Barged out by snowf lakes!
Forced to end river trips, woman abused over ‘cruel’ horse-drawn narrowboat
FOR more than 50 years, horses have towed Iona – an 85-year-old narrowboat – through Britain’s scenic waterways.
But now, the owner of the country’s oldest working horse-drawn barge has stopped doing passenger trips after criticism from snowflakes complaining about animal rights.
Jenny Roberts has retired her horses and shut down her Surrey business after 33 years. The 74-year- old said she made the decision after an increase in ‘aggressive’ comments from others using the towpath along the River Wey and onlookers claiming the practice was cruel on the horses.
Mrs Roberts, based in Godalming, told the Mail last night: ‘People do not understand the concept of a horse pulling a boat.‘I get people shouting things like, “That’s really cruel, what are you doing to those horses?”.
‘But they don’t understand – it’s an easy pull for a horse. I could pull that boat, it’s on water so it’s not heavy. It’s much easier for the horses than somebody riding them. It’s far less strain.
‘These are big heavy horses, that’s what they are bred for.
‘I love my horses to bits and if anybody accuses me of being cruel to them it really hurts.’
Iona was built in 1935 and began life as a cargo- carrying narrowboat, towed behind a motorboat. At 70ft long and 7ft wide, she is the maximum size for boats navigating the inland canal network. In 1968 she was retired and converted to a passenger carrier, pulled by a horse the old-fashioned way.
The horses have appeared in television programmes including Inspector Morse and The Victorian Farm as well as the remake of The Railway Children film in 2000.
Mrs Roberts, whose business was called the Godalming Packetboat Company, added: ‘To start out it was lovely – we were taking thousands of people along the river. But in the last three or four years, it’s got busier to the point where we stopped running on Sundays and Bank Holidays.
‘People were getting more and more aggressive in telling us that the towpath was actually a cycle path. People come up beside you on their bikes, ringing their bells, people’s dogs come flying at you.
Losing [Iona] is an awful shame – there used to be many, but now horse- drawn boats [are] dwindling.’ Iona has now been transported to the Grand Western Canal in Tiverton, Devon.
Phil Brind of the Tiverton Canal Company said: ‘Iona is unique – the last of her kind.
‘All the other horse-drawn barges still working were built as replicas at a much later date.’