Canal Boat Diaries visits Northampton

Starting weeknights from Monday 3rd June on Yesterday & UKTV Play, there are 10 new 1-hour episodes (Monday-Friday 7pm) of the popular Canal Boat Diaries with Robbie Cumming, as he offers a personal take on life aboard his narrowboat home the ‘Naughty Lass’.

Robbie moved to London in his early 30s, where he struggled to afford to live anywhere. He started living on a narrowboat after accepting a friend’s offer to keep it running over winter. He fell in love with the simplistic lifestyle and decided to make it his job as well as his home.

In this new series the film-maker and waterways enthusiast explores the landscapes, towns and cities of the Midlands before heading south down the Grand Union Canal. Along the way he shares his passion for industrial heritage and celebrates the lesser-known stretches of our most challenging inner city canals.

Over summer, autumn and winter 2023/24, the journey takes him from Braunston, Northamptonshire, considered to be the spiritual home for narrowboaters, through Birmingham’s maze of canals made famous by Peaky Blinders before he heads south.

Expect peace and tranquillity, but also plenty of drama that comes with boating along underused stretches of England’s canals. Along the way Robbie gets marooned in the mud on a leaky lock pound in Perry Barr, he breaks down on a remote section of the Ashby Canal in rural Leicestershire and is even forced to call in an underwater dive team, to help recover his smart phone after dropping it into the Stourbridge Canal - it's thrill and spills at 4 miles an hour.

Robbie says: “The show has moved home to a new channel and that's given me the opportunity to make more of the programmes I love. I've packed load into this series and encountered some of my toughest trips yet. There are parts of the Birmingham Canal Navigations not for the faint hearted - it was hard going at times but ultimately an amazing adventure which makes great telly I can share with you”