Hi guest - more info about the horse boat...

Horseboating required great skill and knowledge. Working with and caring for horses was central to canal life, and we cannot understand that society without a much better awareness of the part played by horses. At its best, horse-power was a very efficient means of transport. At a steady walk, a horse could pull fifty times as much cargo in a boat as it could on the roads. Achieving this needed close working relationships between crews and horses, and between crew members themselves.

Re-introducing horseboating today is not easy. Some parts of the canals have been altered to make it hard for horses to work, and there are many issues of access and safety. Finding suitable horses with the training necessary for this work is difficult. Most of all, few people now have the necessary skills, and even fewer the detailed memory of how horseboating was actually done in its commercial heyday.