Behind every cheerful festival photograph there are a great many hours at the tiller, and this post brought that home to me.

Journey’s end at the festival

Writing from the Fund Britain’s Waterways group, Mike Starnes shared the news that the Navigating for Change fleet had finally arrived at its destination, the Bedford River Festival, after around twenty hours of cruising — and, as he cheerfully noted, a good deal longer for some. There is something rather moving about that detail. Twenty hours is not a quick hop; it is early starts, patient lock work and long days on the water, all undertaken to carry the campaign’s message down the Great Ouse to a festival where thousands of people would see it. Journeys like this are the beating heart of the whole effort.

The post appeared in the Fund Britain’s Waterways Facebook group.

The campaign behind the cruise

Fund Britain’s Waterways is a coalition that speaks up for the hundreds of thousands of people who use and love Britain’s canals and rivers. Cruises such as Navigating for Change are not just gatherings of boats; they are a very visible argument for sustainable government funding, without which locks fall out of use, channels silt up and whole stretches of navigation are lost. Every one of those twenty hours was, in its own way, a mile flown for the cause.

If the effort of those boaters has struck a chord with you, please sign the petition at change.org/p/fundbritainswaterways and share it on with #FundBritainsWaterways.