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With Covid restrictions beginning to lift, and the canals reopening, we are determined to hold our annual event over the last weekend in June, when we have traditionally held it since 2003, bar the loss of the last two years. This year it will be on June 25-26.
The waterways need to have something to celebrate, something to look forward to and initial soundings of the owners of historic narrowboats – who are the making of the rally, the largest gathering of these surviving leviathans of the canal’s carrying past – is that they cannot wait to come.
Songwriter and producer Pete Waterman pictured is still on board. He will formally open the rally, hopefully on the restored narrowboat steamer President and its butty Kildare. President is undergoing works, including a new boiler, at Alvecote Docks. The Friends of President are planning to make a non-stop 36-hour run from the Black Country Museum in Dudley, West Midlands, to the rally.
On the Nutfield & Raymond, will be our ‘canal treasures’ Tim and Pru, who is now in her 90th year. When I rang Timothy West to invite them to join us again – they have opened several of the 17 previous rallies – his reply was spontaneous: “What a lovely idea… but don’t forget I don’t dress up unless I’m being paid.”
Our music impresario for some years, Janul, is already networking the amazing musicians she produces each year for the beer tent. Alarum Theatre are also rehearsing their latest production I Dig Canals, about female volunteers involved in the canal restoration projects in the 1950s and 1960s. We are also seeing a positive response from trade exhibitors and the canal societies, whom we seek to support through free space and the publicity the event gives them.
We are fortunate to hold the event in our marina, with use of the canal outside for the parades of historic narrowboats, thanks to the Canal & River Trust. The rally is very much an outdoor event, with the attendance of around 5,000 along the mile or so of towpath.
TIM COGHLAN
Braunston Marina
