The Leeds & Liverpool Canal is the first in a new series of canal route DVDs from rail and waterways enthusiast Paul Balmer. The series is branded Waterway Routes, and they will offer some novel enhancements over existing canal DVDs.
I can't offer a full opinion because the DVD player on my computer (the only way I'm able to view it) isn't yet working after the recent reinstall. But I'd seen a very early 'beta' version of this DVD last year, and I was particularly impressed with the camera work and editing, although at the time I thought the narration and background music needed reworking and Paul said he was doing this. The route focused on all the beauty spots and stuck to the waterway itself, never venturing far from the canal.
This first in the series also covers the entire 127-mile route on one disk, which I think is a wise move. It's hard to see your family sitting still through two DVDs just to see where you went on holiday! I can imagine a canal buff being dissatisfied with compressing the L&L into 59 minutes, but Waterway Routes is designed for people with friends! It also seems aimed much more at the tourism/hireboat market.
The novel features (not present on the rival Videoactive series, at least, not on the ones I've seen) are a foldout map of the route, a ten-page booklet on the history of the route, and a time-lapse video of sections of the route, showing the trip as if experienced in a speedboat. A further distinction is that the DVD is only £12.45 inc p&p, considerably cheaper than Videoactive.
The second in the series is going to be the Forth & Clyde Canal, filmed in early summer and released later this year.
Paul filmed Granny travelling from Bristol to Portishead last July, and came with us on the passage up the Severn - perhaps we'll see the footage from that trip used in a future Waterway Routes series. It's a major passage for a narrowboat, and tagging it on to a River Severn/Avon DVD would be irresistible.
Currently you can buy Leeds & Liverpool Canal only by post and paid by cheque, although there are local stockists planned.
Oh, it's also available on VHS. Good lord, VHS and cheque - I've forgotten the last time I used either of those! I've not had a VCR for several years, and I haven't seen my cheque book for several months.
You can keep up with developments in the series, including stockists and ways to buy, on the Waterway Routes blog. (However, there's no RSS feed, which misses a big opportunity.)
The blog should also have news of his own new narrowboat, due to be built later this year and intended to be technically groundbreaking in its use of electric power and emission-free propulsion. I presume he'll release a DVD of the construction in due course. If he's not filming it, he's missing out. Hadar is showing how to blog the build of a boat, but no-one's done a DVD yet. It would be reassuring for those who are having a boat built to know what to expect.
Thank you for the excellent information about our first DVD.
I'm sure you will be pleased to hear that you can now purchase the DVDs online through the website - you were just a day too early with your blog - I should have let you know we were working on it. You can also purchase the VHS version online if you can remember how to use one of these.
Now I just need to work out what an RSS feed is and how I've managed to live so long without one!
Thanks, Paul Balmer
Posted by: Paul Balmer | Sunday, 19 March 2006 at 10:25 PM