Martine and Phillippa, Cool Canals
This month we get to know the writers of this summer's hit canal guide, 'Cool Canals'.
Martine and Phillippa are the tea makers, authors, photographers and creators of the new leisure guidebooks publisher, Coolcanals Guides.
'Cool canals The Guide' (an introduction to canal leisure time) was published in March 2009. Two further titles (on the best walks and pub days out) will be published in March 2010.
"We caught the waterways bug for good after buying a Sailaway Plus 58-foot narrowboat (Bhaile) to live afloat, continuously cruising with our four cats. Like other boaters, we used much-loved navigational guides to cruise our way around the network, but we couldn’t find any canal guidebooks focusing on leisure, both on the water and on the towpath. We could see the canals were a destination in their own right, with their own culture, architecture, landscape, heritage and even lingo - with as many things to do and see as any far-off place.
"So we wandered into the world of publishing on our own, without knowing anything about it, but everything in our bones told us to do it anyway; and the time seems right since, ironically, the credit crunch and eco tourism could make Britain’s inland waterways more popular with holiday and leisure seekers than ever before."
• Which 5 words best describe you?
Phillippa – Creative, chaotic, enthusiastic, chatty, short.
Martine – Practical, organised, emotional, Irish, decadent.
• You must have explored all or most of the UK canal network over the years. Do you have a favourite cruise?
As waterways nomads travelling so much, it’s got to be our home stretch on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal (Alvechurch village was home before we lived afloat, and Worcester is nearest to our current dry base in Malvern).
• What did you most enjoy about writing 'Cool Canals'?
The autonomy of starting our own publishing company meant we didn’t have anyone to account to, so we could get on with photographing and writing about some of the things we most love about the canals – and hopefully help support the waterways at the same time.
• What did you want to be when you 'grew up'?
Phillippa – I wanted to be George and escape to Kirrin Island with Timmy.
Martine – My first memory is of wanting to be a nun, but that soon changed to airline pilot.
• What first attracted you to the canals?
Phillippa – Helping out in the ‘70s as a bell-bottomed teenager on the Narrowboat Hotel Co, Dawn & Dusk, owned by family of my then boyfriend (later husband).
Martine – Living in Alvechurch and walking past the marina every day.
• What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
To turn the tiller in the opposite direction to the way you want the boat to go (Phillippa is still struggling though after all these years).
• And the worst?
Don’t go and live on a narrowboat with four cats – they’ll hate it, they’ll run away, they’ll drown! (How wrong could that be?)
• You have a chapter in your book named 'quirky adventures'. What’s the quirkiest canal adventure you’ve ever had?
After moving off the boat to dry land, we set ourselves the challenge of a 2,000-mile (ish) slow stroll along every canal from the Bude in Cornwall to the Caledonian in Scotland. We’re doing it bit by bit, at canal pace, stopping off for a good chat with every swan, Dick or Harry along the way, and nipping into a few canalside pubs for a pint of course.
• Which three people (dead or alive) would you like to invite onto your narrowboat for the day?
Joanna Lumley – because she’s patron of CIWF (Compassion in World Farming), loves cats and would fit in well with the ‘Ab Fab’ madness of our narrowboat.
Stephen Fry – because he’s deliciously intelligent, witty, and as kind as he is big.
Nigella – to cook something no-nonsense, but naughty, for us.
• Where would you most like to be right now?
Picking up the keys for our new narrowboat – Bhaile 2.
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