London by water

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

The Water Rat, in “Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame

Ratty would be just as correct in 21st century London as he was in 1908, although that sentiment may be more appreciated today in the cosmopolitan center of movers, shakers, wage-earners, entrepreneurs and tourists.

Fortunately, there’s no need to constantly deal with London’s traffic snarls, be sandwiched by tube riders, climb stairs on a swaying double-decker or navigate sidewalks with pedestrians in overdrive.

Just step off the fast lane and onto a canal boat, a first-gear approach to seeing the quieter side of London. Or if you don’t mind the crowds, turn the Thames River into your highway to the sights.

Whether renting a narrow boat for a day, taking a weeklong floating vacation or a two-hour ride with a guide, a canal experience is priceless.

Britain’s extensive canal networks were built in the early part of the 19th century to move coal, iron ore, china clay, grain and limestone from industrialized regions to rivers and ports.

Martin Sach, of the London Canal Museum, said some sections were built “as a government scheme to counter unemployment. They didn’t want a French Revolution in London so they came up with a plan to keep the poor busy,” he said.

Cargo was carried in narrow boats pulled by horses and run by itinerant workers with little social contact outside the canals. They were generally perceived as filthy lower-class folks and somewhat dangerous.

So boat owners, who often lived aboard with their families, offered a striking counterpoint to that assessment by turning their boats into showcases of art, painting many surfaces in the tradition of folk painting.

The canals had a relatively short run as commercial byways. Railroads, then better roads and trucks, gradually took away their business. By the late 1960s, the narrow boats were without cargo; the docks closed a decade later. Yet proposals to turn canals and towpaths into roads or rail beds were resisted.

Today, the canals are nationalized and carry mostly live-aboards and tourists. The system is so extensive that many loop trips are available. And canals still have their towpaths for walkers and bikers, and bikes can be brought aboard the boats.

According to British Waterways London, 40 years ago London’s towpaths were private property and accessible only to a few. Today BWL manages about 100 miles of public towpaths in the capital.

We sampled Regent’s Canal aboard a 100-year-old, 48-foot-long, 10-foot-wide iron-and-wood narrow boat from Jason’s Wharf, floating with a colorful assortment of canal boats, swans, red-face moorhens, white-face coots and kingfishers.

At one point we were only a short walk from Kings Cross, one of the busiest stations on the London Underground, but also in a totally different world where the top speed is 4 mph.

Regent’s Canal runs from Little Venice in the west to the Thames River, with 12 locks dropping the boats a total of 100 feet in elevation. The project had to overcome an innovative lock design that failed and a promoter who embezzled.

Along the way are numerous waterside parks, pubs and restaurants.

Tunnels, not a problems for today’s narrow boats, were a challenge for boats pulled by horses walking along a towpath. There are no towpaths in the tunnels, our guide pointed out. The solution was for a crew member to lie on a board extended from the boat and “walk” along the wall, a feat called legging.

A stretch from Little Venice to Camden Town, where splashes of colorful boats move slowly against a backdrop of weeping willows, is particularly beautiful.

The canal runs through Camden Town, a shopping district once a backwater of drug-dealing and associated crime that is being cleaned up.

Several markets with about 1,000 shops and stalls operate here, with Camden Lock and Stables markets the most popular. Expect to find 21st-century hippies, live music, exotic foods, Hawaiian shirts, ethnic bazaars, 1960s clothes shops, restaurants, Victorian jewelry, art studios, handmade postcards and furniture from Africa.

There are plenty of pubs, such as the Fusilier and Firkin, which brews its own beer and celebrates National Naturist Day with an afternoon of naked drinking.

If you have rented a narrow boat, you can stop almost anywhere along the canal and walk to nearby sights.

Off Regent’s Canal, for instance, you can easily reach Regent’s Park, once the hunting grounds of King Henry VIII; the Pool of Little Venice, named by poet Robert Browning when he lived overlooking the canal; the London Zoo; the London Canal Museum; and Lord’s Cricket Ground, the most hallowed turf in cricketdom.

It’s not even necessary to have a narrow boat of your own between Camden Lock and Little Venice. The London Water Bus Company operates a boat with stops at the lock, the zoo and Little Venice.

A different boating experience through the heart of London is on the Thames River. Taking a cruise boat that offers a guide’s narration provides history, anecdotes and a chance to turn sites on a map into three dimensions.

We rode Catamaran Cruises from Tower Pier to Waterloo Pier for a ride on the London Eye, the huge “observation wheel” on the Thames.

Another option is to use London River Services, boats with a schedule designed for commuters at 18 piers but also useful to tourists.

Here are some sites that can be reached by boat-hopping and walking along either embankment, over the bridges, or within a short distance from the river:

The London Eye, for a bird’s eye of the area; the Tower of London; Tower Bridge; St. Paul’s Cathedral; Victoria Embankment Gardens; National Theatre; HMS Belfast; the Houses of Parliament; Westminster Abbey; the London Aquarium; Tate Modern; Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre; and Winchester Palace.

The Thames River is not as quiet as a canal but like the canal system, it offers another way to appreciate the sights without using wheels.

Travel writers Sharon Wootton and Maggie Savage are co-authors of “You Know You’re in Washington When …”