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shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Shadowed Eyes
@shadowedeyes.bsky.social
320 followers 25 following 680 posts
Boatlife, Canals, Heritage...
...plus a bit of Gloucester Heritage (https://gloucester500.co.uk)
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shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Shadowed Eyes @shadowedeyes.bsky.social · Nov 26
River Cherwell, aka Oxford Canal, photographed in October 2022 less than two weeks into the new boatlife and just a few days before boatlife reality struck and a stuck starter motor left me stranded in the Oxfordshire boonies for eight days.
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat #boatlife #OxfordCanal
Autumnal, warm-tinted image of the canalised River Cherwell with a narrowboat moored near a bridge over the river and the Oxford Canal continuing round right.
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
When #boatlife goes nightmare 😱
Not cruising anywhere for a while 😪
On the bright side, it's a chance to clean up the engine bay, if it ever stops raining long enough that the bilge doesn't immediately start filling again 😠
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
February 5, 2026 at 4:31 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Public funding has always been vital for #ukcanals, with no evidence they can survive without it. This extra funding is a welcome step in the right direction, but the principle of long-term public funding must still be defended against Govt. policy.
#FundBritainsWaterways

www.gov.uk/government/n...
Iconic canals to be better protected with £6.5 million investment
Funding will support repair, maintenance and long-term projects.
www.gov.uk
February 4, 2026 at 5:31 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 1001
Fuel boats resting up at Marsworth Yard on the Grand Union last summer. The yard produced concrete pilings for the canal until the mid 1960s, when sheet steel replaced concrete, and was redeveloped 2015.
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a pair of narrowboat cargo vessels, motor and butty, breasted up at a former wharf that has been redeveloped in modern times into a residential area.
January 24, 2026 at 12:36 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#boatlife day 872 (Pt. II)
After an early start on a cold February morning last year, managed to catch up with the fuel boat that had passed me after dark the evening before on the Shropshire Union
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of narrowboats moored on both sides of a tree-lined canal, smoke rising from the chimneys of a couple on a cold sunny February morning. At the end of a line of three boats moored on the offside, a fuel boat is breasted up against the narrowboat it is supplying.
January 19, 2026 at 6:03 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 872
Frosty February morning last year, Shropshire Union. This was a detour to make sure I could catch the fuel boat, but that passed after dark the night before, so spent the morning playing chase the fuel boat
#ukcanals #narrowboat #photography
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of narrowboats breasted up on the offside of a canal on a cold winter morning, with the towpath frosted and the canal a perfect mirror of boats and leafless trees.
January 8, 2026 at 6:33 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Don't have any cool pics of this year's frozen canal, but here's one from last January at Great Haywood Junction looking down the Staffs & Worcs Canal
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of several narrowboats moored end on on a frozen canal on a partially cloudy January day
January 6, 2026 at 4:22 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Last light of 2025 slinks from the skies, and judging from the forecast, it's taking a fair bit of warmth with it 🥶⛸️
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a small canal wharf with boats moored, framed by the concrete ribbing of a modern road bridge on a cold windless night.
December 31, 2025 at 6:22 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 10
Wild mooring on the Thames, or the River Private No Mooring as so many signs seemed to label it. If I had done any planning, I would have known there were proper moorings a few minutes farther on, but it was getting late.
#ukcanals #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a narrowboat moored awkwardly to the bank of the Thames, bow nosed out into the river, with dense trees on the opposite bank glowing in the early morning late-summer sun.
December 28, 2025 at 5:39 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 850, and one of my fave pics of this year, from the Trent & Mersey at Great Haywood Junction, the ice that kept us there finally melted and a newly minted boat safety certificate in the email inbox.
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat #photography
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of narrowboats moored next to the towpath of a canal as the sun burns off the fog on a mid-winter morning.
December 27, 2025 at 3:33 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 429 (jumping around the archive a bit now), entering the second winter aboard, this time on the Llangollen.
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a narrowboat on an isolated mooring on a rural canal as autumn is giving way to winter.
December 24, 2025 at 4:30 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 8
🧵1/x
Rare turf-sided Garston Lock, of early 18th century origin on the Kennet & Avon. The M4 of its day, the K&A was neglected under railway ownership from 1852, and neglected even more under Govt. ownership from 1948.
#ukcanals #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a canal lock on a sunny later summer's day. The lock itself is unusual in having sloping turf sides, a product of early 18th century civil engineering, when the River Kennet was first made navigable, almost a century before the Kennet & Avon Canal linked the Kennet Navigation to the Avon near Bristol to create a commercial waterway between London and Bristol. Two Second-World-War brick pillboxes stand on opposite corners of the lock.
December 23, 2025 at 6:04 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Archive image from the Llangollen at Whitchurch in happier times. Happy to hear no injuries after this morning's catastrophic breach here, though awful to see the two boats, people's homes, deep down in the sinkhole.
#ukcanals
#FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of narrowboats moored under a colourful sunrise sky in February 2024, at the site which suffered a major breach 22/12/2025, leaving two boat homes, thankfully evacuated in time, at the bottom of a large sinkhole and a third teetering on the edge, and several boats grounded at severe angles all the way down the pound to Grindley Brook locks.
December 22, 2025 at 5:54 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 7 & had already knocked the roof-top boiler flue down twice. Was thereafter secured with duct tape and string until removed completely last year.
Kennet & Avon (river bit), to this day one of my favourite moorings.
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a Dutch barge-style narrowboat wild moored against an uneven bank on the River Kennet, shaded by the trees it is tied to on a sunny late-summer afternoon.
December 19, 2025 at 6:14 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 5: small delay as gate repairs completed at Cobblers Lock on the Kennet & Avon. While waiting for the lock to re-open I inadvertently dismantled the stern gland greaser as part of my first ever effort to refill it 🫣
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a lock gate beam being lowered into place by a crane, watched over by a former lock-keeper's cottage, a workboat stationed in the lock and several workers in high-viz jackets.
December 18, 2025 at 3:42 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
#Boatlife day 6 back in Sept 2022. Had a spot of bother mooring here on the Kennet & Avon and ended up dropping the gangplank onto the button fender at the back & hopping the stern rail to regain control and unblock the canal.
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo taken from the towpath of a canal at sun down, with the low sun sparkling through the dense vegetation lining the canal.
December 17, 2025 at 6:19 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Start of the Birmingham Canal at Gas Street Basin, completed 1772. When 20 years later digging began on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal at the basin, the two canals were separated by a bar that was not pierced until 1815.
#boatlife
#ukcanals #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of Gas Street Basin in Birmingham colourfully lit at night, showing a cast iron footbridge over a former stop lock that was installed when the Worcester Bar, a physical barrier that prevented the loss of Birmingham Canal water to the later Worcester & Birmingham Canal, was pierced.
December 16, 2025 at 7:36 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Worst of #boatlife, engine going up in cloud of black smoke, forcing me to haul boat and ailing old bones long distances for essentials 😨

Best of boatlife: Jules Fuels CT&M, who, unsolicited, towed me thru a storm to boatyard safety 👼

#ukcanals #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of an 18th-century wharf at night with boats moored in the canal alongside
December 10, 2025 at 7:41 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Coventry Canal and Oxford Canal at Hawkesbury Junction. Both were troubled projects, the Coventry requiring completion by two other canal companies and the Oxford requiring a second Act to raise the funds to complete it.
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo taken from the top of a cast-iron footbridge over the junction of the Coventry Canal, which passes down the left hand side of the image, and the Oxford Canal, which begins at the junction. In the middle distance to the left stands the former pump house which fed the Coventry with water. To the right, a stop lock watched over by a lock-keeper's cottage protected the water of the two separately owned canal companies.
December 8, 2025 at 7:05 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Hardy December hire boater having negotiated the Hawkesbury Junction U-bend head up the Coventry Canal past the 1837-built former pump house that used to keep the canal topped up.
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a narrowboat passing under a footbridge that spans a narrowed section of the Coventry Canal, just before passing a very small cruiser moored (and looking abandoned) on the right and a long blue narrowboat moored on the left. Watching over the scene from the right bank is the former pump house, a three-storey brick building with windows bricked in and a tall chimney attached to one corner.
December 6, 2025 at 5:54 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Wrangling over tolls between the Oxford and Coventry Canals meant the two originally ran parallel just a few feet apart for nearly a mile before meeting, until this new junction at Hawkesbury eliminated duplication 1803.
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of Hawkesbury Junction in the fading light of a rainy winter day. The Coventry Canal can be glimpsed through the cast-iron footbridge to the left, whilst the Oxford Canal runs from the far end of the basin, past the former lock-keeper's cottage, through a stop lock and under another cast-iron footbridge in the distance. To the right, the warm lights of the Greyhound Inn have been welcoming boaters for nearly two centuries.
December 5, 2025 at 7:15 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Amazing the number of underwater obstructions one finds right next to the towpath😡
1/2 mile added to the trip log in the bow-hauling column, and just another 1/2 mile more to reach a much-needed elsan.
Wonder if Santa can drop a new engine down the chimney this year😟
#boatlife #ukcanals #narrowboat
December 4, 2025 at 2:13 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
"Days are too short," the skipper said as his narrowboat crept past, bow light illuminating the way like a very, very slow comet.
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a narrowboat approaching a bridge, the boat's bright bow light illuminating the bridge's art deco styling. In the foreground another narrowboat is moored stern to the camera, while behind warm light spills from a canal-side residence.
December 3, 2025 at 5:25 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
One day it's blowing a gale and the sky looks like the Atlantic is doing a low-level flyby on its way to the continent, the next it's blue sky and millponds. Nippier today, too, but I scored me some coal, so all good 🔥😊
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of narrowboats moored on the offside of a rural canal under a clear blue winter sky.
December 2, 2025 at 4:17 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
Bit blowy out & last of the coal just gone into the wood-burner, but all good because today was a laundry and hot shower day 🥳🕺
Old pic of Lower Parting on the River Severn at Gloucester, which ceased to be navigable 1941
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a colourful winter sunset taken from an apex of land formed by the two channels of the River Severn at Gloucester rejoining, the east channel from the left and the west channel from the right.
December 1, 2025 at 6:58 PM
shadowedeyes.bsky.social
NB Sculptor turns 90 this year. Built 1935 for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co., it is now part of The Canal Museum on the Grand Union at Stoke Bruerne, one of three excellent museums operated by the Canal & River Trust
#boatlife
#ukcanals #canal #narrowboat
#KeepCanalsAlive #FundBritainsWaterways
Photo of a historic working narrowboat moored by the side of a picnic area next to the canal.
November 29, 2025 at 2:53 PM