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Post by Mr Stabby on Jan 7, 2018 18:12:23 GMT
Just curious really, obviously narrowboats are pretty unique to England and Wales, but is there a culture of living on non-commercial boats in mainland Europe? If so, it is as common as in the UK? I met some gongoozling Italian tourists at a lock last year and they were fascinated by the whole concept and told me that they'd never heard of anything similar in Italy.
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Post by bargemast on Jan 7, 2018 18:51:18 GMT
Just curious really, obviously narrowboats are pretty unique to England and Wales, but is there a culture of living on non-commercial boats in mainland Europe? If so, it is as common as in the UK? I met some gongoozling Italian tourists at a lock last year and they were fascinated by the whole concept and told me that they'd never heard of anything similar in Italy. As you are a truck driver, I'm a bit surprised that it's you asking this question. Driving through Europe you must have seen lots of boats and houseboats in the Netherlands, quite a few in Belgium and Gemany too, and not to forget France. The bigger cities of these countries are (if you believe the autorities) full of boats, I always think that there's lots of space left for many more. If the Italian tourist lived somewhere in the mountains in his country, he may not have seen many boats and houseboats, but even in Italie there's more than only Venice for boats, and there are people living on boats there too, although not as many as in the UK. Peter. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2018 18:57:44 GMT
Just curious really, obviously narrowboats are pretty unique to England and Wales, but is there a culture of living on non-commercial boats in mainland Europe? If so, it is as common as in the UK? I met some gongoozling Italian tourists at a lock last year and they were fascinated by the whole concept and told me that they'd never heard of anything similar in Italy. I've met a few whilst gongoozling on the French Canals, some of them Brits too. |
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Post by Mr Stabby on Jan 7, 2018 19:25:25 GMT
Just curious really, obviously narrowboats are pretty unique to England and Wales, but is there a culture of living on non-commercial boats in mainland Europe? If so, it is as common as in the UK? I met some gongoozling Italian tourists at a lock last year and they were fascinated by the whole concept and told me that they'd never heard of anything similar in Italy. As you are a truck driver, I'm a bit surprised that it's you asking this question. Driving through Europe you must have seen lots of boats and houseboats in the Netherlands, quite a few in Belgium and Gemany too, and not to forget France. When I was driving regularly in Europe, it was before I bought my boat and boat dwelling was only a very vague long-held dream which wasn't realised at the time due to the need to raise children, pay a mortgage etc. So I didn't really examine the issue in any great detail. I did regularly see canal boats in Belgium and Holland, but from memory the overwhelming majority, while being lived on, were operated commercially. I'm sure there are liveaboard boat dwellers in Europe, especially in the low countries, I'm curious if it's as prevalent as it is in the UK. |
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Post by bargemast on Jan 7, 2018 22:11:38 GMT
As you are a truck driver, I'm a bit surprised that it's you asking this question. Driving through Europe you must have seen lots of boats and houseboats in the Netherlands, quite a few in Belgium and Gemany too, and not to forget France. When I was driving regularly in Europe, it was before I bought my boat and boat dwelling was only a very vague long-held dream which wasn't realised at the time due to the need to raise children, pay a mortgage etc. So I didn't really examine the issue in any great detail. I did regularly see canal boats in Belgium and Holland, but from memory the overwhelming majority, while being lived on, were operated commercially. I'm sure there are liveaboard boat dwellers in Europe, especially in the low countries, I'm curious if it's as prevalent as it is in the UK. Commercial barge transports are still very important in the low countries, but there's a HUGE amount of liveboards and pleasure boaters too. The big difference with the UK is that there is sadly enough hardly any commercial boating left, for a part due to the bad state of maintenance of the waterways, and to the politics who don't care for ecological water transportation, there's more money to be made by selling off wharves etc and to transform former warehouses into luxurious appartments. The smaller waterways in France are almost as bad as the canals in the UK, still good enough for holiday boating, but very hard for commercial laden barges, and when they have to desert these waterways, the VNF (the FRench C&RT) like to close these waterways down. Instead of the highly neccesary maintenance, they prefered to invest fortunes in remote controlled locks, with electro-hydraulic systems, and save on salaries for lock-keeper that aren't needed anymore. But the automatic remote controlled locks don't pick floating rubbish that stops the gates from closing completely, and because of that the locking cycle is disturbed and cuts-out, then you have to call for a mobile service that has to come to reset the lock, clear the object(s) that were the problem, and race off again to their next lock problem. That money would have been much better spent on maintenance, dredging etc. Peter. |
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