This week as a Leicestershire couple celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary with a canal boat trip along the Grand Union Canal I thought I would celebrate the Grand Union itself. (The happy husband at 83 is the same age as the canal.) We have boats for sale all over the southern Grand Union and as Boatshed Inland we cover an even wider area.

The Grand Union canal will take you from London to Birmingham should you wish, meandering off with extra arms towards places like Slough, Wendover, Aylesbury and Leicester. It was formed from by the unification of several different canals. The present version dates from 1929 and was extended in 1932. Last week the Wendover Arm Trust held their annual sponsored ‘Walk an Arms Length’ to raise funds to continue restoring the arm.

The parts that I’ve travelled are the wide bits, between Brentford and Braunston, formerly known as the Grand Junction Canal. Here the locks can hold two narrowboats side by side or a barge up to 14 feet wide.

From London to Birmingham it’s 137 miles long, as Tom Graham and Dale Whittaker recently found out, when they rowed the whole of the Grand Union passing 166 locks on the way.

We are pleased to be the first Boatshed brokerage dedicated to the UK inland waterways. As well as the Grand Union we cover the London Canals and the River Lee Navigation. So if you have a boat to sell, give us a call and we’ll be happy to list your boat on our web site and many others, with all the photographs made available to our 250,000 registered customers.

Peggy Melmoth
www.narrowboatwife.com

You may also like:
Living on a Boat: The Boatshed Guide (free) / New Boat Blog on the Block / Rowing the Grand Union - Yes Really! / A slideshow of our boat of the moment./Blog Archive

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