Fifth series sees Robbie travelling along canals in Midlands and Home Counties
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13443055/Why-Canal-Boat-Diaries-host-never-live-dry-land-again.html
Robbie Cumming has been navigating England's canals and rivers for the past ten years and making TV shows about his journeys for the last five.
But his latest series of Canal Boat Diaries is proof that experience on the waterways is no guarantee of trouble-free travelling.
Robbie manages to lose both his mobile phone and an expensive TV camera over the side of his boat Naughty Lass, gets stuck in mud and rubbish near Walsall, wedges his boat in a lock gate, hits a bridge and becomes marooned in ice on the Grand Union Canal over the course of ten episodes.
'In Walsall the propeller became obstructed by weeds and plastic bags and the boat was stuck so deep in treacle-like mud I said to the producer, 'I can't carry on, I can't move any further – this is the end,' recalls Robbie.
'We had to get the producer to throw me a rope, and with the help of a fisherman pull Naughty Lass from the mud.'
Robbie Cumming has been navigating England's canals and rivers for the past ten years and making TV shows about his journeys for the last five
It's quite a catalogue of mishaps, but refreshingly at least there's no artifice in the show, no attempt to either exaggerate Robbie's problems or play them down in order to preserve his reputation. 'What you see is what you get,' he says.
'We just film what happens as I travel along the canal at four miles an hour. There are no set-ups and definitely no celebrities who just happen to be waiting around the corner to take part in the show.'
This fifth series sees Robbie travelling along canals in the Midlands and Home Counties, beginning at Braunston in Northamptonshire and ending up at Little Tring in Hertfordshire, via a lengthy stint in and around Birmingham.
He points out places of interest along the way and, when moored up, carries out maintenance on his 43-year-old boat while reflecting on life.
The combination of ripples on water, the metronomic chug of the engine and the breathtaking scenery have earned Robbie's series a cult following, no mean feat for a man who only developed a passion for narrowboats by chance.
He fell in love with them after spending a few nights on a friend's vessel a decade ago, and began his media career by putting videos of his life afloat on YouTube.
'I got a call from Stuart Woodman, the same producer I'm working with now, who'd seen my videos at exactly the right time because BBC4 wanted to make something completely different, something almost anti-television,' explains Robbie.
Four series on BBC4 starting in 2019 followed that initial conversation, and now the show has found a new mooring on Yesterday, with episodes that are twice the length at one hour.
This is the most personal series yet. In the final episode Robbie's parents Sue and Richard help him navigate his way through Marsworth Locks in Hertfordshire, shortly before his father's heart surgery.
Robbie manages to lose both his mobile phone and an expensive TV camera over the side of his boat Naughty Lass
There's also a lament in the first instalment about the problems of dating when you're on the move.
'It's difficult for people who live on narrowboats,' Robbie says. 'It inevitably becomes a long-distance relationship because of mooring rules – you have to keep moving and you move away from the person who is rooted and settled.'
He confirms that he's currently involved in a relationship with a woman which is restricted to a single meeting per week.
'I like to be all in, I like to be with someone all the time and you just can't do that when you're always travelling. I'm having to do a lot of travelling just to maintain the relationship.'
But Robbie says he has no plans to leave the water and enjoy a more conventional romance. 'My career is in boats and canals and I love it,' he says. 'I'm definitely hoping for series six…'
Canal Boat Diaries, weeknights, 7pm, from Monday 3 June, Yesterday. All episodes on UKTV Play from 3 June.
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