Slow Travel

“We’re taking it extra slowly,” shouted the American patriarch on a hire-boat as he signalled for me to overtake. “We stopped to pick plums!”

I’d been behind the Oxfordshire Narrowboats’ vessel as it ascended Heyford Common Lock on the Oxford Canal. He had a plate of cheese and a glass of wine as he stood at the tiller, while his wife and two teenagers operated the lock. I closed the gate for them and on they cruised, or so I thought. After I’d drained the lock and ascended single-handedly, the American family was still near the lock landing, foraging for autumn hedgerow fruit. They cruised off as I neared them, going so slowly that I moved the throttle down to tickover. For a few moments I even idled in neutral in the middle of the canal and used the chance to duck inside the boat and turn the fridge up. I would have made a cup of tea but I was drifting into a hawthorn bush. I didn’t mind this extra slow pace. After all, none of us had far to go. The canal was closed beyond Aynho, about 2 miles ahead.

For some, slowing down on the canals has been made easier of late. So few waterways are navigable – due to low water levels – that the number of miles available to cruise has been severely curtailed. No doubt some boaters have had to rush to get past planned stoppages but for many of us the high number of canal closures, with locks padlocked shut, has meant boating life has reached a standstill. If we are fortunate enough to have any length of waterway to travel we may as well eke it out and cruise, like those holiday-makers, ‘extra slowly’, taking even more time to drink in our surroundings.

Gathering pace 

For most of our history, humans have travelled just a few miles each day, our range limited to that attainable by a fleet-footed messenger, galloping horse or fair winds. Perhaps the rare downhill skier realised speeds unknown to others. Travel for the masses started to speed up in the early 19th century with the first passenger-carrying steam train 200 years ago. On the waterways there were horse-drawn fly-boats, which surfed a bow wave along straight lock-free stretches of inland waterway.

In 1833, Water Witch, a 70ft-long, 6ft-wide horse-drawn passenger-carrying packet boat, began service on the Lancaster Canal, taking people from Preston to Lancaster, a lock-free distance of 30 miles, in a fast three hours. 

Not everyone thought that ever-increasing velocity was a good idea. Early critics of the railways theorised that passengers would die from excessive speed, believing human bodies to be incapable of withstanding 30mph.

This is an extract from the 'Last Word' article that appears in Waterways World December 2025