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,

Napton to Warwick.

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.

At Napton the Grand Union, formerly the two Warwick canals resumes after a short stretch on the Oxford canal. This last stretch is just under 40 miles with 57 locks. It is a rural canal for much of its length as it first drops down Calcutt, Stockton and Bascotte locks to take us down one side of the Avon valley. At the bottom the canal runs through the outskirts of Leamington Spa and Warwick.

The canal then climbs up out of the Avon valley by the great flight of 21 locks at Hatton, known by boatmen as "21 steps to Heaven", but where do we go when we go down them? They lift boats 146 ft, providing a spectacular view back down to the distance tower of Warwick church. We then go back into the country soon passing through the dripping cavern of Shrewley tunnel. Passing King's Norton Junction with the Stratford canal the Grand Union heads towards Birmingham, climbing the 5 Knowle locks and for the last 7 miles passing through the suburbs of Birmingham till it drops down the 5 Camp Hill locks to finish at Bordesley junction.

If Birmingham is the destination, then you carry on dropping down Ashted locks and join the Birmingham and Fazeley canal to climb up the Farmer's Bridge locks. All inner city canal, but with it's own charm.

A very heavily locked stretch of canal as it seeks to lower boats down from Napton to the River Avon at Leamington. Calcutt three, Stockton ten, Bascotte four, two of them form a staircase, then half a dozen individual locks. The stretch finishes with half a days run on the level before Cape Locks lift us up two locks to the end of this section.