There's a lot more behind this story, I'm sure, but the news agencies certainly took wing today when they learned of the story that Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart had taken a canal boat holiday on the Llangollen Canal. Finer details were skimpy, but apparently the couple rented a boat from Maestermyn Marine and took a short-break four-day holiday to and from Llangollen, but staying in Llangollen's Bryn Howel hotel each night after supposedly complaining of 'cramped and cold' acccomodation aboard. I presume standards have improved at the hotel since someone last year described it as 'Fawlty's training ground'.
Here's the route they took, via Canalplan. It's just 12 hour's actual cruising, but allows time to explore Llangollen itself and Chirk Castle, and it's an excellent short break. Only two locks though - at Marton.
The most detail to this story is in The Sun on Thursday. (first two pics nicked from the Sun website). They call it 'exclusive', and certainly they have detailed photos that look genuine and that no other news sources have - plus a few faked as jokes.
Hats off to Waterscape for their alacrity in teaming up with the Sun to offer a competition for a free canal holiday. And yet - I wonder if that was all just another cog in the Hollywood publicity machine? Did Waterscape have prior knowledge of this? Did they, indeed, feed the story to the Sun in the first place?
I'd thought Maestermyn's hire boats were generally brown and cream coloured, and named after knights - Sir Bedivere, etc - but the Sun's photos suggest it was another part of their fleet, predominantly blue and white and blessed with more generally aristocratic names - Lady, Duchess, etc.
Perhaps it's no surprise the superstar pair (and their children and nanny) didn't spend the nights afloat. I've often thought about how hard it would be for celebs to narrowboat afloat, and that's why my 'Celebrity Boaters' typelist remains skimpy and resolutely B-list. Canal boating is literally 'hiding in plain sight'. If no one is interested in you, you'll be anonymous. Otherwise you'll be more like Peter the Great in his Great Embassy of 1697-8, unable to flee the simply and openly public nature of your trip, no matter how privately you try to behave.
I'd love to find the true story of this trip, of how the telephoto lens pictures were taken, and hopefully to get some close-up photos myself someday of an A-list celebrity boating holiday. I figure it might be something like this picture, which is crowded only because it's a beauty spot on the Chesterfield canal.
But the photos of Ford and Flockhart look snatched and prying. And unfair to the image of a canal holiday - it can't be fairly judged through a telephoto lens. Anyway, welcome, Harrison and Calista, to my Celebrity Boaters List.
I would love to know the name of the boat. Any idea?
I'd imagine that, until an independent witness verifies it, Maestermyn will claim every one of their boats as the 'Harrison Ford boat', like several Catholic shrines all claiming to hold the right thumb from a particular saint.
Posted by: Andrew Denny | Tuesday, 20 July 2004 at 08:14 PM
... actually, we were - by pure co-incidence - on a barge just behind them as we approached the lock (at 'New Marton'). The photographer who took them walked past us as we approached and carried on past the lock to take pictures on the far side, although I couldn't see him when we actually came to the close the lock behind them.
This was a day after we left Chirk, where we later learned they'd already been, presumably to get water - so The Sun would have had plenty of time to get someone out there after a tip-off.
The boat was indeed one of the 'blue and cream' ones. Both seemed reasonably nice, with that obvious little suspicion hanging in the air that you're about to whip out a piece of paper and ask for an autograph!
And to tell the truth, they just looked like two americans trying to have a nice quiet holiday...
Posted by: Rich | Monday, 12 July 2004 at 10:52 AM