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,

Marsworth to Gayton.

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 from Marsworth to Gayton junction was built as part of the the Grand Junction canal, which runs from Brentford on the Western edge of London north west to Braunston Northamptonshire. It is nearly 100 miles long, has 100 locks and two of the longest tunnels on the UK canal system as well as several major branches. 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.

After climbing up from London to Marsworth. This section of the canal then starts to descend, passing through countryside for many miles with the exception of Leighton Buzzard. Arriving at the bottom of the descent the canal passes through the 'new town', of Milton Keynes opinions on it vary. :-) This is the last town on this stretch of the canal which now becomes, and remains remote.

At Cosgrove the canal crosses the Great Ouse river on an embankment and an aqueduct which caused many problems to construct, and the abandoned Buckingham arm. It then meets the hills which it passes with a short flight of locks at Stoke Bruerne, with the canal museum at their top just before Blisworth tunnel at 3,075 brings us to Gayton junction where the arm to Northampton and the fens branches off.

The pictures below are of this section.


Marsworth locks.	Solobury Three locks.	Countryside.

Church lock.	Part of an extensive mural in Milton Keynes.	In the centre of Milton Keynes!

The Great Ouse aqueduct.	Cosgrove.	Stoke Bruerne.

Blissworth Tunnel.	Reused mill at Blisworth.	Countryside.