Category Archives: canals and boating

Big Martyn’s Big Cruise

Big Martyn has started on his Mega Cruise. Hurrah! I’m pleased to report there’s a daily update from the man himself on his new blog:
http://bigmartyn.blogspot.com/
By the way, did I mention I lost another 3 and a half pounds last week? Check it out!

Big Martyn and Dr Jan’s Third Annual Cruise

Our first year we went up the Grand Union Canal and just about got outside the M25. Kings Langley is where we turned around.
Last year we went the other way, along the Regent’s Canal to the Hertford Canal and then up the Lea Navigation and the Stort River to Bishop’s Stortford and then Hertford.
This year [...]

Venice?

I’m staying this week in Mestre. Which was described by a colleague as ‘the Slough of Venice’. Which is probably not a bad analogy
The Venice Festival is on right now, and allegedly it can take up to 90 minutes to get from here (to all intents and purposes at the end of the [...]

Big Martyn and Dr Jan’s Second Annual Canal Cruise

Well, we’ve been at it again
Last year we turned left out of the basin, went down the Regent’s Canal to the Grand Union and followed that up as far as King’s Langley. Our mission was to get outside the M25, and we just about managed it
This year we decided to go [...]

Boating with Ruth, Lawrence and Martyn

We arranged with Martyn to meet him on Sunday and take the boat out down to Limehouse Basin, then north up the Lee Navigation, then back along the Hertford canal to the Regent’s Canal and back to base.
We arrived in time to find that Lawrence was visiting, so there were 4 of us all together.
We [...]

I Drove Das Boat!

Yesterday I drove Martyn’s boat down the Regent’s Canal
We started at Kings Cross and headed westwards down to Little Venice. When we got there we turned around and came back
Martyn was driving on the way down, I was doing the locks. St Pancras lock was OK - another boat was waiting [...]

On The Regent’s Canal

Last night I visited Martyn on his narrow boat in King’s Cross. We were planning to take the boat out for a little chug on the canal - Anthea (one of the boat people) had promised to hold our hands on our maiden voyage.
We both arrived back at the boat about 18:30, only to find [...]

Delays to Dunkerque

Monday 21st March 2005.
I’m driving around Europe with my Dad this week.
We arrived at Dover just after nine last night for a 21.30 sailing on the Norfolk Line to Dunkerque. Unfortunately they had no record of our booking - the website had crashed whilst we were booking
I had sent email asking if the [...]