Top 6 short breaks for the Jubilee Weekend
The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Weekend (3-5 June), offers the chance to explore Britain’s beautiful 3,000-mile network of inland waterways by canal boat.
Over the course of her reign, Her Majesty The Queen has made a number of visits to the waterways, and iconic waterside attractions.
Drifters Waterway Holidays (drifters.co.uk) offers over 550 boats for hire from 45 locations across England, Scotland and Wales. 2022 hire prices over the Jubilee Weekend and Half Term holiday start at £985 for a short break (three or four nights) on a boat for four, £1,365 for a week.
To celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, Drifters’ has listed its Top 6 short break canal boat holidays for the Jubilee Weekend:
1. Travel through the Falkirk Wheel and on to Edinburgh
From Drifters’ canal boat hire base at the Falkirk Wheel, officially opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth II in 2002, Edinburgh Quay is a sedate 11-hour journey along the lock-free Union Canal. The journey, perfect for four-night mid-week break, starts with a trip through the iconic Falkirk Wheel – the world’s first and only rotating boat lift. Once through the Wheel, boaters continue navigating through the Scottish Lowlands, passing through the villages of Linlithgow, Broxburn and Ratho. Visitor moorings are available at Edinburgh Quay, a five-minute walk from Princes Street.
2. Visit the UNESCO World Heritage City of Bath
On a short break from our narrow boat hire base at Devizes in Wiltshire, boaters can travel along the Kennet & Avon Canal to Sydney Wharf, on the edge of Bath City Centre. Drifters’ Devizes canal boat hire base is at the bottom of the magnificent flight of locks at Caen Hill, officially reopened by The Queen in 1990. One of the locks is named in her honour. The journey to Bath travels 19 miles, passing through eight locks and takes around nine hours.
3. Cruise to the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port
From our boat yard at Bunbury on the Shropshire Union Canal in Cheshire, it takes 10 hours to reach Ellesmere Port. In 1979, The Queen visited the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port, and boarded a historic working boat. The journey to Ellesmere Port takes 10 hours, travelling 21 miles and passing through 12 locks. The route takes boaters through the ancient City of Chester along the way.
4. Navigate to Stratford upon Avon’s Swan Theatre
From Drifters’ narrowboat rental base at on the Stratford Canal at Wootton Wawen in Warwickshire, it’s a picturesque six-hour cruise through the Warwickshire countryside to Shakespeare’s Stratford. Once there, boaters can moor up in Bancroft Basin close the town’s famous Swan Theatre, visited by Queen Elizabeth II in 1986.
5. See the largest pair of equine statues on the planet – at 30-metres high, the magnificent Kelpies stand at the gateway to the new extension to the Forth & Clyde Canal, opened by The Queen in 2017. The Queen Elizabeth II Canal links the Forth & Clyde Canal with the Firth of Forth. Based on the heavy horses that one plied the canal towpaths, the Kelpies form part of a new 350-hectare Helix park at the end of the canal extension at Grangemouth. From Drifters’ narrowboat hire base at Falkirk, boaters can reach the Kelpies in around four hours, cruising four miles and passing through 14 locks.
6. Visit Coventry Cathedral by canal boat
From our narrowboat hire base at Braunston, it takes 12 hours to reach moorings in Coventry Basin. From there, it’s a short walk to Coventry Cathedral visited by The Queen in 1981, for a special re-dedication service to mark the Royal British Legion’s Diamond Jubilee. Travelling 28 miles and passing through just four locks, the journey to Coventry takes boaters through a series of canalside towns and villages, including Hillmorton and Rugby.
