Blog name change...

This blog was originally called bowsnboats because we owned a share in a narrowboat and I was into archery. However we then sold the share and I no longer do archery...

Still interested in narrowboats and canals though. And increasing interested in folk music so changing name to folknboats

Still on the canals

Well kind of...

We sold our boat share in part because we were missing holidays in France. So virtually as soon as we decided to sell we booked a ferry crossing for the end of March. From one boat to another!

At that point we had not even decided which part of France to visit. After some thought, we decided on a gite near Strasbourg. And get this... It is right next to a canal! Our canal hating daughter still can't believe it.


While researching the small village where we are staying (Waltenheim sur Zorn) I was amazed to find this picture from this webpage from K and H which shows our gite. Not sure which of these buildings it is but it's one of them.

The canal goes right from outside the door to the centre of Strasbourg so I will be taking my bike! In fact the canal goes a good deal further than that as it is the Canal de la Marne au Rhin.

There are some excellent photos on K and H's webpage of Strasbourg. Can't wait!

Better view of Milton Keynes

Deborah Newbold in her "Little More" blog has a long rant against cars and Milton Keynes. I think that MK gets mentioned largely because of the perceived impact of cars on the town.

Now I probably agree on the overuse of cars bit. And the Milton Keynes roundabouts are a pain when you want to travel across the town. And, yes, I did fail to find the centre of the town the first time I visited. And it took me a few visits to work out that the V & H at the front of the road numbers in Milton Keynes stood for Vertical and Horizontal.

But I digress (again)... The main purpose of this post was to point out how pleasant it it to visit Milton Keynes by narrowboat. We did that in August last year and thoroughly enjoyed it.

We got to moor in the middle of a large park and had a nice walk through said park to the shopping centre. Now, admittedly, if you don't see a shopping centre as a suitable destination for a walk then you will be unpersuaded but we found it quite pleasant.

PS: I have actually been quite impressed with the way that different transport systems (roads, cycle paths, footpaths are interlaced within Milton Keynes. For example you can cycle or walk a long way without ever having to cross a road. Being a new town, the planners had the luxury of being able to design this in. Livingston in Scotland is similar.

My website mentioned

Being new to this newfangled blogging lark, most of the canal related information that I have put on the internet is on our website (www.asmith.org.uk).

In the canals section, there are detailed logs of every canal trip that I have been on. The majority of trips are on nb Sojourn. We own 1/12 of her through the Ownerships scheme.

However there are also logs going back as far as 1970. This was my first trip aged 9 and is now quite an interesting historical document. Which is why it got a mention on Adam Porter's blog. He has recently been on the same part of the Oxford Canal and found it a rather different place.

This isn't the first time that the website has been mentioned. That god of canal-related blogging Andrew Denny mentioned it in his Granny Buttons blog in July 2007.

I have also had emails from various people who read the site and either wanted to ask questions or reminisce about past canal trips. Nice to know someone is out there!

Maid-Mary Sonya at Science Museum

Spent the weekend in London and visited the Science Museum. Hadn't noticed before how dated some of the exhibits are...

However one interesting thing was the single display window relating to canal boats. It had two model boats in a model lock. One model was a traditional working boat (told you the display was dated!) and the other model was of Maid-Mary Sonya.

The relevance of this is as follows:

My first ever canal trip was on Maid-Mary Wanda back in 1970. She was part of the Maid Mary cruise line which seems to have long disappeared. Yet more proof of how dated the display at the Science Museum is but a real nostalgic moment.

Just shows that museums don't have to be all multi-media extravaganzas!