Hamish Leys

Published: Monday, 08 February 2010

Many visitors to the 20th OwnerShips Show at Braunston last weekend would have been mystified at the name Hamish Leys on the side of the its most recently launched narrowboat, writes Allan Richards.

It is generally held that most older boats in the shared ownership scheme have names beginning with 'S' but OwnerShips simply ran out of good names.

However, Hamish Leys is not named after some obscure village on an even more obscure canal. The 58 ft diesel electric semi trad has been named in memory of an owner within the scheme who died just over a year ago.

Trip from Scotland

Without owners volunteering to help, the OwnerShips Show would never ever take place. For many years, Hamish made the long trip down from Scotland to arrange delivery of more than a dozen boats to the show at Braunston.

He would then help over the two days of the show and arrange for all the boats to be returned to home moorings. Hamish was also a real character as anyone who knew him would testify. As one owner put it when he died:

"What a wonderful character. We'll remember good times spent over many hours after the innocent invitation to 'a wee dram'."