POTD : Vintage at Fradley

A vintage van at Fradley canal junction.

Travelling the Grand Union Canal in the 1930s

An amazing video following showing canal boats travelling from London up to Birmingham. Showing inland waterway traffic on the Thames, Regent's Canal and Grand Union Canal. Some of the places shown like Hatton Locks i have visited myself over the last couple of years, some things of course look very different now but some things are unchanged, though you may need to look closely sometimes!

Stratford-upon-Avon River Festival 2013

Something i enjoyed last year was the Stratford-upon-Avon River Festival, being a fan of boats and inland waterways it was like heaven for me! However i enjoyed it by "accident" to be honest, i went to Stratford last year not even knowing it was on...

This year however i have been waiting for it to take place and on a scorching hot Saturday i visited the festival again, not for that long because of other commitments unfortunately but i did take quite a few photographs.

New waterways map!

I've finally got around to transferring my Canal Tube Map into the right format for the graphics program i use nowadays (Photoshop) and while doing so i decided to update it a bit... and then a bit more and in the end quite a lot! So proudly presenting version 3.0 of what is now a Canal and Navigable River Map.

I first created the map a number of years ago, seeking to create a Birmingham Canal Navigations map in the style of the London Tube Map, over time the map has expanded to include canals like the Stratford-upon-Avon and navigable rivers in the West Midlands. The style has also deviated from the London tube map somewhat.

Version 3.0 has the following updates:

• New font used for titles, no reason for changing really apart from the fact i really like the typewriter font now used! Its a digital version of the actual font of my Brother typewriter in fact.
• Amends to a number of canals including Titford and W&E.
• Rivers now more clearly shown
• A few extra places shown

I hope you find it useful or at least mildly diverting... 

Banbury

I've travelled through Banbury a lot (usually on the way to and from London) but today i stopped off to visit the town and especially the canal. The Oxford Canal runs through the town and i was surprised at how many narrowboats there were there. It totally surprised me, some of the bridges were pretty neat too. You can see my canal pictures here.

I also visited the town, which is nice. Oxfordshire is in my blood. My relatives can be traced back to that county to the 1670s apparently. The railway station is especially fun with some interesting traffic including an inspection saloon being propelled by a class 37! You can see my Banbury (non-canal) photos here.

I also made the following Vine video of the London-Stratford train arriving.

Inland Waterways 1950 (video)

An interesting film i have found on Youtube. Made in 1950 this film shows a canal boat travelling from London to Birmingham. A very different world to now, back then the canals were used to carry goods but now they carry holiday makers. Its fascinating how much has changed in the last 63 years but in rural areas how much has stayed the same. What i found most interesting was the board which was used to track boat movements and positions.

Stratford-upon-Avon River Festival

I headed off down to Stratford-upon-Avon today as it was a nice day and had a surprise when i got there and saw signs for a "River Festival" (probably saw the posters before but forgot about it). Must be plenty of boats then i thought... and how! River cruisers, rowing boats, service craft, RC boats and dozens of narrowboats!

As well as that lots of morris dancers and people dressed as pirates. All great fun and i'm glad the weather was good for them all too. All in all it was all a lovely sight along the Avon and here you can see the photos.