The John Pinkerton & The Basingstoke Canal

During my earlier years of boat ownership, I thought it a good idea to join a canal society and maybe get involved with work parties, or something of use, so I could put something back into the canal system from which I have gained much pleasure.

So, with 'Life' moored at King's Bromley in Staffordshire, I joined the Lichfield & Hatherton canal society. All I ever did was go to one of their rallies, not much being put back there?

A few years later I joined the Wilts & Berks canal society, the thinking being that it was much closer to home and I was more likely to get involved, yes, you've guessed, I did less than above, a big fat 0.

Anyway, I eventually got around to joining the Basingstoke canal society, even nearer to home, third time lucky maybe? Well, this lot are very pro-active and within a few days of joining I'd had a phone call inviting me to take a look at their trip boat, the John Pinkerton. (I had expressed an interest in boat crewing on my membership application).

Off both myself and Penny went, on a Tuesday evening to Odiham, sometime in July 2010, to be introduced to the 'JP' operation. I had a drive turned it round and had a bit of an induction as to what was required, I was hooked!

A few days later we were crewing to the Barley Mow with 45 passengers!!

We did a few more trips that year and quite a lot the following year, I was keen to qualify as a Skipper and duly passed my MCA boatmaster exam in the Spring of 2012, I also found myself 'roped' into becoming the Training Manager for the operation.

We retired the JP in 2013 and took delivery of the John Pinkerton II, a lot of work in training crew and a much better boat for the passengers. Penny had got more involved and was looking after advertising and publicity, all in all this and input from other new committee members took the annual profit (all deeded to the canal society) from around £25k to £55k, quite an achievement.

There's a lot of good people involved in the JP operation, all giving a lot of volunteer hours. I've trained up 6 more skippers and currently have a 6/6 pass rate, but sadly, due to our current retirement and boat plans we are phasing ourselves out of the operation and will have pretty much no involvement from the Spring 2018. I've committed to one more round of Skipper training, I hope I don't spoil my 100% record, but of course, it's all down to the quality of he candidates.

Look us up at John Pinkerton Canal Cruises Ltd