I took my entire family on a canal boat holiday – and found the antidote to our hurried age
Ever since travel started speeding up, we've been trying to slow it down. It's usually a losing battle. Remember the 19th-century law that decreed motorists must drive no faster than 2mph and employ someone to walk in front waving a red warning flag? No? That's because it was doomed to failure.
Cyclists, once the pin-ups of slow travel, are now vacuum-packed in Lycra to shave off every second. Take time to breathe, we're told, as we huff and puff back to the hotel for dinner; notice the little things, we're advised, as they pass in a blur outside the window of the train. Slow travel is all the rage, but so often it's not that slow.
Fortunately, one mode of travel is as lazy as it's ever been: the canal boat. Sixty years ago, the Locomotives Act placed a 4mph speed limit on Britain's waterways and the rule remains unchanged. And the canal boat's slow credentials go beyond its dawdling pace. This is transport that comes with its own bed and breakfast, a snail-shell for the family in which there are no departure deadlines to meet or reservations to make. Truly, a canal boat holiday is the undisputed champion of slow travel breaks.
That's what drew me back: the chance to put a drag on life's momentum for a few days. It wasn't only about the dawdling pace. There's something soothing in the tidy canal route maps, a mental freedom in the sheer limited choice of direction. Just follow the water. It promises gentle passage from rolling countryside to brick-chimney landscapes that immortalise a golden age of industry.
A canal's very geometry lowers my pulse: the arc of its little bridges, the interlocking teeth of the cogs in the lock mechanisms, the horizontal timbers that lever the gates. And so, with life rushing by, I booked a week-long family trip to Worcester on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.
In truth, a canal doesn't bring entirely uninterrupted calm. It had been 30 years since I last went canal-boating and now, as I thumped the bow against the side of Astwood Top Lock, and howls rose from the galley as cans cartwheeled from shelves and red wine sloshed on the floor, it all came flooding back.
That narrowboat break of 1994 has gone down in Phillips family folklore. Remember when the dog went overboard and dad fell in trying to pull him out, we'll say to each other at Christmas. Or the 'Titanic' incident, when my brother caught the rudder at the back of an emptying lock until the rudder ripped off and the stern came crashing down.
All of which added up to one of the best family holidays ever, one we often swore to repeat. And here we were at last, mum mopping wine from the floor as we headed out from Stoke Prior. Same canal, same mopping, same season: springtime, the birds pairing up and buds adding flesh to the bony trees.
There were some differences. Three decades on, that grey-haired man working the windlass to lift the paddles to drain the lock wasn't my father. We'd faced some choppy water when my parents divorced, but Colin had come along, and the way became smooth again. He's Grandpa Colin now; those nine-year-old twins were mine, lined up beside him to push open the gates, puff-cheeked with earnest endeavour. Yes, a big difference: this time I was father as well as son, with more life behind than ahead.
A tight parade of tatty industrial buildings gave way to banks of rushes and hawthorns frothing white with early blossom. Six locks came in quick succession, testing our processes, but we fell into roles without debate.
Grandpa Colin and Monika, my wife, were the gatekeepers, jumping off and on with windlasses in hand to bookend our passage through each lock. Mum despatched a steady supply of coffee and muffins from the galley, while deckhands Matty and Kitty clambered about on the roof and offered a running commentary on the mistakes made by the helmsman at the back.
I was that helmsman, tight-browed with the burden of responsibility. So much for relaxation. Stretching ahead was a craft measuring 70ft – the length of two-and-a-half London buses, the kids informed me with a certain sadistic relish. There were three bedrooms, two toilets, a shower, a galley and dining area, four adults, the twins and two dogs, all to be threaded through narrow locks and nosed around blind bends.
It was a beautiful boat too, dark blue and glossy, with red handrails running along the top and its name painted with a dainty flourish on the side: Eden. Not a scuff mark to be seen. Sorry, Eden.
But the canal's balm soon settled my nerves. Olive-green water slipped beneath the banks, pirouetting around protruding stumps, toying lazily with a twig and a feather. I took pleasure in the robust functionality of this man-made waterway, iron and wood and brick working in harmony since the year Wellington won Waterloo. It seemed to slot into its landscape, like nature with neatened edges.
We spent much of three days meandering the 11 miles down to Worcester. There would have been rather more urgency in the 19th century, when working men managed heavy horses to pull barges piled with salt from the works at Stoke Prior and chocolate from the Cadbury factory at Bournville. It must have taken some choreography, particularly when barges had to pass one another, horses rubbing shoulder to shoulder and towlines manoeuvred over or under the hulls in a three-way tango between man, boat and beast.
Today you'll see a purposeful jogger panting up the towpath, perhaps, or a kayaker racing the clock, but otherwise the canal is a place of easy journeying and parallel existences. At Hanbury Junction, we chugged through a corridor of narrowboats moored bow to stern, some scruffy and others immaculately kept, but all permanent homes. Smoke curled from the chimneys of boats called Adventure Before Dementia, Seize the Day and Bob Along, the mission statements of people who had untethered from a hurrying world.
We kept left at the junction and carried on, through the dripping darkness of Dunhampstead Tunnel and out into air full of barnyard smells. On the right was a cameo of idyllic yesteryear, with a foreground of skittish lambs and behind it a medieval church bowing with age. At Tibberton, we moored for the night outside The Bridge pub and rewarded ourselves with a beef carvery dinner and pints of Butty Bach.
We became a pretty well-oiled outfit as we navigated locks with names straight from a Dickens novel: into Blackpole Lock and barely a nudge or scrape; through Bilford Bottom, slick as a bar of soap. Then warehouses started to appear, and a string of canal-side back gardens containing beach huts, hammocks and self-built outdoor bars.
The bells of Worcester Cathedral were ringing as we tied up outside Sidbury Lock. We visited the Museum of Royal Worcester, tried and failed to crack the escape room at the Commandery, ate upmarket burgers for lunch (kids' choice) and Japanese food for dinner (our choice). And then we began the slow chug back the way we'd come.
It was just a few weeks later that Grandpa Colin had his stroke. The choppiest of waters. But the way will become smooth again, and when his right arm is strong enough to wield a windlass, we'll book another narrowboat trip because 30 years is too long to wait to measure out some days in locks and bridges, cups of tea and games of cards. Seize the Day, Bob Along – the boat people have it right. It's good for the soul to float a little freer.
Essentials
Adrian Phillips was a guest of Black Prince Holidays (01527 575115) which has nine bases across the UK, offering modern narrowboats for two to 10 people (including pet-friendly boats). Choose from short breaks, seven- and 14-night holidays; coaching and route advice is provided before guests leave the base.
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