Jesse. I went to chat to the latest Jesse about how they keep the business running and what its like to be the only boy at school called Jesse.

It turned out to be a potty day. After we finished at the factories, two potters joined us on board our boat to show us some of their expensive hand made artistic pieces.

They had only started in business a few weeks before. I think they were at such an early stage that they hadn't even hit the problems of how to run a business.

But the pieces were selling for up to £1,000 so they are going to have their work cut out for them.

As if we hadn't spent enough time on board, that night we went off to a floating canal boat restaurant.

It was a nice restaurant but the problem with this sort of place is that you can't get off before the captain moors the thing - and by the end I was going nuts.

You can just spend too much time squashed against the side of a boat, even if you are eating nice food.

I admit I had drunk a bit but it was more my general incompetence which meant I let my mobile phone majestically slide from my hand into the water as I got back on board.

And from then on - I couldn't call anyone. Anyone was very relieved.

And that was the end of the first day.

---

---

Saturday

About ten years ago I met a man on a rickshaw in India who I called Rickshaw Johnnie for reasons I can't remember.

His real name is Colin. He's spent his life in the pottery industry and he kindly came to find us on one of the many canal side pubs.

Of course it's nice to meet old friends but it was also useful. Because what we heard so far was the view of the pottery industry from the big companies.

Colin gave us the insiders view - the experience of a lifetime as a worker in the industry. We were chatting in a pub called the Romping Donkey. They never let you miss an opportunity for an interview - so after the drink we looked at the business of how you run a pub and make money out of it.

It's not easy but the manager and his girlfriend had really turned it around, although with 50-odd choices on the menu I thought they were making life more complex for the kitchen than it needed to be.

You know how sometimes you feel like you are in a film. Well that evening I felt I was right in the middle of one.

We turned up at a small town called Alsager. Even the thuggish looking kids on the street looked fairly tame and that, I think, may have been a good measure of the town.

I was going ballroom dancing, invited by Wayne and his dad. Wayne plays the organ and does cruise ships and while he's not on the ocean he runs a regular gig for the dancers of Alsager.

If you were over 40 and out on Saturday night, you were almost certainly dancing to Wayne's organ.

It's a tough career but he's been playing since a lad and is set on the job.

He said he could get me a dance. For a good looking boy like me you would have thought that was easy. But it was harder than you think.

They take their dancing seriously in Alsager and I really had to strong arm one woman - who ironically had a broken arm - to have one dance with me.

You'll have to watch to see the result.

---

---

Sunday

Although it had rained for most of Saturday, we woke up on Sunday to find that ironically much of the water had drained from the canal.

As a result, one boat was dangling by its rope without much water underneath.

Our boat owner John fixed it for them, although I didn't see how since I slept through most of it, but I did manage to be filmed running up to ask heroically if I could help.

Once we saved the day we headed off to three guys who had set up their own boat builders.

I've always thought of narrow boats and narrow boat holidays as cheap. But our boat cost £1,000 a week in summer and buying one can cost up to £90,000.

While driving at 4 mph we met up with a folk singer who agreed to come along for a ride.

He was called Andy and in between stories about the canal and the problems of making a living from singing about the old days, he sang to me.

It's lovely being sung to and I now want Andy to sit by my office desk singing while I write about the markets.

And then it was on to a town which I will never forget: Middlewich.

First of all we met a group of litter pickers, then the Mayor, Chalkie White and Aunty Maureen.

Aunty Maureen had grown up on the boats after being given away as a baby in a local pub.

Everyone knew her and she told me all about what life used to be like on the canals, how it has changed and what she had learned about business and tourists.

But that's not why I will remember Alsager.

I hope I won't be thought too rude when I say I didn't think Alsager was a great place.

We could only find two restaurants - at least the Chinese served egg and chips and were very polite.

But in the pub by the lock, I had one of my best evenings.

The locals bring their instruments - saxophones, fiddle, squeeze boxes and the like and sing for each other.

Well you couldn't get me away. Even mild mannered Rob, the director, got involved. I had an absolutely fantastic evening.

It's amazing what talent people have and it was wonderful to see an unassuming group of people play so beautifully just for each other's enjoyment.

If it wasn't so far away, I would pop down for a sing song.

Then again, every silver cloud has a dark lining.

We stayed so late that the producer's hotel had shut and so, late at night she came back to the boat.

There was a long discussion about sleeping arrangements and we all volunteered to give her our bed. But she decided to sleep on the floor.

Or at least that is how I remember the discussion. She may have a different memory.

But her recollection of the events was probably damaged by the effect of the hard wood floor against her head.

---

---

Monday

I've never given salt much thought, unless it's about the debate on how healthy or not it is.

But at British Salt they think of nothing else.

The factory is right alongside the canal. Inside the factory there is a great mountain of salt which looks like a scaled down version of a snow-covered Everest.

So I spent the first few hours of the day finding out how to make salt.

It's a complex process involving bore holes, kettles, grinders and packers. All of which get the salt from pre-historic underground lakes to your table.

The canals of the UK are home to an increasing number of so called live-aboards. People who have left the comfort of home for a stretched, thinner version of life that is the narrow boat existence.

Chris Johnson is someone who has chosen to live on a narrow boat in the evening after working on a narrow boat during the day, delivering coal to other live-aboards along his stretch of the canal.

It was then off to Harral's boat brokers, which is a posh name for a boat estate agency to talk about the business of selling boats.

Then onto the Anderton boat lift - one of the wonders of the boat world - which lifts the boat from the Trent and Mersey canal to the River Weaver.

A wonder of engineering and now quite a tourist attraction.

---

---

Tuesday

In a final attempt to see me get wet, the producer got me in a kayak made by a canal side business with a world reputation called Piranha.

And wonder of wonder it still manufactures in the UK.

Life on board was actually better than I thought it would be.

It's a bit squashed and there isn't a moment you can have to yourself.

Nonetheless it was good fun and I hope it will make for some fun viewing.

Next time it's the QE2.

---

---