Canal stretch opens up London to the Lakes route

For travellers with time on their hands, driven witless by immobility on the M6 and endless delays on the west coast main line, it offers a leisurely alternative to the grind of grid-locked England - cruising in the real sense of the word.

The latest north-south route has the added bonus of being a heritage trail second to none. But be prepared to be patient. The winding, 321-mile journey will take even longer than a delayed Virgin train: two weeks if you were really pushing it for 12 hours a day.

Officially opening the Millennium Ribble link, the first new canal for over a century yesterday, the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, hailed the birth of a new golden age in water travel - 240 years after the Duke of Bridgewater built the first canal to carry coal around Manchester.

The new four-mile section connects the landlocked Lancaster canal to the rest of the country's 2,000 mile network, making it possible to travel by narrow boat from London to the edge of the Lake District for the first time.

Praising volunteers who have long been campaigning to expand northwards, George Greener, chairman of British Waterways which operates the network, said they were finally in sight of realising "a long held dream", a waterway connecting London to the Lakes.

Plans are now advanced to open another section and push towards Kendal in Cumbria as part of a £500m programme of waterway restoration throughout the country. Over the past decade more than £2bn has been ploughed into the network.

The new £6m section, which links the Lancaster canal to a branch of the Leeds-Liverpool canal, is the first new waterway to be built since the Manchester ship canal opened in 1894. With nine new locks and four bridges, it is dependent on tidal conditions because part of the route crosses the estuary of the river Ribble.

"Boaters ... will be carefully instructed and assisted during their (four-mile) journey by our staff," cautioned British Waterways.

It was excited with the prospect of taking the network further north. "One day, people will be able to cruise from southern England to the Lake District, bringing more tourists, new jobs and a better environment to millions in the north-west," added the board.

The complexities of travelling north are not for the faint-hearted. From London, a boater can start the journey on the Regent's canal and glide towards Little Venice, joining the Grand Union and then taking the Oxford canal to the Midlands.

To avoid Birmingham, the Coventry canal is the best option up to the Trent and Mersey through Stoke - over the recently re-opened Anderton boat lift, described as the "cathedral of canals" - to the Bridgewater (over the Barton swing aqueduct) to the Leeds-Liverpool. In all, there are 190 locks to be operated,.

Time? British Waterways said it would take 2.5 weeks. "But, it you really wanted to pull out all the stops you could, in theory, cruise for 12 hours a day, seven days a week and do it in about 14 days," said an official. "It still makes the M6 look a better option."