A slow boat to heaven - Angela Rippon’s River Cruises
A slow boat to heaven - Angela Rippon’s River Cruises
Ed Grenby - 5 June 2026
Angela Rippon may have cruised the Mekong on 5, but ED GRENBY discovered adventure on the water closer to home
I'm not saying this pub’s steak-and-ale pie is better than the 12th-century temple complex of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, but put it this way: as I make the first incision through its perfectly flaky crust, and the aroma of beef and Hook Norton bitter mixes with the honeysuckle at the pub garden’s wild edges, and I gaze contentedly out across Oxfordshire’s gently-flowing River Cherwell, I’ve no burning desire to be beside the Mekong instead.
I mention the comparison merely because you may have been watching Angela Rippon’s River Cruises on 5 for the past few weeks, and somehow formed the opinion that for a memorable waterborne jaunt only the Mekong – or Danube – will do. But that would be to overlook Britain’s own brilliant tangle of canals and navigable rivers, and the truly world-class holiday you can have on them.
Me, I’d never so much as dipped a toe in any of them until two months ago, but that didn’t seem to deter narrowboat specialists Black Prince (black-prince. com) from entrusting me with one of their 65ft long, 6ft 10in wide beauties. It may not have had the multiple restaurants, spa and swimming pool of Rippon’s ride – Angela cruised with six-star Scenic (scenic.co.uk), just in case you insist on following her down the Danube – but it did come with a proper king-size bed, a couple of singles, two separate shower rooms, a full galley and a smart little sitting/dining area that somehow also found space for a 32in flatscreen TV.
A quick lesson in steering, mooring, knots, locks – and, just as crucially, what can and can’t go down the toilets – and I was let loose, roaring out of the base at speeds of up to… 3mph. Narrowboats do not go fast, it turns out, and the speed limit on UK canals is a molassespace 4mph. The crew of my craft – my two sons, aged 12 and 15 – were initially horrified by this, but soon came to love the freedom it gave them. While the boat chugged unhurriedly on, they could hop on and off at will, strolling the towpath alongside, darting off to explore waterside villages (and their snacking opportunities), nipping up ahead to open locks, or just loafing on our open prow, safe in the knowledge that they were 65ft from my prying ears while I was at the stern, steering. (I generously let them have a go themselves, when I needed to pop down into the galley for another beer.)
Driving the great steel beast isn’t particularly onerous – though there were a few tell-tale scrapes in the paintwork by the end of our week. Mostly these were the result of my getting distracted by the landscape while at the tiller. Black Prince has nine bases across England, Scotland and Wales, but I’d chosen Lower Heyford, where the Oxford Canal and River Cherwell share a course, and there are multiple route options. Not a half-mile passed without a sigh-inducingly satisfying view: sun glittered on water, furball ducklings waggled behind their mothers, dragonflies floated among reeds, wildflower-speckled meadows and church spires scrolled into view around every bend. The journey was punctuated by pub lunches and picnics on grassy banks,
the best spots picked out by the winningly idiosyncratic Pearson’s Canal Companion (Pearson has written a guidebook for pretty much every stretch in the country). In fact, the pace only picked up a little when we moored in Oxford for a couple of nights: the sudden bustle felt strange, though the boys loved the bonkers Pitt Rivers Museum (prm.ox.ac.uk), the cavernous “secret” underground bookshop at Blackwell’s on Broad Street, and the general, pervading Harry Potter/His Dark Materials vibe.
Leaving town, we dropped neatly into the Thames and a dilemma. Turning left would take us to Windsor Castle and Hampton Court; turning right, to such slightly-less-world-famous names as, um, Bablock Hythe. We chose the road less paddled, and were glad of it: heading west, along a narrowing and pleasingly meandering Thames, we got village pubs instead of palaces, farm stalls instead of castles – and the pure delight of having nowhere in particular we needed to get to.
And that, really, was what we all loved about our week on the canal. We went, arbitrarily, as far as Newbridge (a tiny hamlet consisting of one gorgeous 13th-century bridge and two terrific boozers) before turning round and heading back to Lower Heyford. We could have driven between the two in 34 minutes, says Google, instead of the full week we spent on the water, but then we’d have missed out on all that gazing into the middle distance while the countryside unspooled slowly around us.
Sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination. Sometimes, slow is better than fast. Sometimes, you need to take the scenic route.
Watch Angela Rippon’s River Cruises on channel5.com
Angela Rippon may have cruised the Mekong on 5, but ED GRENBY discovered adventure on the water closer to home
I'm not saying this pub’s steak-and-ale pie is better than the 12th-century temple complex of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, but put it this way: as I make the first incision through its perfectly flaky crust, and the aroma of beef and Hook Norton bitter mixes with the honeysuckle at the pub garden’s wild edges, and I gaze contentedly out across Oxfordshire’s gently-flowing River Cherwell, I’ve no burning desire to be beside the Mekong instead.
I mention the comparison merely because you may have been watching Angela Rippon’s River Cruises on 5 for the past few weeks, and somehow formed the opinion that for a memorable waterborne jaunt only the Mekong – or Danube – will do. But that would be to overlook Britain’s own brilliant tangle of canals and navigable rivers, and the truly world-class holiday you can have on them.
Me, I’d never so much as dipped a toe in any of them until two months ago, but that didn’t seem to deter narrowboat specialists Black Prince (black-prince. com) from entrusting me with one of their 65ft long, 6ft 10in wide beauties. It may not have had the multiple restaurants, spa and swimming pool of Rippon’s ride – Angela cruised with six-star Scenic (scenic.co.uk), just in case you insist on following her down the Danube – but it did come with a proper king-size bed, a couple of singles, two separate shower rooms, a full galley and a smart little sitting/dining area that somehow also found space for a 32in flatscreen TV.
A quick lesson in steering, mooring, knots, locks – and, just as crucially, what can and can’t go down the toilets – and I was let loose, roaring out of the base at speeds of up to… 3mph. Narrowboats do not go fast, it turns out, and the speed limit on UK canals is a molassespace 4mph. The crew of my craft – my two sons, aged 12 and 15 – were initially horrified by this, but soon came to love the freedom it gave them. While the boat chugged unhurriedly on, they could hop on and off at will, strolling the towpath alongside, darting off to explore waterside villages (and their snacking opportunities), nipping up ahead to open locks, or just loafing on our open prow, safe in the knowledge that they were 65ft from my prying ears while I was at the stern, steering. (I generously let them have a go themselves, when I needed to pop down into the galley for another beer.)
Driving the great steel beast isn’t particularly onerous – though there were a few tell-tale scrapes in the paintwork by the end of our week. Mostly these were the result of my getting distracted by the landscape while at the tiller. Black Prince has nine bases across England, Scotland and Wales, but I’d chosen Lower Heyford, where the Oxford Canal and River Cherwell share a course, and there are multiple route options. Not a half-mile passed without a sigh-inducingly satisfying view: sun glittered on water, furball ducklings waggled behind their mothers, dragonflies floated among reeds, wildflower-speckled meadows and church spires scrolled into view around every bend. The journey was punctuated by pub lunches and picnics on grassy banks,
the best spots picked out by the winningly idiosyncratic Pearson’s Canal Companion (Pearson has written a guidebook for pretty much every stretch in the country). In fact, the pace only picked up a little when we moored in Oxford for a couple of nights: the sudden bustle felt strange, though the boys loved the bonkers Pitt Rivers Museum (prm.ox.ac.uk), the cavernous “secret” underground bookshop at Blackwell’s on Broad Street, and the general, pervading Harry Potter/His Dark Materials vibe.
Leaving town, we dropped neatly into the Thames and a dilemma. Turning left would take us to Windsor Castle and Hampton Court; turning right, to such slightly-less-world-famous names as, um, Bablock Hythe. We chose the road less paddled, and were glad of it: heading west, along a narrowing and pleasingly meandering Thames, we got village pubs instead of palaces, farm stalls instead of castles – and the pure delight of having nowhere in particular we needed to get to.
And that, really, was what we all loved about our week on the canal. We went, arbitrarily, as far as Newbridge (a tiny hamlet consisting of one gorgeous 13th-century bridge and two terrific boozers) before turning round and heading back to Lower Heyford. We could have driven between the two in 34 minutes, says Google, instead of the full week we spent on the water, but then we’d have missed out on all that gazing into the middle distance while the countryside unspooled slowly around us.
Sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination. Sometimes, slow is better than fast. Sometimes, you need to take the scenic route.
Watch Angela Rippon’s River Cruises on channel5.com