Calling tiller boys or girls
As the historic Bingley Five Rise Locks undergoes major renovation, a new BBC programme sheds light on some of Yorkshire’s more hidden canals and shows what life is like living on a narrowboat. Catherine Scott reports.
Robbie Cumming is passionate about canals. Not just the freedom that living aboard a narrow boat give him, but the people he meets, the places he visits and the history he unearths. Cumming has managed to turn his passion for our waterways into a career. He returns for the third series of BBC Four’s Canal Boat Diaries which sees him cruise through new towns and villages on his rustic narrowboat, the Naughty Lass. The waterways enthusiast offers a personal take on life as he navigates a challenging 170-mile stretch of the canal and river network aboard the vessel – all the while being filmed on mobile phones and small cameras.
Cumming set off on his adventure over summer and autumn last year, soaking up the scenery while making his way through some beautiful landscapes in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
“Unlike some other programmes, we actually live on board the entire time,” says Cumming, who when not filming lives on the Naughty Lass moored near Wakefield. Starting at the Wigan
Lock Flight, he takes on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, heads along the Aire & Calder Navigation and onto the Selby Canal, up the tidal River Ouse to York and onto the cathedral city of Ripon in North Yorkshire in the four-part series starting on BBC Four on Monday, which sees him have to navigate a total of 103 locks. But this is much more than just a travelogue. Cumming shares his passion for industrial heritage and the history of the areas he passes through, picking out landmarks such as Kirkstall Abbey and Salts Mill as he celebrates the lesser-known stretches of our canals and river
navigations. He also gives an insight into what life is really like living aboard a narrowboat that is less than seven feet wide, as he struggles to balance a relationship on dry land with being away on the water a lot of the time.
Cumming didn’t actually become a boatman until he was 32, having grown up on a garden centre in a small village in Dorset.
“I was one of those people who really didn’t know what they wanted to do, although I really wanted to work in television but I thought I came from a background where that wasn’t possible.” He went from job to job, switching from being an illustrator and musician to working in London at the top of the Gherkin in administration.
It was while he was in the capital that his life changed forever. “Some friends of my then girlfriend had two narrowboats and I was struggling to afford anywhere to live in London and so they said I could live on one of their boats and that was it, I was hooked.” He formulated a plan over the next few years to up sticks and travel the UK’s waterways, videoing and editing along the way and posting the results on YouTube. “I also composed my own songs and people seemed to like it.” They liked it so much that Cumming was contacted by a BBC producer and asked is he would like to make a series for BBC Four. Canal Boat Diaries was born.
“I jumped at the chance. Now this is my third series and I am hoping for more. I just wanted to show people what life was like looking at places from the canal as you have never seen them before,” says Cumming. The series also includes drone footage as he makes his way along Yorkshire’s waterways. The first episode sees Cumming begin his 170-mile journey at Wigan but he soon runs into difficulty when he encounters a propeller problem and runs aground in Blackburn. Nevertheless, he pushes on to navigate a true wonder of the waterways, the Burnley Embankment.
“We didn’t want the series to just be about the romantic side of boating,” he says. “We wanted to show the realities as well and that includes mechanical problems as well as other difficulties you have to overcome.” The second episode – from Barrowford Locks to Bingley – follows Cumming as he crosses the Pennines on the picturesque Leeds & Liverpool Canal, and lends a hand to hireboaters in Gargrave.
“We just came across these holidaymakers by chance – nothing is scripted other than the route and the places we stay. They had overshot their turning and it was the last day of their holiday and they would have had to navigate five more locks before they were able to turn around.
I offered to reverse their boat for them. The boating community is really friendly and it was a great way of showing how we help each other out.”
Holiday renters are one area where Cumming thinks the waterways could be improved. “People are given just an hour’s training by someone who has done it a thousand times. It gives them the basics but not everything they need to know. Nothing beats practice.”
He also encounters Bingley Five Rise Locks, a wonder of the inland waterways that is undergoing major refurbishment The project to replace two out of five sets of lock gates on the UK’s steepest lock flight is part of a four-month, £55m winter works programme being carried out by the Canals & Rivers Trust across its 2,000-mile network of waterways that is due to be completed later this month. The charity is replacing the giant gates at Lock 25 and Lock 26 of the Grade I-listed Bingley
Five Rise. Each set of lock gates weighs six tonnes (the equivalent of an adult African elephant). Standing seven metres tall, they are also some of the highest lock gates in the country.
“It is the steepest flight of locks in Britain,” says Cumming. “Bingley Five Rise Locks lifts boats around 18 metres, with the five locks operating as a ‘staircase’ flight – in which the lower gate of one lock forms the upper gate of the next.”
The new lock gates have been hand-crafted using traditional methods in the Canals & Rivers Trust’s specialist workshops at Stanley Ferry, near Wakefield. A single lock gate can take up to 20 days to make and has a working life of around 25 years. In order to be watertight, they need to be built very precisely, fitting snugly to the masonry of the 248-year-old lock walls.
When completed in 1774, around 30,000 people gathered to watch the first boats make the 60-foot descent through Bingley Five Rise Locks. Today, nearly two-and-a-half centuries later, the flight is still in daily use, providing access to 16 miles of lock-free cruising on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal in the glorious scenery of the Yorkshire Dales. A mix of seasonal staff and volunteers are on hand to assist boats through during the busiest months of the year and Cumming is shown chatting to the lock keeper about the project.
“Upkeep of the canals and waterways is much needed but there are other priorities, I suppose. You do see locks that are in need of repair but there is also a lot going on which is great to see, much of it by volunteers who are passionate about preserving our canals,” he adds.
Within the trust’s Yorkshire & North-East region alone, £11m is being spent on essential repairs, upgrades and maintenance on nine out of 19 waterways in the region. These include the Calder & Hebble Navigation, Chesterfield Canal, Huddersfield Broad Canal, Huddersfield Narrow Canal, Leeds & Liverpool Canal, Rochdale Canal, Stainforth & Keadby Canal, Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation and Tees Navigation.
“This charity and their volunteers do vital work to maintain this important part of heritage,” says Cumming. “The canals aren’t just about leisure, they were vital for transportation and industry.”
This can be seen clearly on another leg of his journey which takes him from Knottingley to Ripon. He has to navigate the fast-flowing tidal River Ouse which he says was one of the scariest parts of his journey.
“My engine started to overheat and I had to stop and sort it out. The Ouse is a busy river and it was quite scary.” He also found mooring in York a challenge as he waded through mud and avoided tourist boats and rowers.
Despite some challenges along the way, Cumming says he hopes the series will inspire more people to take to the water.
■ Canal Boat Diaries will run Monday to Thursday on BBC Four at 7.30pm, starting this Monday.
■ The Canal and Rivers Trust will be hosting a virtual open day on its website, featuring behind-the-scenes footage and interviews from the experts involved. It is anticipated to go online by the end of March. www. canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-thewaterways/events/open-days-2021-22
My engine started to overheat and I had to stop and sort it out. The Ouse is a busy river and it was quite scary.