Hello we are to norwegians that have taken the tour from Norway to Shetland, Faero Islands, Orkenyes, Invernass, Caladonian Canal and the westcoat down to Liverpool. We would like to take the canals from Liverpool to London. Is that possible with our RIB 8,5 meters long and 3,0 m weidth?
Now whether you'd want to do that kind of distance at displacement speeds in a planing craft may be a whole different bag but it looks on the face of it to be navigable...
The standard canal network has a limiting width of 7ft. Quite a lot is wider than this but I don't think there's a complete north/south route for wider beam boats.
This map is based on a 12'6" beam, but I suspect the situation would be the same for your 10' beam:
Looking at that map the only obstacle to finding a complete route is no 3 around Northampton if I read it correct you could work across towards hull then down & across the wash then towards London
If you were determined to complete the trip which will take a considerable amount of time then you could probably find someone to slip the boat out & relaunch to get you round the one obstacle
Looks like you could do Liverpool to The Wash & then coast hop down to the Thames
Ooops! looks like BK beat me to it
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Shropshire Union and the Birmingham canals are all narrow beam as far as I can see.
You could go via the Wash, but I'd much rather go anti-clockwise by sea and take in the Pembrokeshire coast, Cornwall, Devon and the run up the Channel to the Thames estuary.
Or just trail the RIB to the interesting bits and take a narrow boat holiday some other time. A RIB will be quite horrible on the canals anyway; they're not much fun at displacement speeds even for short distances.
Wow. Had no idea some bits were that narrow. Been on narrow boats and hadn't realised they are narrower than a chubby RIB...
Hello and thank you for all answers. We dropped the canals and take the boat on a trailer! Tried a company that should be experts on transporting RIBs but they kept us waiting for ours and when they ginally arrived, the trailer was mutch to short. They promised to come back the day after with another trailer, but they did not! After sending sms, mail and telephoned several times they promised to come the next day again, but we didnt hear from them so we fonally dropped them. That cost me to days in hotel in Liverpol. So no we have find another solution! But thanks anyway!
And for all of you that should be interested in our RIB-journey across the North Sea from Norway you could have a look at facebook exepdition modern norsemen, most is written in English
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