One of the joys of Summer, aside from the beach and the
Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations
and warmed up weather and outside get-togethers is cruising along with all of
the same, during August, on a long, slow languorous glide, like the water ride
at Palisade’s Park into September. No need to rush, we have time.

Speaking of cruising there seems to be a lot of that going
on right now. No need to blush either, boy: we have some other game in mind… The
word cruising as well as the world of cruising hold some glamour, in particular
in summer, although I can hardly imagine climbing aboard any ship with several
thousand people onboard these days or doing anything unexpected now that we are
all so much older and wiser, after COVID especially, right?

Elsewhere the pencil and the sword, thin river-boats of
Viking Cruises all over Europe hold some allure even here in North America, but
they seem to be less daunting, a bit more manageable today than they would have
in Lindisfarne about 1000 years ago. We are telling a tale of swift development
in logistics and industry, far from battle and invasion.

 Great that YouTube and Amazon Prime TV here in the USA have
picked up the narrow-boat phenomenon going on in the UK.

Small boats, in fact barges of historical nature, carrying
mostly coal in the past, are a history lesson in cargo transportation in the
land where you can ply the over 4,000 miles of canals and imagine how these
waterways and former tow paths sparked the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian
Era and in fact were key in making Great Britain a world power.

 

Actually the Thames remains today an antidote to London’s
stifling traffic for some selected operators and as much as London, Amsterdam
and New York have shaped global trade in the last four centuries, both grand
and mean, depending… there are still so many smaller details in the waterways
of Anglia that their full story cannot be entirely told.    

 

For me especially, during the Dog Days with heavy rain here in
New York City recently, confined indoors by the weather, watching a You Tube
sponsored series titled “Travels by Narrowboat” for a couple of sessions was
informative and fun.

    

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