The Grand Union Canal, or G.U.C., is a 137-mile-long, 220-year-old man-made channel of once purely functional water. It is now long relieved of its original vocation of channeling industrialised loads of coal and aggregates between the great smoking behemoths of London and Birmingham. Now only leisure narrowboats and lightweight cruisers chug down it, their pilots stopping at pubs and drinking their fill, safe in the knowledge that drink-driving a leisure watercraft is a grey area misdemeanour, almost impossible to enforce against. Water has historically always been a “grey area” as regards the law. At sea, several miles offshore, a country’s legislation often blurs into seething waves and sinks to the ocean bed fragmented. Pirates abound and zealots make island states out of plastic bottles. In UK inland waters, the Royal Yachting Association states that “Section 80 of the Railways and Transport Act 2003” is unclear and unenforceable as regards leisure boaters that drink while in command of a craft. (The unofficial stance is not to get so drunk that you crash into another boat, at a maximum speed of 4 mph, and make a dent in it.)

Starting at the small town of Leighton Buzzard, there is a weir on the Grand Union with 12 concrete arches. For years a legend was spray-painted in fine wild style lettering on the top of the weir, just where you can get in past the inadequate fence. It read simply “12 Arches, 13 Apostles.” The author is unknown but appreciated by many of the mystics and explorers of the area. One brings up unbidden the image of Christ’s Judas, alone and ashamed without an arch, as you watch the 12 rivulets one by one open their silver threads, speeding over beds of glossy green weed. Children are scolded if they attempt to traverse the trickles, that so often and with speed turn to torrents. I scold my own child just the same, but one day when the water is low I come with him and two other boys and we leap the fence and the modest stream. We are on an island of huge dense leaning willows, completely hidden from outside eyes. The boys leap over several shallow brooks to reach a tiny beach adorned with rusting shopping trollies. A lost boy’s paradise, like that of the Mississippi River in the adventures of Tom Sawyer. There are car tyres, a broken willow. The boys pan for invisible gold.

Another day, alone, I walked just a few miles of the way down the Grand Union. South, towards London. I started at the 12 Arches, 13 Apostles weir.

I have lived on the Grand Union, in a narrowboat, for the past 12 years. They say you are either a boater or you are not. It takes a certain type of person, one who enjoys constant change, closeness to nature in all its moods and weathers. In the winter, without the stove on, it can easily get so cold that water freezes in the bathroom sink. In summer, the steel boat can heat up in direct sunlight to the point where candles melt. A cunning boater, however, unlike a householder, can move their home to a shady or sunny position as needed. Boaters are marked as different from the town dwellers by the way we embrace the earth—the coal dust that is impossible to scrub from under our nails, the wildness of our unkempt hair, clothes that enjoy and endure the kiss of dogs and mud. Those without a mooring—continuous cruisers—must move every two weeks to ensure the free flow of water traffic. Neighbours are constantly replaced by new ones, ensuring relationships do not stagnate. No one argues over a garden fence. Every few months one reunites with found-again neighbours, and drinks are joyously pulled out around a fire pit.

It is not all plain sailing, to excuse the metaphor. It can get lonely as a continuous cruiser, with nowhere to put down roots, no long-term relationships. Alcoholism and depression can strike down the itinerant boater, who does not stay in one place long enough to form friendships. Several boaters I know have died this way. I, like many, eventually struck a balance, working in one area and moving back and forth over a distance of 12 miles or so. Some of us travel in larger family groups, or move as a small caravan of boats. Many choose to homeschool their children.

“It just makes practical sense, as we are moving, and also fits with our ethos of allowing ourselves and our children freedom to learn what they want,” says boater Jo, who has homeschooled her four children with the help of husband, Mick, for over 15 years. As I speak to them in a woodland clearing off the towpath, they are teaching the children to make iron implements with a small forge, whilst Mick repairs an obscure antique wooden instrument. The children have been magnet fishing and have a large collection of antique glass bottles and the remnants of an ancient shotgun. They are constantly interacting with the natural world around them.

This flow and constant flux, as in Buddhist philosophy, teaches us that firstly we cannot hold onto form, including material possessions. This state of impermanence is known as anitya in Buddhism—everything changes, nothing lasts forever, but is created and decayed continuously.

The concept of “flow,” according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is “the state of mind one is in when completely absorbed in the task at hand, unaware of the passing of time, when one’s skill and the task are equal to each other.” The flow state is well known by artists and writers but universally beneficial to anybody, whatever they are doing. The canal represents the flow state in a physical form, though it does not flow itself. (The canal, unlike a river, is a controlled water. Locks raise and lower its levels, ancient sluices drain its excesses.) However, everything under its own power moves and flows upon it. The flow state is maintained. Artists, creatives and dreamers, as well as those in need of emotional healing, are drawn to this water. Water has long been associated with healing and with creativity.

Wood-carver and canal-ware painter Graham has been living and running his business on the Grand Union for over a decade.

“I am inspired by the pieces of wood that I find as I am moving along—I carve the faces of nature spirits, wizards, pagan symbolism,” he explains.

Occasionally, a real, bona fide tramp will come past on the Grand Union towpath, slowly walking a limitless distance, his beard long and his loose clothing shades of umber and khaki under his huge backpack. Once, a lady who was sleeping in her canoe knocked on the water side of my boat, startling me. She wanted to borrow a tin opener. I gave her a torn-off page of my canal map book, showing the way to Wales, and wished her good luck on her incredible journey. Another time, a young couple vented their frustrations outside my boat, screaming and swearing. (I asked them to keep it down for the benefit of my son, who was sleeping, and got a flower pot thrown at my head.) Eventually, however, the water calms the people who have, consciously or not, come there for healing.

In his 2014 book Blue Mind, author and marine biologist Wallace Nicholls tells us:

“This deep biological connection (to water) has been shown to trigger an immediate response in our brains when we are near water . . . and can induce a flood of neurochemicals that promote wellness.”

It’s no accident that properties close to water command a premium price, and that we go on holiday to the seaside. So why, then, do we use water as a carrier for our effluent?

The first bridge I reached on my walk, 114, is where the towns of Leighton Buzzard and Linslade are divided by the water. When one stands atop this old stone arch, one is neither in one town nor the other. Being a boater, I belong to neither town. A liminal space. A space like this can be physical, emotional or metaphorical, or all three. A physical example would be a place such as the stairs or landing in a building, or a station platform. A mental or emotional example of a liminal space would be describing the state of someone who has just left their job or relationship, but is not yet in another job or relationship. A place of transit, under the jurisdiction of Janus, the two-faced Roman god of change. Or an alternative deity, depending on what you believe in.

I am addicted to the thrill of never knowing what is coming next, and the freedom from being entrenched in doctrine and bylaw.

Liminal spaces are uncomfortable for many, a psychic equivalent of living on the stairs, yet there are some that find the very act of continuous transit comforting. People like me. The physical liminality of the canal and towpath (which is one great, long transport corridor) seems to be mirrored in the lives of those that live there. We are named “water gypsies” or “river pikies.” Live-aboard boaters fall under the umbrella of the Traveller community and can, as far as officialdom is concerned, identify as such when our children attend schools. But we are not the same. We elude easy definition, just as the water does.

“Why don’t you move into a house, with a lot more space?” I have been asked.

I shudder. A bricks and mortar house, resisting change. I am sick with the crushing inertia of the idea. Like a shark, to whom constant motion is life, to whose gills oxygen only comes when it continues to soar forward. I am addicted to the thrill of never knowing what is coming next, and the freedom from being entrenched in doctrine and bylaw.

The town bridge was a beautiful structure, with its smooth curves and the ripples reflecting on its underside. As I walked underneath the archway, I made sure to feel the deep grooves where countless long-gone draft horses wore away at the lining of the arch, slowly sawing furrows with their barge-pulling ropes. For a moment I travelled back in time, or no-time. Horse ghosts snorted in shadows beyond my vision. That soothing forever tread of hoof and boot, on and on all the way to the nation’s capital and back again north, untiring. The working boaters of old, the originals, compacted their whole families into cabins 10 feet long by 6 feet wide with ingenious folding beds and tables, all lovingly painted with folk art motifs in bright colours, and copperware polished bright. It was a matter of pride with them. We still keep the brass shining now, or at least the paintwork fresh, when we can.

I am addicted to the thrill of never knowing what is coming next, and the freedom from being entrenched in doctrine and bylaw.

I walked down past the cement-scented builder’s merchants, past a lock pond and stream where I picked wild watercress last summer. I mounted the stairs of the second bridge, which is not blessed with any number in the Grand Union waterways map book. The railings are painted white. What this bridge lacks in age it more than makes up for in other, more subtle ways. The white has developed a patina, a skin of algae or mould that covers the sides of the railings grey-green. When I draw closer and am still, I begin to see trails, tracks of fine tooth-edged patterns, strikingly and completely unintentionally graceful, arresting my eye to travel the loops and squiggles made by the unknown artists. The amusing thing is, this art was indeed made by teeth, and the artist was far from human. These works were made by the mouthparts of snails.

When snails come out at night to feed, they scrape serrated paths in the mould or algae with their radula—a stretchy band lined with thousands of minuscule teeth. I was still, and full of wonder. No one should ever feel they have to lose their sense of wonder, but too often, past childhood, we do. We need, sometimes, to break the useless conventions that teach us what is appropriate behaviour. I dropped down, belly to the bridge floor, and began to take close-up photos of the trails on their canvas of mouldy bridge. I got into the flow space with these tiny creations, lost in the complexities of the journeys of the molluscs. As you might imagine, other bridge users were confused by a scruffy-looking woman lying on the floor of a bridge, staring close-up at the posts with fervour. I explained what I was doing, getting some smiles, nods and some odd looks. At least no one was visibly scared, or phoning the hospital. It is in witnessing these things, however, that we experience a deep sense of joy. I take great comfort in knowing that these snails did not create this beauty for any other beings but themselves, and most likely for no other reason than sustenance. In these unintentional masterpieces, I feel in awe of the higher power of nature, that goes on doing and being regardless of the works of humanity.

The next bridge, the Pipe Bridge, was the site of the old quarry railway. Back in the First World War and coming into World War II, it was a hive of activity, narrow gauge locomotives and trucks carrying Leighton’s high-quality sand from pit quarries next to the canal. Now it is a footpath, with vibrant wild edible greens flush on either side of the dirt. I gathered some jack-by-the-hedge tops (Allaria petiolata) to add to a soup. This plant, also known as garlic mustard, has a taste that combines pepper, mustard, garlic, and cabbage. It makes a brilliant, powerful-tasting pesto. It is incredible that these culinary treasures are overlooked by the vast majority of the population. Foraging and the itinerant life of a canal boater go hand in hand. The canal towpath is one of the last preserves of the hunter-gatherer, an unclaimed space between worlds, and so for the most part free from the attentions of agencies that spray Roundup and other chemicals. In fact, in the UK, landowners must make a detailed and tedious application through the Environment Agency for a permit to spray herbicides within several metres of a watercourse. No one farms the towpath, and no one can block another’s right of way. The towpath is probably the last land in the UK held as commons for all. I take comfort in these facts, though I pick only over 25 centimetres high to avoid the rats who frequent waterways near civilisation. (Rats carry Weil’s Disease, which can make you really very ill.) Cooking wild herbs solves this issue entirely.

As creativity happens at the edge of things, where water, sunlight and land intersect, so does the towpath bring forth its cornucopia of edible greens, fruits, roots and shoots. Hydrogen, oxygen, minerals, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Mushrooms are attracted by the damp conditions, though it is easy to mistake a yellow stainer for a tasty wood mushroom (Agaricus sylvestris). At the Pipe Bridge, roses will provide their hips later in the year, elder will provide a snow of blossom that can be battered, and berries that can be made into fruit leather.

The edge—be it of water, of madness, of war or of the feral electricity between bodies—has historically been a place where art and ideas (and babies!) are generated. In permaculture—the design school of thought that observes and copies natural systems—one of the key precepts is to “increase the amount of edge.” Hence keyhole beds, layers of hedging or ditches to increase biodiversity. In fractals—infinitely complex self-similar mathematical patterns—we see layer upon layer of edge either increasing or decreasing. In geometry, fractals exist between the dimensions that are familiar and homely to us. They exist as expressions of the dynamics of chaos, which is an exploration of the transitions between order and disorder. (Our old two-faced friend Janus is at the door yet again!) So they, too, are a liminal space, and they can be found everywhere in the nature of the canal system—in fern fronds, clam shells, turbulent water.

Further on down the towpath there is just one section of the narrow gauge quarry track left. A surreal vision, a lost jigsaw piece of parallel silver rails that requires your mind to draw in the blanks across the neighbouring meadow, as it veers across the towpath and crashes into nonexistence.

“Can we walk the whole train track, Mummy?” my son asked one day.

We would have had to trespass through fields and break through fences the whole way to Luton, following the idea of the now forgotten rails.

The vestiges of the narrow gauge rail bridge were next, a dull black that still shines in places over lines of rivets. It formed a hulking ladderlike structure, but the only lifeforms occupying it now were ash trees, their smooth silver spearing through the iron rungs. I attempted to count their age. My inexpert guess was that they have been residents of the rail bridge for at least 50 years. (That is young for an ash.) This remnant was beautiful in the way that all old railways and factories are beautiful. It was more so now it was occupied by natural forces that juxtaposed its horizontal lines of transit. It had no other purpose now at all, save to frame the ash trees, and to remind us of what once was. Canals and industry have always gone hand in hand, often as industries needed both water and a way to transport goods. This has also meant canals have gone hand in hand with pollution. During Britain’s Industrial Revolution, the canals of Birmingham and the Midlands were “black as treacle.” After many years from the decline of heavy industry, roach, carp, tench and pike cruise again beneath the waters, though you wouldn’t want to be (and indeed you are prohibited from) eating them. Myself and other more adventurous boaters do, however, eat the crayfish we catch in traps occasionally.

During Britain’s Industrial Revolution, the canals of Birmingham and the Midlands were “black as treacle.”

Next down the dusty line of the thinning path was the Green Bridge, again too young to be numbered on the map. It curved in a soft, wide, vibrant spiral of rails and metal into a grassy field called Peace Meadow, which a board proclaimed as the historical site of a peace treaty between the Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Elder, and the Danes in the year 906. This area, Tiddenfoot, was known as “Yittingaford” way back then, after this briefest of moments of glory. The Green Bridge is the way to the quarry lake, now a nature reserve. Peace Meadow is now full not of Saxons, but poison hemlock, Conium maculatum, which laps with its lethal turquoise lace at the feet of the green metal rails. When I look up it is not far to the industrial estate, a chink of grey towers through the underside of the bridge. I notice that I always find hemlock on land ravaged by industry, or else at the sides of motorways. I consider it a mirror of our own toxins—lead, arsenic, mercury—that seep into this brownfield land. A weird sort of natural justice. It is so poisonous, with three deadly alkaloids including conine, that it was used to execute people in ancient Greece. On summer days the sickly sweet scent of the flowers, reminiscent of failed kidneys, hangs in the air. We must have a hefty debt to pay for what we have wreaked on the soils. If you ask the hemlock.

*           *           *

The canal pulled me on, rolling and curving towards the highway bridge, a modern confection of functional concrete and hard lines yet again not itemised with a number. There was more hemlock amidst the din and roiling fumes, but yet there was promise here too, if one knew where to look. The bridge roared and screamed above, but in its bleak interior was a sacred grove, bedecked with paintings of modern-day cave art. The Apostles of this arch were human. I had never met them, not being one to go out much at night since having children. But by their works ye shall know them. Those rebel lovers of beauty in desolation, that go out with cans of spray paint and pour forth works that, if imbued with a random profound meaning and hung in the Tate Gallery, would be worth thousands if not millions and revered. Instead, they are decried as mere vandalism. My soul leaped at the joy of their wild lines, their scintillating colours. Who cared if they had no words on a plinth to convey their meaning? These humans sought no monetary reward for their works, just the thrill that they will be seen, appreciated by strangers they will never meet. The very purest form of art, and the most generous. Rebellion happens at the edge in every story, from Romeo and Juliet to every science fiction dystopian dream.

Past the A road, the canal opened up either side to a vista of open fields. Torn black rags fluttered in the wind searing through the hedge. Reedmace, that king of invasive flora, massed at the opposite bank. I saluted its much maligned, indomitable nature and made plans to harvest the sweetcorn-tasting flowerbeds later. Lesser celandine flowers glowed golden—do you like butter?—against the bright water. A pheasant carked and I smelt burning. I shared the path with a red kite wheeling overhead, a predator that has embraced liminality and is equally at home atop a skyscraper or an oak tree. Wherever there is carrion, there they are. They are not proud. Towpath space is so narrow, only those who can adapt to change and enjoy sharing can happily coexist there. This is certainly true of most boaters. It is cooperation, not competition, that today’s canal boat lifestyle teaches us.

“The community is what I like best about the canal,” Sue, a live-aboard boater on the Leighton moorings, tells me. “It doesn’t matter when you go outside, you’ll always meet someone you know.” Perversely to the previous theme of loneliness, once you are living in a fixed spot on the canal, the relaxing atmosphere ensures that people are happy to chat with each other, and neighbours, temporary or otherwise, are quick to offer aid and advice to one another. Boat life can be hard, and the modest living space and lack of possessions and electricity mean a more outdoor life for many.

Bridge 116 was old and made of stone carpeted by greying lichens and moss. The countryside stretched out either side in fields containing sheep, or nothing. Church Lock was here, its heavy elm doors spewing jets of water. A pair of swans hissed as they guarded their precious eggs, the pen sitting immobile in a nest of crushed reedmace, a dazzling sculpture. The cob struck out back and forth, patrolling like a soldier at the battlements. Swans are the symbol of the canal—heartrendingly beautiful, the Queen’s royal bird, but with foul tempers at odds with their angelic appearance. They are never more poetic than when they sail past the coiling acid colours of graffiti—drops of snow sailing in the heart of rebellion.

I turned back towards my boat, knowing these waterways, in all their atrophied glory, are as much a part of me as the arteries and capillaries that service my blood. What came first, the product or their environment? We are on the stairs, the landing, listening in. We have our feet in two different worlds. We still don’t know.

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