Reasons for hire vacancies?

AFTER reading the suggestion that the boat hiring concerns would seem to have vacancies, I confirm that many hirers do in fact have many vacancies, and I believe the reason is twofold, and this is from my own experience of hiring narrowboats for the past six years, writes Ralph Helleman.

Experience I may add that has prompted us to forsake the canals and take a package holiday to Spain this year.

Nothing to do

The first reason is children, who find a boating holiday very boring after soon realising there is absolutely nothing for them to do as soon as they realise working the locks is little fun, as they really are man's work, and travelling along the Kennet & Avon Canal at about three miles an hour only too often raises the plea ''when will we get somewhere dad?''

I managed to get them on another boating holiday by the promise that they would be able to do the locks, choosing the Shropshire Union Canal with lighter narrow locks, but this defeated its object by long, long stretches of nothing.

So after these first two attempts to include the two children I gave up and allowed the children an alternative holiday, but with my partner and myself enjoying the canals on our own.

The weather

But there's the second reason, that many other like hirers have complained about—the weather! Over the past four years we have been allowed to choose when we hire a boat, trying for the drier months, but have been thwarted every time. It wasn't so wet at the end of May last year, but we had a week on the Trent & Mersey Canal suffering a very cold North wind, and with no heating, found it quite miserable.

But you do of course forget, and though we had both decided we were going to get some hot sun this year, I still rang round the hire companies, and it was then I found they all had lots of weeks on offer, but my partner said no, we were getting away from the English weather and taking one of our children at least with us—the other having outgrown!

Thoroughly enjoyed

So though I thoroughly enjoyed the boating holidays in themselves, the combined problem of not being able to keep the interest of children and the vagarious of our weather has prompted us to look elsewhere. Considering ourselves of normal dispositions I would imagine others take the same attitude, hence, I believe so many vacancies.

I do realise, obviously, that neither of these are the faults of the hire concerns, but boating holidays are not really of any attraction to modern children and the English weather is something we all must like to get away from.