Meet Kingswood

Kingswood is our not-so-new narrowboat. It’s a very traditional 34-year-old, 40-foot, Gary Gorton boat, built in Staffordshire. Buying the boat was a slow process, taking roughly two years to find something suitable. We found Kingswood after a previous sale on another boat fell through, resulting in the seller having his bank account temporarily suspended. Ooops. Once we’d bought Kingswood, we had a steep learning curve getting the boat to its new home.

How was the journey back?

Highly stressful in parts, but otherwise magic. We collected the boat on the River Soar in Leicestershire, expecting a leisurely 13‑day cruise home to Yorkshire. Instead, we spent 49 nights on board, travelled 388 miles and passed through 305 locks. Narrowboats are slow, but relatively predictable. What isn’t predictable is the state of the canal network, and getting stuck on the canal bed 😂

The trouble started on the Macclesfield Canal. A boat had sat too far back in a lock, so when the water dropped, it hit the cill and damaged the gate. This meant the lock couldn’t seal, and the only north–south link on the Canal & River Trust network was closed.

We waited a couple of days for news, which wasn’t in our favour, so we decided to explore another part of the network. We turned back to the Trent & Mersey and committed to the Four Counties Ring, a 110-mile cruise through Cheshire, Shropshire, the West Midlands and Staffordshire.

The Four Counties Ring was a great detour. The days absolutely flew by. It’s wild how quickly the days pass, especially when you don’t really do much other than go forward and go through some locks, all at an average daily speed of about 1.5 MPH.

We also got to see loads of places we would probably never otherwise visit, travelled England’s shortest canal (at 47 metres), had a pint at Crown Wharf (the Great British Pub Awards: UK Pub of the Year), fixed a broken water pump switch, sorted a plumbing leak, fitted a new headlight, and almost had to recover Stacey from the canal.

And we discovered the network is very social. Everyone wants to say hello, and we met some interesting folk, including The American, who couldn’t wait to show us his remote-controlled bow thrusters, the guy who got kidnapped by his wife’s family in the Philippines for 18 months, managed to escape, then came back to the UK and bought a boat, the guy who has a vintage boat with a hull from 1899 (which is quite amazing), little Bella, the Border Terrior who took it upon herself to hop on board and say hello, and the guy who gave us a jar of honey for helping him through a lock.

But would you believe, once we made it through the broken lock, there was another one? This time, we were halted at Marple, just a few hours on from the previous lock. This lock finally opened two weeks later, and we jumped at the chance to head through. And to keep a long story short, we hit loads of trouble getting through the next few flights of locks, including getting locked in a flight, getting stopped with a sunken boat hull wedged into the lock gates, and getting grounded in locks and pounds because of low water. The learning curve was steep.

What’s on board Kingswood?

Despite being a small boat, Kingswood is surprisingly comfortable. There’s a small double bed, a dinette table that creates another small double, a three-way fridge, a gas cooker, a gas boiler, a boatman wood-burning stove, a TV, and the original Lister 19-horsepower two-cylinder diesel engine, which, by all accounts, is bulletproof. We shall find that out, no doubt. But if nothing else, the engine produces the delightful and unmistakable chug of a vintage diesel.

The previous owners had loved Kingswood and very kindly gave us everything we needed to take the boat away, including cutlery, crockery, utensils, wood, coal, and even the copper coal scuttle. And thanks to Stacey’s magic touch, it quickly felt like home.

What’s it like living on board?

A lot of fun, actually. It’s a little different to living in a house when things like electricity, gas and water are fed to your house, and sewage is taken away, all without you knowing much about it.

There’s a freshwater tank, filled from points along the canal. We don’t know exactly how big the tank is, but it’s likely around 400 litres. Bottled gas powers the fridge, hob, cooker and boiler, which are bought from boatyards and marinas across the network. Greywater from the sinks and shower is discharged straight overboard into the canal. And the final piece of the puzzle, and the least pleasant, is the sewage. We have a chemical toilet (also known as an elsan) on board, which is emptied at sanitary points around the network, usually where the water points are.

It’s easy to manage a few days, but it takes a little planning to make sure the water tank is full, and the toilet cassette is emptied so you aren’t caught short. Thankfully, you are never too far from water and sanitary points, and none of it is as much admin as you might think when you take for granted that all of this is done for you in your house (unless there’s a stoppage on the network that the CRT can’t fix, and you are eight hours from a sanitary point, so decide on a 5-mile walk with a 20kg casette of sewage on your back in the ouring rain 🤷‍♂️).

But the trade-off for all of this is adventure, new neighbours every day, and the unbeatable sound of the dawn chorus, because you are almost always surrounded by greenery.

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