2017 Big Southern Cruise - Final tally

2017 Southern Cruise - the final tally

October 2017

I have long since given up logging my daily progress but having completed this years big cruise which lasted five months, I thought it would be a good idea to plug the destinations into the Canal Planner and see just how far we travelled.

Over the period we travelled 752 miles and passed through 710 Locks.

I could cut and dice this in all sorts of ways but one of the key metrics is the general speed of travel with the butty in tow. My gps tells me that on the narrow canals my maximum average speed is 2.3 mph, rising to about 3.5 running downstream on the Thames. If I turn and head upstream this speed drops to less then 2mph as I encountered on the Wey, Lee and Stort. As you can appreciate, I prefer to make my river passages downstream!

The boats are now laid up for the winter with a long list of repairs to be completed. 

But as one chapter closes another one starts, and the world of Wild Side never rests. We have lots of apples in the shed and about 2000 jars of preserve of preserve to be made in the next six months.

The plan is to start the 2018 season at Droitwich, as usual, and then head north for Liverpool and then over the Pennines to Leeds before heading south via the Huddersfield Narrow to join the festival season at Cosgrove in July. I think I need to log into Canal Plan again.....

OK - have had a look at next years plan and although it seems longer on the map it is actually a very achievable 696 miles and 566 locks, not including any diversions along the way.