The Interview We talk to Helen Whitehouse from How did you first get interested in inland waterways – was it as a hire boater? My family lived close to the Rushall Canal. As a child my grandfather would take me in my pushchair to Lock 3 to watch the horse boats come through the lock. When I was about 10 years old one of my father’s friends invited our family for an afternoon trip on his small cruiser. My younger brother and I were dressed in our Sunday best and told to sit still and behave. We were bored at not being allowed to do anything and so vetoed the whole idea of a family holiday on the canals. I eventually had my first canal holiday in 1979 on a hire boat. There were four of us – one of whom had had a previous canal holiday when he was a student.
IWA Lichfield Branch
My next holiday was with Anglo-Welsh from Aynho. This time we took my parents to try to make up for depriving them of 20 years of canal holidays. My father died the following year.
Tell us about some of your other early experiences. Just before my first canal holiday, we spent a weekend at a hotel (near Bromsgrove) learning about canals. The first evening, there was a slide show. I was amazed when people recognised places such as Fradley Junction, Hawkesbury or Braunston from the slides. We walked a stretch of the Droitwich Canal and came across a Waterway Recovery Group work party and I was once again surprised to find how many people knew each other and how friendly everyone was.
Where did you go on your first trip?
What were your first impressions of the canals?
We hired a boat for a week from Countrywide Cruisers in Brewood and went all the way to Llangollen and back. We started at first light and continued until dusk. At Grindley Brook I got into conversation with two American couples who had hired a boat for the whole summer to see the country. I remarked that it must be very expensive to do that. “On the contrary” they said, “no hire car fees, no hotel bills, no packing and unpacking, stay in the middle of towns and cities like Oxford, London, Warwick, Stratford-on-Avon, Worcester and York whilst you visit the sights and theatres and you also meet some lovely people on the way.” It set me thinking.
On my first holiday, it took three days for my brain to slow down sufficiently to enjoy the slower pace of travel. Once I understood that it was the travelling rather than the arriving that mattered, I loved it.
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Did you go on to become a boat owner? Yes, my husband was initially against the idea of wasting money on a boat. However, we went on another course ‘Understanding canals’, 28 lectures and four field visits run by Lewis Braithwaite from the University of Aston Extra Mural Studies. In this series of lectures, he explained the history, how the canals were built, importance of water supply and Spring 2015