Chestnut X

It’s five year mission: to boldly go where pretty much everyone has gone before!

This is the internal layout of Chestnut. She is 58 foot long, (17 metres) and can therefore go anywhere on the UK Inland waterway system. The problem is Locks. Half the canals in England are so called Narrow canals; the earliest to be built, where the locks are designed to carry boats that were no more than 70 feet long and 7 feet wide. Later came the Broad canals with 14 feet wide locks designed to carry two Narrowboats side by side, so that each lock transit moved twice the goods. But then, to save money, some of the later canals made wide locks that were shorter than 70 feet. The worst offender is the Huddersfield Broad Canal – its locks are 14 feet by 57 foot 6 inches. While less than four miles long its 9 locks are the shortest in the system. Luckily a 59 foot boat like Chestnut will fit diagonally, very carefully.