One of the joys of Summer, aside from the beach and the

Beach Boys’ Good Vibrationsand warmed up weather and outside get-togethers is cruising along with all ofthe same, during August, on a long, slow languorous glide, like the water rideat Palisade’s Park into September. No need to rush, we have time.

Speaking of cruising there seems to be a lot of that going

on right now. No need to blush either, boy: we have some other game in mind… Theword cruising as well as the world of cruising hold some glamour, in particularin summer, although I can hardly imagine climbing aboard any ship with severalthousand people onboard these days or doing anything unexpected now that we areall so much older and wiser, after COVID especially, right?

Elsewhere the pencil and the sword, thin river-boats of

Viking Cruises all over Europe hold some allure even here in North America, butthey seem to be less daunting, a bit more manageable today than they would havein Lindisfarne about 1000 years ago. We are telling a tale of swift developmentin logistics and industry, far from battle and invasion.

 Great that YouTube and Amazon Prime TV here in the USA have

picked up the narrow-boat phenomenon going on in the UK.

Small boats, in fact barges of historical nature, carrying

mostly coal in the past, are a history lesson in cargo transportation in theland where you can ply the over 4,000 miles of canals and imagine how thesewaterways and former tow paths sparked the Industrial Revolution, the VictorianEra and in fact were key in making Great Britain a world power.

 

Actually the Thames remains today an antidote to London’s

stifling traffic for some selected operators and as much as London, Amsterdamand New York have shaped global trade in the last four centuries, both grandand mean, depending… there are still so many smaller details in the waterwaysof Anglia that their full story cannot be entirely told.    

 

For me especially, during the Dog Days with heavy rain here in

New York City recently, confined indoors by the weather, watching a You Tubesponsored series titled “Travels by Narrowboat” for a couple of sessions wasinformative and fun.

    

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