Princess Royal opens training centre

SOMETHING that is sorely needed on the waterways is boat handling training, and now Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal officially opened its new state-of-the-art training centre at Willow Wren.

 

Grand Union Canal based Willow Wren Training received the Royal Seal of approval as the Princess Royal visited Nelson's Wharf in Stockton, one of the UK's busiest inland waterways training centres, teaching hundreds of people from all over Britain to safely handle narrowboats and navigate the nation's waterways every year.

Showed how it should be done

And Her Royal Highness, President of the RYA, met the centre's staff and volunteers plus people who have honed their skills at the centre, before taking to the tiller of one of Willow Wren's narrowboats, Peggy, herself and showing delighted guests exactly how it should be done!

More than 200 people have already taken advantage of courses at the new centre since it started operating in April.

Can help in a lot of ways

Steve Vaughan, Willow Wren Training Centre Principal and Chief Instructor, explains:

"We're serious about training. We wanted to expand the training and make ‘training' a good word for the inland waterways. Now we're on the main canal, people using the canal and towpath can see us and hopefully realise training is not a bad word and can help in a lot of ways while boating.

"Steering a narrowboat on a canal is not difficult, and if you make a mistake, they're made of steel and are pretty resilient. But, if you want to do it right every single time and not end up in embarrassing situations where you're hitting something, that's where the training works. People can't experiment when they're out there steering a boat.

"It's lovely to see people's faces when we show them how something should be done and it clicks and, for example, they don't take four attempts to come into moor, they do it first time every time no matter how windy or shallow it is. Whatever the conditions they can do it all the time.

More floor space

Work on the new centre started on 1 October last year with the clearance of waist high brambles and nettles. The building was in place with the roof on and watertight by Christmas and finished by the end of March. The inside of the building gives Willow Wren three times the floor space as its previous building while they now run three training boats as opposed to just the one, enabling courses to be even more practical.