We were delighted to be featured in this month's issue of Towpath Talk (https://www.towpathtalk.co.uk/), with a wonderful write up of our cruiser Drake.

Visit this link to view the full April 2024 issue.

Drake featured in Towpath Talk

Embarking on a narrowboat holiday offers a unique opportunity to explore the serene waterways at a leisurely pace, and for pet owners, it’s a chance to share this tranquil experience with their furry companions. The Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal provides an ideal setting for a pet-friendly adventure. Here’s why bringing all the family, including your pets, along on a narrowboat holiday is a fantastic idea, and how you can make the most of it.

Why Narrowboat Holidays are Great for Pets

New Scenery Every Day: Your pets, especially dogs, will love the changing landscapes and the new scents that come with a different mooring spot each night. The diverse flora and fauna along canal paths can stimulate a pet’s senses and encourage physical activity and help with mental stimulation. 

Exercise and Exploration: With miles of towpaths to walk, your pets can enjoy plenty of exercise and the excitement of exploring new territories. If well behaved it can follow you while you cruise the canal, or you can walk with your dog as you're only travelling at a slow walking pace. 

Bonding Time: Walking or playing by the canal can be a bonding experience for pets and their owners. It’s a chance to spend quality time together away from the distractions of daily life.

Pet-Friendly Amenities: We offer boats equipped with pet essentials, ensuring a comfortable stay for your pets.

Preparing for a Pet-Friendly Narrowboat Holiday

Choose the Right Boat: Ensure that the narrowboat you select is the right one for you. All of our boats (except Robin) are pet friendly and we accommodate up to two dogs, have a look at each boat and its layouts to ensure you pick the correct one for you and your companions. We would generally advise that you book a boat bigger than your party size to accommodate your pets as well as their beds. 

Pack the Essentials: Bring all the necessary items your pet will need, such as food, bowls, leads, a bed and any medications.

Safety First: Consider a pet life jacket, especially for dogs, to keep them safe near water. On request we can provide these for you.

Familiarise Your Pet with the Boat: Allow your pet to explore the narrowboat to get accustomed to their new environment.

Keep Pets Off Furniture: To maintain cleanliness and respect the boat, train your pets to stay off the furniture. Although to ensure an enjoyable experience for all our guests (pet lovers or not!) we also have 5* cleaning standards.

Be Mindful of Wildlife: The canals are home to various wildlife; ensure your pets do not disturb the natural habitat.

Exploring the Canals with Your Four-Legged Friends 

The Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, located in the stunning Brecon Beacons National Park, is a prime example of a pet-friendly destination for narrowboat holidays. With only a few locks to navigate, it offers a peaceful journey through picturesque countryside and quaint villages, perfect for a relaxing break with your pets.

And if you weren't looking for a longer holiday, and instead a day trip, we also have a fleet of electric day boats which you can take your pet on as well!

A narrowboat holiday with pets is not just a rural getaway; it’s an enriching experience that strengthens the bond between you and your animal companions. It’s a shared adventure filled with new discoveries and the joy of the great outdoors. So, next time you’re planning a holiday, consider a narrowboat journey with us at Beacon Park Boats—it might just be the paw-fect choice for you and your pets.

(By the way this was written by Jam the Beacon Park Boats cat so you know you can trust it! See you on the wharf!)

Pets on the Mon & Brec | Pet friendly holidays in Wales

Pets and holiday narrowboats: a purr-fect combination

Spring is certainly in the air here at Beacon Park Boats as we have been delighted to welcome the first customers at the start of the new season. 

The canal is especially beautiful at this time of the year with the fresh flowering and renewal of nature which occurs on the glorious Mon & Brec canal every year in full flight.

And it's not just us who think it! We've been thrilled to read our customer reviews from the first few weeks on the canal and we thought we'd share one with you we're particularly proud of from a guest staying on our wonderful boat Kestrel.

"Beacon Park Boats provided us with an unforgettable experience from start to finish. From the moment we made our booking to the moment we stepped off the lavishly decorated canal boat, every detail was meticulously handled.

Lisa's warm greeting set the tone for the entire weekend. Her genuine enthusiasm and professionalism made us feel instantly welcomed and at ease. Throughout our stay, every member of the team exhibited exceptional knowledge, ensuring that we had everything we needed and answering any questions we had with ease.

The services and facilities on board were truly second to none. From the cozy bedrooms to the well-equipped kitchen and luxurious amenities, every aspect of the boat was carefully considered to provide maximum comfort and enjoyment.

Our three-night stay was nothing short of exceptional. We were able to relax, unwind, and enjoy the stunning surroundings at our own pace.

We wholeheartedly endorse Beacon Park Boats and their team for their attention to every intimate detail. We enthusiastically recommend them to anyone looking for a unique and unforgettable experience on the water.

Thank you for providing us with a truly fabulous time. We can't wait to return for another adventure!"

We're thankful to all our customers who visit (and continue to visit over and over again!) and look forward to a wonderful 2024 ahead.

A great start to the season

Narrowboat holidays are all about relaxation - giving you the time and space to decompress and enjoy a special break with loved ones. With this in mind, what better way to unwind than with a leisurely drink or bite to eat in a countryside pub? Whether you’re visiting in the summer and can sit out and soak up the sun and surroundings in a beer garden or you’re visiting in the winter and you can cosy up by the fire, there is a joy to be had in every season.

What’s more is the Monmouth & Breconshire Canal boasts a large number of these stops dotted throughout the route provided by Beacon Park Boats, proving the Mon & Brec really is one of the best canal routes for pubs in the UK.

See below for a rundown of our favourite picks for pub choices we have on the Mon & Brec and their distance from the canal.

Three Horse Shoes - Groesffordd, a 10 minute walk from the canal

This lovely village pub and restaurant serves gastro-pub style dishes as well as classic fish and chips. There is a beer garden with beach huts that can seat 8, these can be booked for al fresco dining with beautiful views.

Horse Shoe Inn - Llangattock, a 10 minute walk from our base

A charming and traditional pub, chef Raymond Hinds serves up Authentic Jamaican Street food as well as homecooked Welsh dishes that everyone needs to try.

The Vine Tree - Llangattock, a 15 minute walk from our base

This 19th century coaching inn offers wonderful food, with both inside and outside dining available.

The Crown - Pantygelli, a 10 minute taxi ride from the canal

A thriving pub and restaurant, visit here for a delicious Sunday lunch and enjoy the quiet surroundings with mountain views nearby.

The Angel Hotel - Abergavenny, a 40 minute walk from the canal

A luxurious 4 star hotel located in the centre of Abergavenny. Providing a warm, friendly environment in a truly residential setting. Book ahead for a memorable dining experience and the award winning afternoon tea service.

Horseshoe Inn - Mamhilad, a 30 minute walk from the canal

A delightful local pub which prides itself on its pub food and ambience. The menu is created from local ingredients by their chefs.

Horse & Jockey - Pontypool, a 20 minute walk from the canal

This lovely restored pub has a fantastic beer garden, surrounded by open and picturesque fields. There is a wide selection of food and drink and they host occasional events!

But that’s not all, there’s a host of other great pubs on the route. These include;

The Wellington - Brecon, a 10 minute walk from the canal

Coach & Horses - Llangynidr, on the canalside

The Red Lion - Llangynidr, a 20 minute walk from the canal

Beaufort Arms - Gilwern, a 5 minute walk from the canal

The Towpath Inn - Gilwern, on the canalside

Tafarn Y Bont - Govilon, a 5 minute walk from the canal

Goose & Cuckoo Inn - Llanover - a 40 minute walk (with a steep hill) from the canal

Goytre Arms - Goytre, a 20 minute walk from the canal

Open Hearth - Pontypool, on the canalside

Also, the good news for those that are only with us on the canal for a day on one of our day boats is that both directions available, either North or South, offer a fabulous pub at the end of each of their routes before you turn back for our base. With both the Coach & Horses at Llangynidr in the North and The Towpath Inn at Gilwern in the South right on the canalside for your enjoyment.

Just a tip from us though - call ahead to make sure you’ve got a table booked, with these pubs a popular destination during the busier periods on the canal!

The best pub spots on the Mon & Brec Canal | Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal pubs

The best pub spots on the Mon & Brec Canal

‘We’ve got a very busy weekend ahead, it’s good to see the sun out, blue sky and we look forward to welcoming our visitors’ - Alasdair Kirkpatrick (Owner)

If you’ve visited us before you’ll know just how beautiful the scenery is here on the canal. 

As we come into Spring life begins to blossom into colour right before our eyes giving us that warm, welcoming feeling - one that lets us know it’s the beginning of a new season for us here at Beacon Park Boats.

The preparation has been completed, our fleet is in the water and we’re all set to have you adventuring across the Brecon Beacons in one of our 20 luxury narrowboats, each with their own unique character and design, all of which you can find here.

Like cooking? Harrier has a particularly well-equipped kitchen area, complimented by a large front deck perfect for al fresco dining. Maybe you’re looking to cosy-up? Buzzard has its own king size bed, surround sound system and seating on the front and back decks. Whatever you’re looking for out of your holiday this year, we have a boat sitting in our dock right now waiting for an adventure across the Brecon Beacons and Monmouthshire.

The Beacon Park Boats team has worked hard over the winter months to bring our fleet back to new, repainting, new floors, maintenance and some extra love they deserve. We want to be able to provide our customers with the absolute best experience we can give, now it’s over to you to make the most of it. 

There are so many simple pleasures to be found along the canal as well as various festivals and events happening in the surrounding area, we’re excited for you to get stuck in.

If you’re local to the area you’ll know the canal itself has had some major work done in recent months - nothing short of a major civil-engineering task - as well as a number of fallen trees, but you’ll be glad to hear the disruption has come to an end and the ‘Mon and Brec’ is back to its former glory. A big thanks to everyone who helped make that happen!

It’s all happening now…

Repairing canals is a major civil-engineering task, as we have witnessed from Beacon Park Boats’ base in Llangattock.  

The Canal and River Trust (CRT) have been building a dam across the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal just North of our basin to dig out and repair a culvert into which water has been leaking.  It’s not an urgent job but part of a planned series of maintenance tasks carried out each winter.

First, the engineers must construct an access across neighbouring fields to get to the canal.  Then they put signs out to warn people that the canal is closed.  Then, boards are inserted under a bridge to seal the canal at one end.  After that, a dam is built across the canal with 200 tonnes of rock and huge plastic sheets.  The water is pumped out, and the fish are removed.  Then, and only then, can work begin on the culvert.

And how much does work like this cost?  “It’s expensive,” one of the engineers tells us. “Put it this way; you could buy a house for the sort of money we are spending here.”  But the money is well spent: “We are repairing the canal for the future, guarding against future problems, and we have a chance to re-clay (line with clay) a section of the canal which may not have been re-clayed for hundreds of years.”

Beacon Park Boats’ owner, Alasdair Kirkpatrick, said: “It’s fascinating to see, and the scale of work required pays tribute to the engineers and labourers who carved the canal out of the sides of the Usk Valley over 200 years ago.  There were no diggers and earthmovers then.  It must have been the most monumental task.”  

If you need to get to us, fear not; the boathouse remains open throughout this work and If you want to come and enjoy the engineering masterpiece which is the Mon and Brec Canal, book a narrowboat holiday with Beacon Park Boats at www.beaconparkboats.com or a day trip on an electric hire boat at www.beaconparkdayboats.co.uk

Getting the canal ready for the new season

Spring 2022 and the reopening of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal to hire boats may seem a long way off right now, but if last year was anything to go by, we have reasons to be optimistic.

In January 2021, we were in full Covic lockdown; when it lifted the demand for luxury self-contained accommodation and staycations soared.  Many of our guests tried canal boating for the first time, and a lot of them said they would come back.  We expect the trend to holiday at home to continue, as visitors seek out self-catering rather than catered accommodation, in the UK rather than abroad, for a safe and Covid-Secure getaway.

At Beacon Park Boats we are “Good to Go”, which means we take all reasonable steps to ensure your boat is deep-cleaned and fully sanitised before you get on it.  All our boats have everything you could need for a completely self-contained holiday, from hot and cold running water, fully equipped kitchens, comfortable beds with luxury bedding, hot showers and one even has a bath.  Our video here will show you what a canal boat holiday on the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal is like.

Throughout the pandemic, Wales has had tighter Coronavirus restrictions than England, meaning we were first to lift last time.  The canal side pubs and restaurants take social distancing and cleaning seriously too.  Watch this video to see how we earned the Good to Go certification last year.

With a choice of 19 luxury boats, we have vessels to suit groups of different sizes and ages and we are pet friendly, too.  This means you can holiday with your entire family if you want to. All our boats are easy to operate, and you will receive full instruction, too.  

If a day trip is more to your liking, you can choose from a range of electric day boats, canoes and a pedal boat, for silent cruising close to nature.

Looking forward to 2022 at Beacon Park Boats

Wishing all our customers, staff, suppliers, and friends a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Beacon Park Boats. 

Merry Christmas

Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)

2022 Calendar

Beacon Park Boats' 20th season is coming to an end, so we've dug out some old newspaper clippings and interviews to remind ourselves how far we have come in the past two decades. It has not been an easy journey, through an epidemic, a canal closure, and a pandemic.  We thank our customers for sticking with us through thick and thin. 

In 2001, Alasdair saw an opportunity in a newspaper to take over a boat hire business named Beacon Park Boats; he quit his stable job to start a new adventure. Shortly afterwards, the foot-and-mouth epidemic closed the Brecon Beacons National Park and the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal to visitors, and Beacon Park Boats lost 50 percent of its customers. Despite this nightmare start, Alasdair was still confident and determined that "this business will succeed".

In 2007, the canal was breached and closed for structural repairs, meaning Beacon Park Boats was once again forced to shut up shop for 18 months. However, despite having 158 customers from across the globe to re-book, Alasdair and the team overcame another hurdle and reopened fully in 2009. 

Six years later, Beacon Park Boats had set their sights on building a new boathouse in Llangattock (they had been operating out of Llanfoist since 2001, which doubled as their home). As the planning application explains; “As the business has expanded, so have the canal boat sizes and it is now impossible for the company to expand at the current site.”

They had started with a fleet of 10 narrowboats, but Alasdair had been designing and building new ones over the years, growing the fleet to 20 luxury barges. Many of the ideas had come from customer feedback, and all are unique in layout and fittings. Wren, for instance, offers a luxury walk-through shower and a specially-designed open-plan layout for two. Owl provides a built-in hot tub and four-poster bed.  Harrier is a barge with a roll-top bath, showcasing the advancement in canal boats over the past decades. 

Despite the businesses ever-growing success, and with Alasdair still recovering from a major stroke in 2018, spring 2020 brought yet another challenge to overcome with a global pandemic and multiple extended lockdowns in the UK. In a BBC Radio Wales programme hosted by Gareth Lewis, Alasdair explained the complexities and hurdles the pandemic was imposing on the business "The lockdowns were devastating, with all of our boats tied up for three months,” Alasdair said. Even when the restrictions eased, overseas customers, who make up between 20-25% of bookings, were still nervous about travelling. But Alasdair remained positive, and thanks to a boost in local customers from within Wales, he hoped to "put this awful year behind us and look forward to a very busy season next year".

And so, we have. We have been taking on customer feedback, striving to improve our boats and create a better holiday experience onboard. This past year, we introduced our new 8-berth boat Falcon, the longest and most ambitious boat built on the canal. In addition, we've started work on our new boat, the Weekender, which we look forward to sharing with you next year.

Twenty seasons later, the goal of creating a thriving business has paid off. We've had a fantastic season welcoming customers new and old after the pandemic, and we look forward to what the next decade will bring – and we're ready for any challenge. Watch our video for more and book for next year!

A blast from the past!

Season End at Beacon Park Boats

We have had a great season at Beacon Park Boats in 2021.  We launched our longest boat, Falcon, and she proved to be a huge success, cruising the entire length of the canal, including the latest stretch to open to Five Locks in the South.  We have had fantastic customer feedback from all our narrowboats and have loved seeing your happy holiday pictures.  We have also most enjoyed meeting all our fabulous customers, most of which have rebooked already for 2022, a big thank you!

The day boats have been fully booked all summer, and the eight-seaters continue to be available throughout autumn and the winter months.  As the leaves sink the canal will turn crystal clear, and you can take in the changing colours and vistas across to the distant, sometimes snow-sprinkled mountains.

To end the year with a bang, we have decided to OPEN FOR CHRISTMAS! The canal is fully open allowing you to cruise the canal's entire length at your leisure. It's the first time in 20 years that we have been able to open for the Festive Season.  All boats will be festively decorated, with a bottle of chilling prosecco to get the celebrations underway. 

We have ten boats to choose from, though some are already booked. They all have central heating and hot water; some have log burners and chimneys for Santa to come down (though we hear he is pretty resourceful on boats without real fires).  All our boats are dog friendly and all kitchens are fully equipped to cook your Christmas dinner.

We have boats that can sleep groups of two to eight people; book more than one boat, and you can bring your whole Christmas party to Wales! You can choose from two dates: The Christmas break runs from Monday 20th December until 27th December, and the New Year break runs from Monday 27th December until 3rd January.

As we are law-abiding citizens, we encourage our customers to stay safe and not drink-drive. Moor instead outside your favourite pub, have a drink and a short walk home.

We still have our two-berth boats, Wren, Hobby, and kingfisher and bigger berth boats, Merlin, Mallard, Condor, and Falcon, available for both dates, the 20th, and 27th December. Pop along to our website at www.beaconparkboats.com to see up-to-date information.

Last year, we were all told to stay at home with government restrictions; this year, we have the fantastic opportunity, whilst still staying safe, to cruise the canal at the quietest, and some would say, most peaceful and scenic time of year.

Should the government decide that we have to stay at home again, no worries, we will refund you your money.

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