Electric Narrowboat Holidays on Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal

Narrowboating on the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal. Photo: Paul MilesA few days on a narrowboat is, perhaps, one of the quaintest holidays you can have in Britain – pootling through the countryside along vintage infrastructure at the grand speed of 4mph. There’s nothing quite like it in the world.

Boy-racers and those who relish spacious accommodation and modern luxuries may not find much pleasure in it. As holidays go, it’s one of the most eccentric, like caravanning on a few inches of water with the added complication of having to stop every few miles to open and close locks. Some love the slow pace – the chance to chat to fellow-boaters and walkers or just sit and watch the wildlife. If, like me, you’re one of those, then the one aspect of narrowboating that may have irked is the noise of a diesel engine disturbing the sound of birdsong. That and the fumes.

An electric narrowboat does away with both of these – the engine is quiet and smokeless. On the 33-mile long picturesque Monmouthshire and Brecon canal in Wales, one company, Castle Narrowboats, has been hiring out the only electric boats in Britain for over a decade.

Our 4-berth 45ft boat came fully equipped with fridge, gas cooker, flush toilet, shower and TV. There were two beds – one fixed double and the dinette area that also turned into a double. It was all smart and clean with some nice little touches like a vase of freshly cut flowers and a box of sweets. Bedding was provided but we had to take our own towels and all our provisions – bought from the village shop in Gilwern.

Nick explained how to move the boat (a simple lever controls speed in forward or reverse) and charge the batteries. “There’s enough power to go 18 miles,” he said but I didn’t listen and thought he’d said 18 hours.

And then, with my parents along for the ride, we were off. My go-faster father at the tiller, breaking the speed limit of 2.5mph while my 68-year old mother walked along the towpath at twice the speed. We travelled about four miles that day and the next went just three. In four hours. There was some exertion: five locks to open and close and hikes up and over the sheep-grazed hills, with views down to the sinuous river Usk and the canal curving alongside. We plugged in to the charging point and replenished the batteries – more often than needed.

We made it as far as Brecon, some 15 miles away and then turned around and headed back, past pretty stone villages, underneath historic bridges, alongside disused lime kilns, the bracken topped Brecon Beacons always there as a backdrop to our evening glass of wine, as we sat in deckchairs, facing the sunset.

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Micro-Hydro-Electric Schemes

The flat-topped hills of the Brecon Beacons, with their upland peat bogs, are the perfect landscape for micro-hydro-electric schemes. Farmers and village communities in the National Park are harnessing this power and selling surplus to the national grid. There are plans for the park to become carbon neutral within a few years. (See www.thegreenvalleys.org for more information.) Although the electricity that supplies the charging points for Castle Narrowboats’ electric boats is not from a ‘green’ energy supplier, it is from British Gas which, through its ‘Green Streets’ scheme, has awarded one canalside village – Llangatock – thousands of pounds to undertake green makeover projects in the community.