| As I have mentioned, I was invited to join the Spring Cruise in 1984 and turned up on a Saturday lunchtime at The Hastings the meeting place at the time. I was introduced to the other crew members, and found that I already knew a couple of them through the walking club. We set off in cars at that time, the use of a Mini-bus not coming for a couple of years. The crew was quite depleted due to family commitments,(one of the reasons I was asked to make up the crew) and we only had an 8 berth narrowboat that year the STAFFORD as we set out from our base at Great Haywood.
I soon found out that the reason a trip on the canal network is a great way of relaxing and unwinding is because it is just not possible to rush and it forces you to slow down to the canals pace. The maximum speed is 4 miles per hour and in many places even that is not achievable due to the depth of water, if you try to go any faster you only draw the water from under your own hull which slows you down even more.
Locks will only fill and empty at a certain pace, governed by the operating paddles. And you cannot open the lock gates until the water has levelled out.
To that you have to allow for waiting for other boats at locks, if other craft are waiting at the locks you alternate one up then one down so that a lock full of water is not wasted. The recomended allowance is 15 minutes per lock the equivalent of 1 mile of travel. So you can see that in an 8 hour day the maximum distance you can travel is 32 miles less 1 mile for every lock on that stretch of canal. It takes a day or so to go from "Get a move on" mode, to "Look at all those idiots rushing about" but once you are there you can really appreciate the peace and tranquility of the canals, you see lots of wildlife such as herons and kingfishers because the pace gives you time to look about you and your gentle approach does not frighten the wildlife, and of course there are the numerous canalside pubs that have to be checked out. And so it was that I was introduced to all the delights that a trip round the Warwickshire Ring and up the Ashby Canal could provide and a real eye opener it was. It is amazing how a totally different view of familiar countryside and places is provided when you approach them from the canals rather than by road. It is like being in a different world and the way that other people react is different as well. I am sure that if we had arrived at some of these pubs by car and been as loud and rawcous as we were, we would not have received as warm a welcome as "These lads on a barge" from the landlords and locals alike.
Despite the leisurely pace the end of the week came all to soon, and as we drove away from the base on that saturday morning I was already counting the days until the next years trip. | 
