Anglo Welsh recommends – Bristol Harbour Festival

The ever-friendly staff at Anglo Welsh’s head office in Bristol are always keen to sing the praises of their vibrant home city, not least when summer comes around and it’s time for the annual Bristol Harbour Festival, often described by the locals as the mother of all maritime festivals.

This year’s event takes place from Friday July 21st to Sunday July 23rd and will once again celebrate Bristol’s proud maritime heritage as the city’s harbour and waterside fill with two miles of boats, food markets, circus acts, live music and performers.

Launching the Bristol Harbour Festival weekend, the 20-piece Outlook Orchestra will perform a 100-minute live mix celebrating some of the most popular dance tracks from all around the world, coupled with a live set by chart-topping UK artist Roots Manuva.

The weekend’s land-based events are free to all festival visitors while tickets are available granting exclusive access to the spectacular array of boats displayed on the pontoons. Also part of this year’s three-day event is the Western Boat Show, an exciting new consumer show that will feature canal boats, sailing boats, power boats, yachts, dinghies and even fishing boats, not to mention a wide range of marine products and services.

An idyllic starting point for narrowboats heading in the direction of Bristol Harbour* for the July festival is provided by Anglo Welsh’s base at Sydney Wharf in the Word Heritage City of Bath, though we should add that the journey itself is not for the faint-hearted!

Bristol is 7 hours cruising away from our base in the heart of Bath, but the route is only recommended for experienced narrowboat hirers due to the rise and fall in the tide on the River Avon – the highest in the world, falling and rising as much as 14 metres per day.

If you do decide to head along the River Avon from Bath towards Bristol, once there you could also take in Brunel’s masterpiece the SS Great Britain, explore Bristol Zoo, or visit the new Blue Reef Aquarium at the harbour side.

If like the Anglo Welsh team you are a fan of boats, arts, circus, music, nautical capers, and good food and drink by the waterside, make sure you pencil the Bristol Harbour Festival into your diary as an unmissable event this summer.

To book a canal holiday from Anglo Welsh’s base at Sydney Wharf in Bath or from any of our 11 prime waterway locations, please call our friendly booking team on 0117 304 1122.

*Access to Bristol is restricted and must be granted by the lock keeper. There is a £35 per night mooring fee for boaters wishing to moor in the Harbour. During the festival, only boats that have pre-booked will be granted access into the Harbour. Boaters can cruise towards Bristol from Bath and moor up approximately 2 hours away, before accessing the festival via road.

Everything you need to keep the smiles coming

Stan Cullimore recently reviewed his holiday from our Oxford base in the Bristol Post, and found the pace of life to be good for the soul…

There’s a lot to be said for messing around on boats. Living life beyond the river banks. It’s a wonderful way to slow down, unwind and watch the world go by.

Over the past few years I’ve had a lot of fun exploring the canals of Britain, so thought it was time to take a walk on the wild side and try the river. A week of peaceful cruising up and down the River Thames was just what the doctor ordered.
Arriving at the Anglo Welsh boatyard just outside Oxford in the early afternoon, we were shown our home for the duration – a four-berth 58ft-narrowboat called ‘Knighton’.

It had everything needed to keep the smiles coming. A solid double bed at one end, a delightful living room at the other and a bijou galley in the middle. It also had a snug bathroom and central heating. Perfect for seven days of relaxing adventures.

Once we had our things on board, we moved off down river and found ourselves deep in the heart of countryside, the hills gently rolling away as far as the eye could see.

Up ahead there were tantalising glimpses of the slender spires of Oxford. But before getting there, we had to put our minds to the serious business of mooring up for the night. Luckily Nick from Anglo Welsh had suggested Godstow Abbey. It’s a sweet spot to stop and has a picturesque pub just over the bridge. The Trout delivered everything we needed. Great views, great beer and free WiFi. On our way home we went for a stroll and found a sign “Be Your Beautiful Best”. Decided to make it our motto for the week ahead.

The next day we headed on down to Oxford. After a gentle morning mooching along the water, we moored up and went into the city centre to explore.

It’s very cute, obviously. If Willy Wonka did architecture, this is the sort of place he’d come up with. As if to prove it, when we strolled along in search of coffee and cake we found a four-piece string quartet playing next to an outdoor café. It really was the cherry on the cake.

As you drift through Oxford by boat, you can’t help but notice swarms of rowers out on the water. They’re lovely to watch but prone to get up to mischief. They splash and twirl their way around the river like crazy boat-borne ballerinas. Think watching Formula 1, but with less revving, more rowing and much slower bumps.

We thought the university town would be the cutest place on offer during our holiday, but we were wrong. Approaching Abingdon by water the next afternoon was like watching a picture postcard come to life.

Luckily, even though the river runs right through the middle of town, we were still able to find a quiet spot in a delightful meadow just moments from the action.

By now, we were getting into the swing of life on board. It’s very restful. You steer the boat, drink tea and watch the countryside glide past at walking speed. Then you moor up and go in search of pleasure and pubs. Very easy on the soul.
As was the procession of bridges that we passed under. Whether they were built for trains, cars, people or bikes, made of stone, steel or wood, there’s something lovely about all of them. Who needs the crumbling spires of town and gown, when you’ve got the beautiful bridges of Oxford county soaring over head?

By early evening the next day, we had arrived in Wallingford. Another glorious little town, with another glorious golden bridge spanning the river.

We turned around and got ready for the return leg of our journey. But first, Mrs Cullimore decided it was time to do some holiday shopping. Somehow I persuaded her to pick up a garden sprinkler, which must be the oddest souvenir we’ve ever brought home.

As we made our way back up river over the next few days, I tried to work out my favourite thing about a being on a boat. It could have been the ever present wildlife, the fabulous scenery or the sheer joy of having a rock’n’rolling home. But it wasn’t. It was something even better than any of those. It was the passers-by. Whether they’re on another boat, on the towpath or just enjoying the view, their waving, smiling and chatting makes your day.

To book a canal holiday from any of Anglo Welsh’s 11 bases at prime waterway locations, please call our friendly booking team on 0117 304 1122.

A family narrowboat odyssey to Birmingham and back

Departing from our Tardebigge base, on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal near Bromsgrove, the Daily Mail’s Guy Adams recently took his family on a canal boat holiday for the first time:

‘The weekend plans — to chug serenely through the Black Country, stopping at a few waterside pubs and overnighting in central Birmingham…

Canal trips create all sorts of happy memories, and this one would bring plenty: the kids (William, six, Megan, four, and Henry, one) hooting with excitement as we chugged into a series of long, pitch-dark tunnels; and the fisherman guffawing into his pot of maggots as yours truly managed to get stuck (yet again!) in a smelly reed bed.

The Worcester & Birmingham Canal, built at the end of the 18th century, was one of the great motorways of the Industrial Revolution. Today, it’s altogether more tranquil, meandering through 30 mostly-picturesque miles of town, suburb, and countryside.

It’s said that Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice. But the rest of the UK is hardly short of them, either: by Victorian times, there were almost 5,000 miles of waterways, of which about 2,200 remain today.

At the helm of a narrowboat, everything moves at its own pace. Once you master the controls, everyday cares recede. It’s really quite blissful.

We arrive at Gas Street Basin, a bustling marina slap bang in the city centre, in the middle of Saturday afternoon, and tie our 70ft narrowboat ‘The Derwent’ up for the night.

Our mooring is right next to the National Sea Life Centre, a large, state-of-the-art aquarium that might have been custom designed for entertaining excitable kids who needed to let off steam.

After dark, Gas Street Basin is the centre of Birmingham’s vibrant nightlife scene, so bedtime is jollified by the succession of stag and hen parties sailing past our mooring on ‘disco boats’, several equipped with karaoke machines. Our kids think it quite the spectacle.

Fortunately, the council requires them to disappear at 9pm, at which point the mooring becomes an oasis of calm once more.

We sleep like logs, before chugging slowly home the next day, thankful that, even in the vibrant centre of Britain’s second largest metropolis, a canal is its own, peaceful world.’

To book a holiday or break on any of Anglo Welsh’s fleet, call our friendly booking team on 0117 304 1122.

Anglo Welsh support for charitable walk on the Warwickshire Canal Ring helps raise over £2,000

Phil Seedhouse is a 61-year-old IT manager from Solihull with a passion for keeping fit and music. A 100 mile canal walk to raise money for Cardiomyopathy UK certainly put his fitness to the test, and when Anglo Welsh stepped in to provide a much needed ‘support boat’ at the eleventh hour it was music to his ears!

The Warwickshire Towpath Challenge normally involves walking a 100 mile stretch of the West Midlands Canal Ring in 5-7 days, but Phil decided to really test his own endurance by tackling the route in just 4 days, with friends and family joining him on different stretches along the way: on the towpath, at locks, or on the water.

Unfortunately, Phil’s best-laid plans were nearly scuppered two weeks before the challenge when a water pipe burst on his crucial ‘support boat’. Rather than cancel, Phil sent out an SOS to old friend, Tom Willson, Anglo Welsh’s joint base manager at Tardebigge on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal. As a business with a long track record of supporting charitable causes, Anglo Welsh responded to the mayday with the 65ft ‘Silver Spirit’, a 6-berth Estuary Class narrowboat.

“I have done plenty of sailing in my time,” says Phil, “but this was my first time on a narrowboat and I couldn’t get over how comfortable it was. Having a luxury canal boat along for support and knowing I would have a great place to put my feet up at the end of the day was a real bonus.”

“I really enjoyed the variety of landscapes along the towpaths, from picturesque waterways on the stretch between Atherstone and Polesworth, to places like Birmingham and Tamworth where you see the industrial heritage. Not to mention the great pubs at Hatton Lock and Hartshill! But I really looked forward to my relaxing evenings on the ‘Silver Spirit’.”

Enjoyable though it was, the raison d’être for Phil’s towpath challenge was raising funds for a good cause. “Our aim was to raise as much money as possible through sponsorship for Cardiomyopathy UK,” he says. “Our initial target was to raise £1,000 but thanks to the support of Anglo Welsh and others we have already raised well over £2,000 and the donations are still coming in. That money goes directly to Cardiomyopathy UK to help them improve the lives of those that suffer from this disease and to improve diagnosis by increasing genetic testing for those who may be inheritors of the gene.”

To make a donation to Cardiomyopathy UK go to www.virginmoneygiving.com/philseedhouse

Phil himself was diagnosed with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) several years ago. Like most people, he had never heard of the condition before. “Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle and can take several forms but can cause death if severe enough,” he explains. “You may remember the sudden death of David Frost’s son who died when out jogging at the age of 31 from heart failure caused by HCM.”

“There are often no symptoms associated with the condition which means that it can often go undiagnosed until it’s too late. I certainly had no idea I was suffering from HCM until I was diagnosed. Fortunately, I only have a mild case and it doesn’t stop me keeping fit and active, but one of the things I hope to do is raise awareness of the condition. So a very big thank-you to Anglo Welsh for stepping into the breach at the last minute and making my Towpath Challenge such a successful one.” 

At least one in 500 British people has a type of cardiomyopathy and it affects people of all ages. Find out more about the heart muscle condition at cardiomyopathy.org

To book a canal holiday from Tardebigge or any of Anglo Welsh’s 11 bases at prime waterway locations, please call our friendly booking team on 0117 304 1122.