[quote="David Warren" post=47365]The BBC made a series in the 70,s which they filmed on the Soar and caused great confusion by seemingly hiring every narrow boat around to go to Birmingham and when our Tadworth was top of Hatton cancelling.[/quote]
It was about that time that Verity Lambert made a BBC TV film of Susan Woolfitt’s book “Idle Women” about her wartime experiences on the boats. One of our working pairs of narrowboats plus three or four others were painted in the fleet colours of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company - ours renamed Venus & Ariadne. We all had to boat down to Regent’s Canal Dock/Limehouse Basin for the first day of filming and one old retired lock keeper came out of his house as we passed with tears in his eyes asking if “the company” had started up again.
Most ex-boatman we knew would tell us they’d “go back tomorrow” if the chance arose, but not the women - it was an extremely hard existence, and quite a step from the relatively spacious accommodation enjoyed by the French batellerie with their péniches.
We've tried the BBC archives and elsewhere, but unfortunately that film seems to have completely disappeared. We didn't have TV ourselves back then, and haven't been able to locate any private copy either.
However there are quite a lot of snippets of documentary film around of the period, and e.g. (if it works) here is a link to some Pathe stuff:
http://www.britishpa...rd.php?id=47511
Tam
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