We had our first boating holiday in the late 90s, on a plastic boat on the Thames.
Oxford Tobago was steered with a wheel, from a position at the front of the boat. It also had a large sunroof which slid back. However, we quickly realised we’d rather have been on a narrowboat, so our next trip was on the Llangollen Canal, on an AngloWelsh boat called Bluebell.
Bluebell was very small, probably not much more than 35 feet. It was pretty basic inside too. Our next boat wasn’t very much different. I don’t remember what it was called, but we hired from Severn Valley Cruisers at Stourport.
We did the Stourport Ring. The first night was spent breasted up with a large number of other boats on the landing of a Severn lock whose mechanism had failed. We also did the Tardebigge Flight, went through Birmingham for the first time, took the Old Main Line to the Black Country Museum in Dudley, went down the Wolverhampton 21, and did Bratch Locks.
In about 2005 we hired from Kate Boats in Warwick, then the following year had a fortnight on a Kate Boat and did an extended version of the Leicester Circuit. It was while sharing one of the double locks on the Trent end of the Trent and Mersey that our locking partner told us about shared boats. We’d never heard of them, but did some research and ended up buying a share in Debdale.
We had the Debdale share through the collapse of OwnerShips and into self management, but after a while wanted our own boat. We bought Briar Rose in April 2011, and all her travels are on the Briar Rose blog.