Prospective buyer could not risk it

Published: Friday, 04 March 2022

MY NAME is Gordon Travis and would like to use your site to tell of my decision that could help others in the same position, [he writes].

Together with my wife Jane we spent a deal of last summer looking at what are called narrowboats and visiting canals to get a feel of what we were both very interested in having witnessed so much activity with boats whilst on holiday at Stratford-on-Avon.

Buying a narrowboat

We both fancied buying such a narrowboat, having just retired with a generous pay-out, to sail along the canals, and we realised rivers too whilst being by the river for a week on our holiday so then a search for narrowboats on Google threw up many sellers of both new and secondhand such boats that then prompted our visits and the realisation that such narrowboats were a floating home with all facilities, much more than we expected.

Not being one to rush into things we then had trips to the canals and especially places where there are rows of locks climbing up hills that attracted a lot of activity and so got talking to those with boats, but what we were told was not what we expected, for many told that it was not easy to plan an outing sailing the canals as they were not in good order and such as the locks and bridges (the latter we could not understand, until we were told about swing bridges) that kept breaking down.

Holidays spoilt

A man on a run of locks on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal told he had his holidays spoilt by breakages and was joined by another who was in a boat who told us if I wanted to learn about the condition of the canals to have a read at your site, he giving me the address, upon which my wife and I spent the whole of one evening trawling your site and were absolutely shocked at what you reported about the condition of the canals with everything breaking down stopping people in their tracks and obviously ruining their holidays.

So that was it for us as we could not go to the expence of a narrowboat worrying if we would be able to get where we wanted by the breakages and only too glad people told us and that you did too of how it is, so certainly could not risk it.

Most sorry for being so defeatist, but I would advise others thinking of taking to the canals of taking a good look first.