In 1963, at seventeen, Roger Alsop set out to captain hotel boats on the canals. The following year, he fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a boatman with the famous Willow Wren carrying company. Accompanied by crew girl Pat Hayes, he entered canal people’s insular and occasionally hostile world. This was an unconventional choice, as most teenagers in 1964 embraced a social revolution instead of a way of life that had remained unchanged since the 1790s.

Twenty-one years later, in 1985, Roger and co-author Graham Dodkins returned to the cut to reminisce about their boating days and observe how the canals had changed since the decline of commercial carrying and the rise of the leisure industry. Not content with simply visiting old canal haunts, they located the boats Roger had captained in the 1960s, loaded a 40-ton cargo of coal at Sutton Stop, and followed the old trading route for about 100 miles down the Oxford and Grand Union Canals to Brentford.

This book was first published in 1988 and has now been released in a new paperback edition with added photographs.