My home is a floating island on more than 2,000 miles of interconnected inland waterways in England and Wales. In my 17-metre narrowboat home, I have travelled from the most northerly of the joined waterways – within sight of the Lake District – to the most southerly, about 30 miles from the Channel.
It took me 16 months to complete but I was never in a hurry, travelling as slowly as the seasons change. Along the way, between Tewitfield in Lancashire and Godalming in Surrey, I enjoyed some meandering diversions, based on talk I had heard along the towpath, to waterways that seemed too good to miss: the River Weaver, the Ashby canal, the upper Thames. This meant that by the time I reached Godalming, the distance had swollen from the most direct 387 miles to 517 miles, with 220 locks.
