Indie Travellers, Let’s Meet Up

We have an idea. I wanted to run it by you.

What is travel?

There is a quote, “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going” by Paul Theroux.

Now you may find this slightly judgemental, and indeed there’s a great rant about it here.  But I understand what Mr Theroux is getting at.

In our quest for offering a unique experience in England, I have at times been disheartened from my conversations with backpacker hostels.  It seems that many of their guests, afraid by the prospect of wasting precious time, are sourcing the quick fixes – the top 10’s of what to do.  Sightseeing and partying, and rarely delving beneath the surface.

This was a common theme when quizzing hostel workers at various hostels in London, and it made me feel quite down-hearted.  I wondered if social media, and mobile internet was slowly wiping out the type of movement I call independent travelling.  We’ve become accustomed to instant gratification in today’s world, and this can only be detrimental to our longing for discovery.  I wondered if anyone else understood where I was coming from.

Fortunately we were given the boost we needed when last weekend we were joined by 2 couples from Australia and a guy from Saudi Arabia.  Our new friends from Oz were living and working in South East London. Mohammad from Saudi Arabia is studying in Bristol.  Whilst they may not have been backpacking in the traditional sense of the word, they came together through their desire to experience a side to England that was unique and authentic.  They engaged with local people, they were excited to be part of a local pub’s barn dance (it was pretty rubbish to be honesty, but it was real!), they went off walking to areas that aren’t in travel guidebooks, but are still beautiful, if on less of a grand scale.

The curious independent traveller does indeed exist.  There’s at least one studying in Bristol, and another 4 living in a house in South East London.  I’m sorry for my temporary moment of doubt in your existence.

This led me on to my next thought process (as Ruth will tell you, I can’t manage thinking about two things at once).  If these great people are out there, but they’re not all staying in backpacker hostels, wouldn’t they benefit from a central place where they can gather to drink, chat, learn, discover, and connect with one another?  Unlike other countries more populous with independent travellers, we’re more spread out here in the UK.  There are also many thousands of ex-backpacker Brits, downhearted from coming back down to earth with a thud, and finding they have no option but to find “real jobs”. Missing the interaction with other travellers. Finding it culturally unacceptable to talk to random strangers on the tube or the bus.

So I did something about this.  I’ve setup a meetup group called “Indie Travel Hub”.  We’re starting one in Manchester first, but the idea is to create them in various cities in the UK.  It will be a monthly social gathering, and each city will have its meetups run by a pair of like-minded travellers who can spare the time to hold such an event.  We can share travel experiences, offer advice on places to visit, events coming up, good places to live, study, or find work. And, of course, put the world to rights!

We’re very excited about this.  Our first meetup is not too far off – Wednesday 12^th June.

If you’d like to come along and join us then sign up here:

http://www.meetup.com/Indie-Travel-Hub-MCR/

Make sure you also RSVP to the event.  If you can’t make the first event, please still sign up to show your support for the concept.

Would you like to set one up in another UK city? Let me know and we’ll publicise your own meetup!

The First Year

Wow, what a year!  To think that a year ago today we were just about to collect our narrowboat from Oxfordshire.

We may have seemed a little quiet of late, but believe me, like our name suggests, we have been behaving like ducks (gliding gracefully along the water, legs flapping like crazy below!).  We’ve been maintaining and improving the boat: increasing battery power, re-blacked the boats hull, added a more ipod-friendly stereo system, and we’re working hard to promote ourselves ahead of our second season.

However, as we race to get everything ready for the first scheduled trip of the new season on the 15^th March (already half full), it’s also important to take a breath, sit back, and reflect upon how the first year of operating has gone.

Our inaugural season has been something of a research period for Wandering Duck.  As you’ll know, there were no other hostel boats on the water when we set up our business, so the concept was unknown.  That comes with huge challenges.  If, for example, you start your own café business, you can set yourself apart from your competition with your own detailed touches; Barista trained staff, quality Colombian Rainforest Alliance Fairtrade coffee, some cool electronic tango background music, and some worn leather sofas.  OK, so perhaps that’s a future project, but you know what I mean.  You benefit from your potential customers at least knowing what a café is, so you’re half way there.  For Wandering Duck, we’re bringing a new experience to a whole new group of younger people.  International backpackers barely know anything about the canals, and in the UK there is still an outdated perception that the canal is just somewhere to dump your shopping trolley.  Then there are the boating community themselves.  They at least have discovered the beauty of this kept secret, but then we have the pre-conceived ideas of what a hostel boat may be.  We often have to explain that we’re not for school children, scouts, or the disabled.

Slowly, we’re making progress.  When we first started trading last April, we naively expected the online bookings to come flooding in.  Backpackers rushing with excitement to experience this new kind of tour.  A unique way to experience a slice of the UK countryside by boat.  The perfect mix of idyllic meandering waterways, history, British pub culture, late night jamming sessions on a guitar on the boat.  That sounds ace!  Lesson 1: Nobody cares about what you’re doing as much as you do.  I think we received one booking from a friend (hi Sara) in the whole of the first month.  This was incredibly deflating and we really questioned what on earth we were doing.  We were so sure of ourselves and our vision that we didn’t really have a plan B.  It felt a bit like planning your wedding day for a year, only for nobody to show up.  It was a nerve-wracking time.

The Olympics came, but the tourists and backpackers didn’t.  Not that we could see anyway.  Presumably they were enjoying watching the Olympics at home on the telly like we were.  We also had the wettest summer since 1912.  This was not what we had in mind.

Summer trips were fairly quiet, but then things started to pick up.  We ran more trips in September and October than we’d had in any of the Summer months.  The weather improved somewhat, and word was starting to travel about these new tours we were doing.  From talking to people we’d also discovered a different group of customers.  It came to light that there were a whole group of people who would like to experience a canal boat break, but who didn’t want the responsibility of hiring their own narrowboat.  We hadn’t really appreciated this at all when we set up Wandering Duck, and as a consequence we’ve now split up what we do in to two areas – private skippered charters, and scheduled tours.  We even did a private charter trip at the end of November for a lovely group of 4 people which was for a 65^th birthday present.  We had planned to finish our season at the end of October, so we were really pleased to learn that there was still some demand for trips so late in the year.  This beautiful winter weekend even entailed a little ice-breaking with the boat which was a lot of fun.

By this stage we’d had lots of fantastic feedback from our guests.  We’ve appeared in a few magazines, including Derbyshire Life and TNT Magazine, and again these features have been incredibly positive.  Unfortunately in December Guardian Travel published a full-page feature on Wandering Duck which was extremely uncomplimentary.  It seemed that the journalist of the piece hadn’t really appreciated what the experience would entail, and had taken her misguided expectations out on our business.  It was a missed opportunity.  Had the journalist been able to get into the mindset of the independent traveller, it could have been a fantastic piece of publicity for us.  However, every cloud has a silver lining.  The Guardian website received 34comments, all encouraging us on.  We received booking enquiries, messages of support, and even phone calls of support following the article.  Fortunately for the UK tourism industry, the writer in question hasn’t written anything for Guardian Travel since. Lesson 2: Before you invite a journalist on your boat, make sure it’s somebody who would choose to be there.

After such a quiet start, we were really pleased with the progress Wandering Duck made last year.  Of the customers we had, a few were friends and family.  Some were canal lovers who had been on canal boat breaks before.  But on the whole our customers were new to the waterways.  They’d never been inside a narrowboat, or seen a windlass.  These days, with sites like Trip Advisor ruling where we go and what we do, it’s no wonder that the majority of people will wait for the reassurances from their peers before trying something new.  As a new business and a new concept, all of our customers over the last year took a chance on a very alien experience they knew very little about.  Whether they booked a tour on their own, or shared the experience with friends, we’re extremely grateful to each and every one of them.

As I say, the feedback from our guests has been exceptional.  But there has also been lots of support from the boating community too.  Particularly in the early, quieter days this acted as a real lift when we needed the encouragement.  It helped us to appreciate just why we wanted to show off this side of the UK to begin with. 

This year we have a Photography Workshop Weekend planned, and in May we’re hoping to launch a 1 night tour through Manchester and out to Worsley.  To have designed a 1 night trip, our shortest yet, with half the time travelling through Manchester city centre, will be a surprise to many.  But this only goes to reinforce our concept as an experience.  Manchester is the second most visited city in England, and this tour will give city lovers a whole new perspective to Manchester, as well as a nice short cruise out to a pub in the village of Worsley, along the first major canal in the country.  A tour of the worlds first industrialised city travelling on the very transport link that helped create it.  At around £60 per person, we’re also going further to make a canal boat break accessible to those on the smallest of budgets.

We’re taking small steps forwards.  We’re not about to rush out and buy another boat anytime soon, but we feel immensely proud to have turned our vision in to a reality.  We thank everyone who’s helped us, who’ve come along on a trip, who’ve helped spread the word and who have offered words of support and encouragement.  We are immensely grateful to you all. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you again soon.

Taking the Final Step

"It might work, but it's unproven". These were the most reassuring words that the most experienced man in the leisure boat industry could muster together for us.

We had decided to look in to our idea for a backpackers hostel boat in more detail.  Nigel Hamilton, a consultant in leisure boat business start-ups, was not as enthusiastic about the idea as we were.

"Why don't you start a Hotel Boat business?" said Nigel.  To give you an analogy, this is like suggesting a nice practical Volvo estate (diesel I might add),  to somebody who’s looking for a 1969 split-screen Volkswagen Campervan. 

Until WanderingDuck, Hotel Boats were the only overnight canal boat tour available on the UK’s waterways.  They tend to cater for the 60+market.  You know, those people who have lots of money to spend, and enjoy the comfort of familiarity,so they keep returning.  If you were to stop and think about it for a second (and we did), Nigel's advice was logical, practical and made good business sense.  But it wasn't for us.  We’re travellers at heart.  We had an opportunity here to show a relatively unknown way of life to a whole new audience of people who shared our passion for discovery.  We would be the first people in decades to be able to offer budget travellers the chance to see this beautiful and little-known historical network of waterways.  This was one hell of an opportunity.

So, we stayed true to our original plan.  Sat in the Oast House in Manchester with a group of friends, we drew up a list of names for our new venture, which continued on to a Facebook Group.  There were some great ideas: "TheUnsunk Bunk" and "International Waters" (where you can do whatyou like!) to the less appealing "Let's Get Shipfaced". 

We decided on Wandering Duck; it was fun, unconventional for the waterways and connected well with travelling.  We put together a business plan.  This essentially is where you say what you hope will happen, and then if the bank thinks it will happen, they agree to lend you some money.  They did, but it wasn't until we bought our boat that everything started to feel real.

I was working for a Travel company called Carrier as a travel consultant at the time.  I say “travel” in the loosest sense of the word.  What I actually sold were holidays.Very exclusive five star holidays at that.  The perks of the job were great, but it wasn't “travel” as in my definition of the word.  Sipping cocktails on the deck of your private water villa is very nice, but in the words of Marshall Bruce MathersIII, it was time to get “back to reality”.  It was time to go get me a boat.

I made the call in my lunch hour, on my walk across to Sainsbury's.  As I pressed the contact number of the boat brokers on my phone I felt my palms start to sweat.  An overwhelming feeling of fear came across me.  This was truly unknown territory, with unknown consequences.  A change of path from this moment on.  It was a cold and wet December day in 2011 as I crossed the TGI Friday car-park en-route to the supermarket, but I was so anxious that I was almost unaware of where I was as I concentrated on the ringing, waiting for someone to answer at the other end.  They did, and I made an offer.  The broker said he'd come back to me, and it felt like an anti-climax.  I wandered around the expanse of the supermarket in even more of an overwhelmed and disengaged state than I normally do.  But on the way back, orange juice in one hand, and bananas and phone in the other, he phoned me back.  He told me I had bought a boat.  This was it.  There was no way out now.  My work colleagues knew nothing of my plans, or fast approaching exit from the company, and so this momentous occasion filled with nerves and excitement, was proceeded with a cheese & pickle sandwich and 20 minutes of Sky News in the staff canteen.

We now have a beautiful 69ft narrowboat.  We had a few modifications made to the interior layout to make it suitable for our trips, and had it sprayed green.  We named the boat “Rakiraki”, the Maori for Duck after our time managing the backpackers hostel in New Zealand. 

We picked the boat up in February 2012 in Oxfordshire and spent two and a half weeks cruising from just outside of Bicester up to Derbyshire, passing through the centre of Birmingham and even getting stuck in Wolverhampton for 3 days due to a huge timber merchant fire beside the canal.  It’s incredible how you can travel all over England by canal, and rarely does the country feel anywhere near as urban as most people would perceive. Don’t get me wrong, parts of our journey such as the outskirts of Wolverhampton were pretty gritty, but for the most part it was a fantastic way in which to appreciate the open English countryside and its small towns and villages.  At 3mph you get to see every detail.  You almost feel sorry for those rushing by in their cars missing everything except for the bland expanse of the motorway network.  It reminds me of a quote for which there are many variations: “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end” Ursula K. LeGuin. I guess that’s life.

We had acquired a mooring at Bugsworth Basin.  Bugsworth Basin is a little known scheduled ancient monument, with huge importance in the inland waterway world.  It was once one of the largest working inland ports in the country, with up to 100 boats a day taking limestone from the nearby Peak District, to Manchester and beyond.  It’s been lovingly restored by volunteers over the last 30 years, and we were lucky enough to acquire one of only 4 private moorings there.  It’s a beautiful spot.

 

Safely home atBugsworth, we went to work on the final touches.  Books for guests to read, an iPod, my Yamaha acoustic guitar on the wall for people to play.  I had the slightly silly idea to install a real ale beer pump.  I felt that pubs and English real ale went hand in hand with canal life.  After convincing Ruth that this was a good idea (with no idea how I was going to actually put it in to practice), I met up with Lee Wainwright from the Bollington Brewing Company.  He helped in getting a pump installed and in return we get to serve his beers which are brewed a 5 minute walk from the canal.  Having the big vinyl Wandering Duck logo installed on the side of the boat was the final touch, and was a very exciting time for Ruth and I.

Another challenge was working out our routes.  We wanted beautiful scenery, some nice pubs, some interesting history, some nice walks, to be close to public transport links (that was a tough one!), and we needed resources such as water,refuse, and diesel easily available.  We also wanted to be close to Manchester.  Manchester is Ruth's home town, and where we have lived together for the past 10 years.  It’s also worth noting that the Bridgewater Canal, which starts in Manchester, was the first true canal in the UK. But that’s another history lesson.

Ruth is a map geek.  She loves them to a degree I will never understand.  It comes from her youth days walking the hills of the UK’s National Parks. Particularly the Peak District.  Coming up with the perfect route was all her doing.  We had a huge map of the canal network on the hallway wall of our flat in Chorlton.  It was covered in post-it notes, highlighter pen, and Biro.  We looked all over the canals that surround Manchester, until eventually agreeing on the routes very close to those that now feature our tour schedule.

Our friends came on some dummy runs with us in March, and with a little practice behind us, Wandering Duck was born.  In April 2012 we took our first paying guests on a 2 night canal boat experience from Macclesfield to Bugsworth Basin.  Our dream had finally become a reality.