The fastest way to slow down is to get on a narrow boat
Or so say those who have tried
For those unsure what a narrow boat is it is a name given to British canal boats
Called such because they have to be narrow enough to navigate the British canal system
The British canal system is extensive and was built before the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century
In fact it both enabled and fed off the industrial revolution
British inland waterways are a network of over 2000m (3000km) of man made waterways which were built over 200 years ago.
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They include some rivers which have been made navigable over many hundreds of years.
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New engineering techniques had to be developed to build the inland waterways and canals made the Industrial Revolution possible by allowing goods and raw materials to be moved between the new ‘factories’ and the new ‘consumers’.
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When the railways took over that role, about 100 years ago, British inland waterways went into slow decline and now carry very little commercial cargo.
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However there are more boats afloat than ever before because canal cruising is such a popular leisure activity.
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Most canals are managed and maintained by British Waterways which is a public corporation and enthusiastically supports their leisure and tourism use.
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Many hundreds of miles of derelict canals have now been reopened for pleasure use.
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Canals first saw use during the Roman occupation of the south of Great Britain, and were used mainly for irrigation.
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However, the Romans did create several navigable canals, such as Foss Dyke, to link rivers, enabling increased transportation inland by water.
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Canal-based holidays became popular due to their relaxing nature, self-catering levels of cost, and variety of scenery available; from inner London to the Scottish Highlands.
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This growth in interest came just in time to give local canal societies the ammunition they needed to combat government proposals in the 1960s to close commercially-unviable canals, and to resist pressure from local authorities and newspapers to "Fill In this eyesore" or even to "Close the Killer Canal" (when someone fell in one).
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It was not long before enthusiastic volunteers were repairing unnavigable but officially-open canals and moving on to restore officially-closed ones and demonstrating their renewed viability to the authorities.
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Local authorities began to see how a cleaned-up and well-used waterway was bringing visitors to other towns and waterside pubs(not just boaters, but people who just like being near water and watching boats .
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They began to clean up their own watersides, and to campaign for "their" canal to be restored.
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As a result of this growing revival of interest, there are now even some new routes under consideration, and one under construction called the Fens Waterways Link for the first time in a century, linking navigable rivers and existing canals.
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Large projects such as the restoration of the spectacular Anderton Boat Lift, or the building of the startling Falkirk Wheel attracted development funding from the European Union and from the Millennium Fund.
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There are now thousands of miles of navigable canals and rivers throughout the United Kingdom.
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Most of them are linked into a single English and Welsh network from Bristol to London, Liverpool to Goole, and Lancaster to Ripon, and connecting the Irish Sea, the North Sea, the estuaries of the Humber, Thames, Mersey, River Severn, and River Ribble.
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This network is navigable in its entirety by a narrowboat (a boat 7 ft wide) no longer than about 56 feet.
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There are also several through-routes not connected to the main network, notably those in Scotland, e.g. Glasgow to Edinburgh via the Falkirk Wheel, and Inverness to Fort William via Loch Ness.
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And yes that is the Loch Ness of monster fame
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So should you find yourself over this way then try a narrow boat for a totally different experience
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British Waterways Authority
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