Reed Hotel Boats



		Your floating hotel on the Canals and Rivers of the UK

Our guide to the waterways of the UK in detail.

Pictures of the Grand Union Canal,

Bull's Bridge to Marsworth.

The Grand Union is a broad canal, we can take both boats through the locks together, however for most of the canal between locks we are unable to stay breasted up and will work in single file. This was the way that boats used this canal in the days of working boats. The Grand Union canal as we know it today is long, 175 miles, and the main route was made up from the merger of three different canals. It varies from inner city to isolated rural, from heavily locked, 21 in two miles, to several pounds over 10 miles in length. It is so long that we never work it as a single trip, but rather it features in many different cruises. Sometimes a section is cruised on its own, sometimes a small part is used to connect different canals as part of a cruise.

This section of the Grand Union from Bull's Bridge, in the Western outskirts of London to Marsworth up near the Chiltern Hills was built as part of the Grand Junction canal, which runs from Brentford on the Western edge of London north west to Braunston Northamptonshire. It is very much an expressway of the canal age. However it does not share the love for speed of modern main routes. Life still moves along at under walking pace and stops completely at locks.

This section climbs from the Western outskirts of London through over 50 locks, passing through Uxbridge, Croxley Green, Hemel Hempstead and Berkhampstead and passing a short arm to Slough. It is a landscape of contrasts, including many lakes and parks such as Harefield Moor with its abundant wildlife and the wooded parkland of Cassionbury Park.

At Cowroast lock the 3 mile Tring summit level is reached. At the further end of the summit lies the arm to Wendover, built as a feeder arm but now unavigatable, and the arm to Aylesbury, a narrow beam canal, still in use. It is also the location for canal reservoirs teaming with bird life and Bulborne Workshops where canal gates used to be made, sadly no longer. Here also is Marsworth where this section finishes.

Below are pictures of this section.