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Working Waterways #1
Maidens' Trip
Maidens' Trip
Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
16 people are currently reading
330 people want to read
About the author
Emma Smith
37 books8 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
EMMA SMITH was born in Cornwall in 1923 and was privately educated. In 1939 she took her first job in the Records Department of the War Office before volunteering for work on the canals; this gave her the material for Maidens' Trip (1948), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. She spent the winter of 1946-7 with a documentary film unit in India and then lived in Paris and wrote The Far Cry (1949), awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best novel of the year in English. In 1951 Emma Smith married and had two children. After her husband's death in 1957 she went to live in rural Wales; she then published very successful children's books, short stories (one of which was runner-up in the 1951 Observer short story competition that launched the winner, Muriel Spark, on her career) and, in 1978, her novel The Opportunity of a Lifetime. Since 1980 she has lived in Putney in south-west London.
Note: Information taken from Persephone Press site: http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/page...
EMMA SMITH was born in Cornwall in 1923 and was privately educated. In 1939 she took her first job in the Records Department of the War Office before volunteering for work on the canals; this gave her the material for Maidens' Trip (1948), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. She spent the winter of 1946-7 with a documentary film unit in India and then lived in Paris and wrote The Far Cry (1949), awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best novel of the year in English. In 1951 Emma Smith married and had two children. After her husband's death in 1957 she went to live in rural Wales; she then published very successful children's books, short stories (one of which was runner-up in the 1951 Observer short story competition that launched the winner, Muriel Spark, on her career) and, in 1978, her novel The Opportunity of a Lifetime. Since 1980 she has lived in Putney in south-west London.
Note: Information taken from Persephone Press site: http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/page...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
June 4, 2018
Before I read this book, I think I imagined a story about piloting a canal boat in England would involve lots of basking in the sunshine while drifting along somewhere beautiful, probably in Oxfordshire. It didn't occur to me that more likely it would be cold and pouring rain, you'd be constantly struggling with locks, recalcitrant boats, and the general filth of the canal and dampness of your existence while subsisting on tinned food, and drifting through gritty industrial suburbs of Birmingham. Emma Smith's Maidens' Trip, her semi-fictionalized account of her WWII service with other women who, like land girls only on water, manned canal boats left empty by men off fighting the war, describes all this and more. And I was completely and utterly engrossed from start to finish. Emma Smith writes so very, very well. Her companions on the boat, Nanette and Charity and a kitten picked up along the way all come vividly to life. I felt like I was really with them. It astonishes me that this incredibly onerous, wildly inefficient way of transporting very small loads existed up until the 1960s, but I can understand the nostalgia for the way of life Emma Smith describes so unflinchingly. I just wish .
September 14, 2016
So I knew about Land Girls, who filled in for farm labourers during WW2, but there were also women who filled in for the canalboat drivers, and this was new to me. And what an adventure it was for them. With only a little training they were expected to drive the loaded canalboat (towing another boat called a 'butty') through the cut, through all the very numerous locks, to its unloading destination. It doesn't sound too bad, but the devil is in the details. Emma Smith is quite a good writer, and brought to vivid life her memories of the people and the lifestyle, always with respect for those generations of canalboat families who, like gypsies, lived and worked on the boats with only occasional forays on shore.
57) "The boats, so widely divided, seemed to be separated even further from one another by the rain driving down between them. To Nanette steering the butty, Emma appeared a remote and insubstantial figure, a lonely exile, altogether out of reach.
The hours that one spent in this way on the deck of the Venus formed a peculiar part of one's life, a second little life of withdrawal, different from all other hours. One was alone but not lonely, nor bored, nor wasting time; time, by an odd inversion, was the waster. Some did nothing - nothing except inquiringly stare ahead, and move one's hand to the one side or the other. The houses, the countryside, floated evenly past, yet one's feet remained still and growing every morning every moment colder. And one's mind, with a queerly mixed detachment, roamed over every field of thought, touched on the old perplexities, worked its way with unhurried thoroughness round new ones, argued through conversations, conjured up faces and tags of poetry, even feasted on single words, breaking them down into letters and individual sounds and so discarding them. And all the time one's eyes flickered ahead searching for approaching traffic, or a difficult bend. Every thought was intermingled with contemporary vision,possessing the freshness of rain, or the despondency of cows clamped together under a tree, the vivid pleasure of travelling sunshine, or the gravity of evening."
There were harrowing moments as well - going through a long tunnel one snowy late afternoon they discover their light is out, and then they get stuck as well - boats are headed their way and are sure to collide with them...
I especially enjoyed how Smith conveyed the feelings of the three young girls in doing a job generally only done by men. They got so dirty their families would not have recognized them. They had both a sense of pride in capability and the worry and weight of the disastrous possibilities around every corner. It was a treat to read such an eloquent account of a life and profession I would otherwise never have known of.
I'll be looking up the others in the Working Waterways series for sure.
http://www.hnbc.org.uk/working-waterw...
57) "The boats, so widely divided, seemed to be separated even further from one another by the rain driving down between them. To Nanette steering the butty, Emma appeared a remote and insubstantial figure, a lonely exile, altogether out of reach.
The hours that one spent in this way on the deck of the Venus formed a peculiar part of one's life, a second little life of withdrawal, different from all other hours. One was alone but not lonely, nor bored, nor wasting time; time, by an odd inversion, was the waster. Some did nothing - nothing except inquiringly stare ahead, and move one's hand to the one side or the other. The houses, the countryside, floated evenly past, yet one's feet remained still and growing every morning every moment colder. And one's mind, with a queerly mixed detachment, roamed over every field of thought, touched on the old perplexities, worked its way with unhurried thoroughness round new ones, argued through conversations, conjured up faces and tags of poetry, even feasted on single words, breaking them down into letters and individual sounds and so discarding them. And all the time one's eyes flickered ahead searching for approaching traffic, or a difficult bend. Every thought was intermingled with contemporary vision,possessing the freshness of rain, or the despondency of cows clamped together under a tree, the vivid pleasure of travelling sunshine, or the gravity of evening."
There were harrowing moments as well - going through a long tunnel one snowy late afternoon they discover their light is out, and then they get stuck as well - boats are headed their way and are sure to collide with them...
I especially enjoyed how Smith conveyed the feelings of the three young girls in doing a job generally only done by men. They got so dirty their families would not have recognized them. They had both a sense of pride in capability and the worry and weight of the disastrous possibilities around every corner. It was a treat to read such an eloquent account of a life and profession I would otherwise never have known of.
I'll be looking up the others in the Working Waterways series for sure.
http://www.hnbc.org.uk/working-waterw...
August 10, 2018
Maidens’ Trip: A Wartime Adventure on the Grand Union Canal perhaps appears to have taken me forever to read, but as it took place in a lost world that yet seems always just beyond my horizon in the past, savouring it slowly in snippets was the best way to enjoy it. During the Second World War, British women were required to participate in the war effort. The young Emma Smith grew bored serving as a typist in some War Office bureau (it was in fact the Secret Intelligence Service but still no less stultifying) and volunteered to become a ‘boater’, piloting canal boats carrying coal and metals back and forth from London to Birmingham. This book is a slightly fictionalised account first published in 1948. The crew consist of Emma, Nanette, and Charity, three young women in their late teens – the latter two composite portraits of the girls Emma worked with. What would now seem to most of us an absolute horror (and indeed many of the volunteers quickly found other assignments) of wet, cold, overwork, danger (drowning, being crushed between the boat and the wall of the lock, hitting your head on a bridge), lack of sleep, and wearing the same filthy jersey and trousers held together by safety pins, is made to sound like a delightful lark and a wonderful opportunity to escape the expectations of being a proper young lady. The other ‘boaters’ - the families that made their living working the canal – seem not quite to have known what to make of these middle-class girls. And their adventures dealing with the highly temperamental one-cylinder diesel engine brought back some nautical memories of my own.
I found out about Emma Smith when I read her memoir As Green as Grass and since I have read her novel The Far Cry. And I still wish I knew her as a person — as I’m only seventeen years younger, it would have been possible had I not discovered her way too late reading her memoir. But of course I couldn’t have known her as she was in 1943. But I still so admire the people of that generation, with their mixture of cultural sophistication and innocence, their courage and self-sacrifice, sense of belonging to each other, and especially common sense and humour. Even vicariously Emma Smith has been such a privilege to have known.
I found out about Emma Smith when I read her memoir As Green as Grass and since I have read her novel The Far Cry. And I still wish I knew her as a person — as I’m only seventeen years younger, it would have been possible had I not discovered her way too late reading her memoir. But of course I couldn’t have known her as she was in 1943. But I still so admire the people of that generation, with their mixture of cultural sophistication and innocence, their courage and self-sacrifice, sense of belonging to each other, and especially common sense and humour. Even vicariously Emma Smith has been such a privilege to have known.
December 28, 2013
When World War II began Emma Smith was very nearly grown up. She saw young men she knew sign up, she heard news of deaths, she saw other working on the home front, and she wanted to do something too. In 1943 she found her role. She signed on with the Grand Union Shipping Company, who were employing women to get boats that had been lying idle moving again, to move cargoes up and down the country.
I read about those years in Emma Smith’s second volume of autobiography, ‘As Green as Grass.’ It’s a wonderful books, but the Cornish library Service’s copies are in heavy demand, and so I had to hand my copy back before I had time to pull my thoughts together and write about it.
But I had this book, the book that Emma Smith wrote about her wartime experiences right after the war, the book that won the James Tait Black Memorial Award for 1948, on the shelf; I had to pick it up and read.
‘Maidens’ Trip’ is fiction, but it is very close to fact; this is the story of one journey, up and down the canal, inspired by many trips made and many people met until the end of the year.
It is a wonderful adventure for three young women - Nanette, Emma and Charity - all from conventional, middle-class backgrounds, who have completed basic training and have been dropped into the very different world of the boating fraternity.
They will manage two boats – a motor boat to provide the power and a butty boat to provide the space – and they will move cargo between London and Birmingham.
“It must have been an astonishing imposition for the canal people when the war brought them dainty young girls to help them mind their business, eager young creatures with voices pitched as to be almost impossible to understand. It must have been amazing, more especially since the war changed their own lives so little, for they read no newspapers, being unable to read, and if they did possess a wireless, seldom listened to the news …..”
Emma Smith paints wonderful pictures of those people: some are curious, some are helpful, some are competitive, and only a few are hostile.
The three girls take to their new life with gusto. They live in cramped conditions, rising early, cooking on a camping stove, and go out in all weathers to do hard physical work. They learn much along the way, they laugh, they cry, they squabble; but it is clear that they have a wonderful camaraderie, that they are completely wrapped up in what they are doing, and that they are absolutely determined to succeed.
The war, home, family, seem so far away, and are barely mentioned. That’s how caught up they are …..
The workings of the boats, the mechanics of the canal and the boats form the backbone of the story, and though I knew little it was easy to understand, and the spirit of the girls always held my interest. If they could do it then I could read it!
There are some wonderful incidents along the way. A kitten is rescued and named Cleopatra. A girl is forced to run along the canal bank when she is left behind, after going in search of proper bathroom facilities. A few tins of food are turned into a wonderful feast. A leak creates panic …..
Emma Smith took all of this - day-to-day minutiae and wonderful memories – and she turned it into a wonderfully engrossing tale. She told it with such verve, such wonderful economy, such subtle wit, such elegant prose; and she brought a world and a time that she clearly loved to life on the page.
I read about those years in Emma Smith’s second volume of autobiography, ‘As Green as Grass.’ It’s a wonderful books, but the Cornish library Service’s copies are in heavy demand, and so I had to hand my copy back before I had time to pull my thoughts together and write about it.
But I had this book, the book that Emma Smith wrote about her wartime experiences right after the war, the book that won the James Tait Black Memorial Award for 1948, on the shelf; I had to pick it up and read.
‘Maidens’ Trip’ is fiction, but it is very close to fact; this is the story of one journey, up and down the canal, inspired by many trips made and many people met until the end of the year.
It is a wonderful adventure for three young women - Nanette, Emma and Charity - all from conventional, middle-class backgrounds, who have completed basic training and have been dropped into the very different world of the boating fraternity.
They will manage two boats – a motor boat to provide the power and a butty boat to provide the space – and they will move cargo between London and Birmingham.
“It must have been an astonishing imposition for the canal people when the war brought them dainty young girls to help them mind their business, eager young creatures with voices pitched as to be almost impossible to understand. It must have been amazing, more especially since the war changed their own lives so little, for they read no newspapers, being unable to read, and if they did possess a wireless, seldom listened to the news …..”
Emma Smith paints wonderful pictures of those people: some are curious, some are helpful, some are competitive, and only a few are hostile.
The three girls take to their new life with gusto. They live in cramped conditions, rising early, cooking on a camping stove, and go out in all weathers to do hard physical work. They learn much along the way, they laugh, they cry, they squabble; but it is clear that they have a wonderful camaraderie, that they are completely wrapped up in what they are doing, and that they are absolutely determined to succeed.
The war, home, family, seem so far away, and are barely mentioned. That’s how caught up they are …..
The workings of the boats, the mechanics of the canal and the boats form the backbone of the story, and though I knew little it was easy to understand, and the spirit of the girls always held my interest. If they could do it then I could read it!
There are some wonderful incidents along the way. A kitten is rescued and named Cleopatra. A girl is forced to run along the canal bank when she is left behind, after going in search of proper bathroom facilities. A few tins of food are turned into a wonderful feast. A leak creates panic …..
Emma Smith took all of this - day-to-day minutiae and wonderful memories – and she turned it into a wonderfully engrossing tale. She told it with such verve, such wonderful economy, such subtle wit, such elegant prose; and she brought a world and a time that she clearly loved to life on the page.
October 14, 2012
Lovely account of the author's time spent working on narrowboats up and down the Grand Union Canal during world war two. It is a book about a lost world, when canals were still a serious commercial/industrial concern, it is also a book about young women taking up work they had never been expected to do, doing it well and loving it.
I especially enjoyed the book as I'm currently walking, in stages, the Grand Union Canal from London to Birmingham. See more here if interested: http://martinblack.com/2012/09/kings-...
I especially enjoyed the book as I'm currently walking, in stages, the Grand Union Canal from London to Birmingham. See more here if interested: http://martinblack.com/2012/09/kings-...
February 21, 2017
This is a fascinating look at a vanished world. Emma Smith worked on a canal boat during WW2, and this book is based on her experiences and that of other girls she knew. The book relates the story of one trip, taken by three girls, and entertainingly describes the adventures and mishaps they have on the way. Although the girls work hard, and suffer much discomfort, they think themselves lucky to be left to manage the boat in their own way, and not be subject to uniforms, rules, regulations etc, like girls in the armed forces. They relish their freedom. And they are intrigued by the lives of the boat people who live this life full time. They love being part of this unusual way of life, even though it is only temporarily. Enjoy making the trip with them.
January 6, 2019
This is the first book of Emma Smith's I've read. I enjoyed this tale of her time with The Grand Union Canal Carrying Company during World War 2. Women were employed to replace the boaters who had been called up. I found it amazing that three eighteen-year-old girls could managed to handle a pair of 72 foot long canal boats with a cargo of steel from London to Birmingham, fetching coal from Coventry on the return journey. It sounded tremendously hard work and at times perilous. They weren't always welcomed by the boating fraternity, but made great friends of others, most of whom were willing to help them out in times of difficulty. Just imagine how many locks they encountered on the way and that was just a fraction of the hard labour they had to endure. It seems they were constantly wet and dirty, even when they lay in their beds sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. A great insight into a lost world.
November 27, 2022
Found it really hard going and rambling not in a good way. I just had to give up part way through it
This was a book club choice and the benefits of that is you get to read books that you normally wouldn't sometimes they just don't work for you. Other people seen to have really enjoyed it just not for me
This was a book club choice and the benefits of that is you get to read books that you normally wouldn't sometimes they just don't work for you. Other people seen to have really enjoyed it just not for me
June 12, 2025
I was aware of the women who took over the jobs of transporting stuff during WW2 however didn’t know the detail and thus book portrays this very well. Was based on fact though I thought the “story” was quickly finished at the end as if she’d run out of ideas
November 12, 2022
I was on page 188 when I read in another review that this was not going to end well for one character so I have closed it for good. I can not read stories with an unhappy end for animals - thank goodness someone saved me the pain of getting to it. The book reflects a very cavalier attitude to animals through out - dogs floating in the canal for example and even two of the women central to the plot seem to have scant disregard for the safety and welfare of animals. My mother was born in 1923 and does not share this view so it is not just of its time. We are a farming family and country folk value livestock (well most of us do) and appreciate animals - maybe these townie converts were typical but I hope not. It was going to be a 3 star up to my learning of this horrid twist.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 22, 2015
From BBC Radio 4 - Afternoon Drama:
By Emma Smith. Dramatised for radio by David Ashton (writer of the popular Radio 4 detective series McLevy).
First published in 1948, this adaptation of Emma Smith's fictionalised memoir opens in 1943 and relates the adventures of three eighteen-year-old girls who'd signed on with the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company to replace workers drafted overseas.
Quite literally thrown in at the deep end Emma, Charity and Nanette embark on their maiden voyage - carrying steel north by canal from London to Birmingham - surmounting the dangerous, back-breaking work thanks largely to an endearing mix of youthful bravado and blissful ignorance. Steering their way through the 'other world' of the boat people, the girls, often out of their depth, face up to an assortment of challenges with courage and good cheer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v1rlh
By Emma Smith. Dramatised for radio by David Ashton (writer of the popular Radio 4 detective series McLevy).
First published in 1948, this adaptation of Emma Smith's fictionalised memoir opens in 1943 and relates the adventures of three eighteen-year-old girls who'd signed on with the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company to replace workers drafted overseas.
Quite literally thrown in at the deep end Emma, Charity and Nanette embark on their maiden voyage - carrying steel north by canal from London to Birmingham - surmounting the dangerous, back-breaking work thanks largely to an endearing mix of youthful bravado and blissful ignorance. Steering their way through the 'other world' of the boat people, the girls, often out of their depth, face up to an assortment of challenges with courage and good cheer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v1rlh
July 19, 2022
I don't know what lead me to this book.
It is certainly a good record of social history and an easy read. Lovely to read about the canal that has always seemed to be the background of my life.
I did find myself confused by the narration which seemed to wander in its point of view even within paragraphs. I also did not find the girls well enough drawn and was often confused about who was who.
I gave up about two thirds of the way through as it was not overly engaging and I found I didn't really care if they got back to London.
It is certainly a good record of social history and an easy read. Lovely to read about the canal that has always seemed to be the background of my life.
I did find myself confused by the narration which seemed to wander in its point of view even within paragraphs. I also did not find the girls well enough drawn and was often confused about who was who.
I gave up about two thirds of the way through as it was not overly engaging and I found I didn't really care if they got back to London.
August 27, 2015
Can't really add much to other reviews of this book, except to say I think it would make a great dramatization for PBS Masterpiece---- a great story of the lives and efforts of ordinary people during WW II, this one told with so much warmth, humor and astute observation.
May 15, 2020
It's World War II and while the men are away at war young women fills their vacancies in the factories and on the farms. This includes the canals of England where women volunteer to take their places on working barges. Today people live along these same canals, living in neat narrowboats, holiday goers take leisure cruises through the countryside in hire boats, wide beams and cruisers, but in the 1940s, life on the canals was a hard, dirty business. They carried coal and other material back and forth between the cities and the ports.
Emma, Charity and Nanette are three middle-class women who leave their office jobs for the cold unglamourous life as temporary boat people. Their story is one of adventure, unfamiliar sights and getting to know the workers and their families who live and work there.. It's backbreaking work of opening and closing lock gates, maintaining the engine, keeping the boat clean, polishing the brass, putting their own vanity on the back burner while wearing men's trousers, not worrying about sweating or if rainwater washes their hair. They sleep in beds dampened by leaky roofs and infested with bedbugs and apparently have the time of their lives.
In between fighting the elements and other boaters, Emma Smith sprinkles the narrative with beautiful moments of reflection as she mediates about life on the waterways.
Beautiful book. Highly recommended.
Emma, Charity and Nanette are three middle-class women who leave their office jobs for the cold unglamourous life as temporary boat people. Their story is one of adventure, unfamiliar sights and getting to know the workers and their families who live and work there.. It's backbreaking work of opening and closing lock gates, maintaining the engine, keeping the boat clean, polishing the brass, putting their own vanity on the back burner while wearing men's trousers, not worrying about sweating or if rainwater washes their hair. They sleep in beds dampened by leaky roofs and infested with bedbugs and apparently have the time of their lives.
In between fighting the elements and other boaters, Emma Smith sprinkles the narrative with beautiful moments of reflection as she mediates about life on the waterways.
Beautiful book. Highly recommended.
December 31, 2025
Originally published in 1948, this is a well substantiated account of the author’s admirable wartime service as a teenage member of a female triumvirate transporting steel rods from London to Birmingham, coal to Coventry on a canal boat, and of the numerous accidents and injuries sustained on the return journey. As a personal record of WW2 history, it would have been more effective if presented in a memoir rather than a jolly ‘three women in a boat’ tale to rival Jerome K Jerome’s boating trip for beginners. The semi-fictionalised redaction provides pseudonyms for her fellow boatwomen, but the author’s presentation of ‘Emma’ as her fictional alter ego breaks down when she interrupts the third-person narrative with first-person interjections. In her introduction to the new edition of the then sixty-year-old text, Smith recalls writing the book ‘at top speed, in about three months’, a claim that is quite credible. Helpful editing of the speed-written manuscript might have harmonised the rival voices, condensed and clarified the narrative, and vorrected the spelling mistake
August 20, 2022
Three young women, Emma, Nanette and Charity, are recruited as volunteers during WWII to transport cargo on narrow boats down the Grand Union Canal between Birmingham and London, while the men were at war. One boat was motorized and a second one (known as a butty) was towed for extra cargo. Far from a leisurely drift down the river, these women endured hard physical work, had little time to eat or sleep, were fearful of crashing into the sides of the locks, fought the elements while standing at the tiller day after cold rainy day, were required to make ad hoc boat repairs and took it all in with amazing exuberance. They even picked up a kitten along the way as if they needed one more worry! What an adventure they will always remember.
The story was well written with a vivid sense of the place and time.
The story was well written with a vivid sense of the place and time.
September 16, 2017
First published in 1948, and reissued by Bloomsbury in 2009, Maidens' Trip is the semi-fictionalised story of Emma Smith and her two friends' experiences working on the Grand Union Canal. The canal company had launched a wartime scheme to recruit women to fill the places left by the men who had gone off to fight. It's an interesting and entertaining insight into an obscure corner of life on the home front. I learnt a lot about life on the canals and the industrial effort that underpinned the war effort and about the independent spirit that new roles for women fostered among those involved. The style is an occasionally odd mix of workmanlike and profound, with sudden descriptions of great beauty and perception.
October 16, 2021
Started watching this:https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=... and became mildly obsessed, so this was the onoy book I could find on the subject. While not spectacularly written, it is a look into a world that I had known about. Knew about the female farmers and plant workers, but not this. It is a fascinating look into the world of women working the boats on the canals of England during WWII. An easy and quick read, I do highly recommend it (and watch the series listed above! it's totally addictive). Very glad I read this book.
January 16, 2018
This was an interesting book about three young women working on the Grand Union Canal hauling steel and coal and whatever else was assigned to them during WWII. The men went off to war and the girls took over their jobs just like they did everywhere else in the world. They learned to man the boats, work the locks, keep the boats in good working order making all repairs needed as best they could and in all kinds of weather. They were expected to work as hard as the men and the families that had worked and lived on the canals all their lives and they had to learn it all in a few short weeks. It was a very interesting read.
January 21, 2019
I wish the story had told a little more about the personal lives of the 3 different girls. As it was, they seemed shallow, without much direction or purpose. And I would have liked to know a little more about the other people they met on the canal. Mostly the book is about the various experiences piloting a narrowboat--managing locks, steering, running aground, starting the motor (or not), etc.--and I did enjoy learning about all those challenges.
October 6, 2021
I really enjoyed this book, but it would have been even better if we had known more about the three girls and how it came about that they decided to "go on the cut".
I have helped out on a narrowboat and believe me, even on a leisurely trip in sunshine and with the canals and locks in pretty good repair. it can be bloody hard work - especially when there is a series of locks and they are all set against you.
I have helped out on a narrowboat and believe me, even on a leisurely trip in sunshine and with the canals and locks in pretty good repair. it can be bloody hard work - especially when there is a series of locks and they are all set against you.
January 8, 2022
Truly entertaining
Great book - entertaining and informative giving great insight into the world of women who put the easy life behind in their effort to help in the years of war torn England. Thoroughly enjoyed it taking you back into a life of hard work and friendship free from cell phones and internet!!!!!!!
Great book - entertaining and informative giving great insight into the world of women who put the easy life behind in their effort to help in the years of war torn England. Thoroughly enjoyed it taking you back into a life of hard work and friendship free from cell phones and internet!!!!!!!
November 28, 2022
Very easy read although some of the sentences were very long. Could have done with replacing some of the commas, semi colons, colons etc with a few full stops to make the reading easier. However I this didn’t stop me enjoying it. I do think I was engaged with the book before opening it since the canal is literally at the bottom of my garden and I do see (recreational) barges every day.
August 12, 2020
I would have given this a higher rating if the author had been less descriptive, and seemingly offhand, about what happened to Cleopatra! Since this book is not an event by event account of what happened to actual people, but is an amalgamation of several people and many events condensed for the sake of storytelling it was absolutely unnecessary to have included an explicit and avoidable death of an innocent animal. It ruined the book for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 23, 2025
I liked the idea but not the writing. The ‘we’ got confusing as there was no corresponding ‘I’ (apologies if that sounds strange!). U did not like the style of writing at all and skim read the last chapters.
March 2, 2018
A nice, interesting read.
June 7, 2018
Bought a copy of this when in Hay-On-Wye for the book festival week. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it! A good story with lots of information about the canals and canal boats too.
June 14, 2019
The author is a great storyteller with a beautiful way of writing. Very interesting to learn about the canal girls during WWII in England
Want to read
June 9, 2023Learned of this book while watching Timothy West & Prunella Scales in Great Canal Journeys on Amazon Prime (several years old now)
March 20, 2025
Interesting but a bit of a slow read
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews