Seventy years on from Charlie’s first foray into boat building, Fox Narrowboats is still offering boating holidays, building and repairing boats, and providing moorings on the Middle Level. Rural Fox pictured in Upwell is a very popular vessel with holidaymakers. The business was renamed in 2004 to become Fox Narrowboats Ltd and in 2015 Fox's welcomed Emily, Paula's daughter and Charlie’s eldest granddaughter, to the marina team, something he would have been very proud of. In 2001 space was again becoming tight, so an extension was completed to the east, alongside the bypass to accommodate another 35 narrowboats. One of their first projects was to build a narrowboat for export to Blackstone Valley Tourism in Rhode Island, USA this was 12m wide beam semi-trad. In the 1980s alongside offering holidays on the River Great Ouse, building narrowboats forĪnd then in the late 1990s Charlie handed over the reins to his daughters Paula Syred and Tracey Baxter. Not only did this provide space to operate the hire fleet but it also enabled the firm to rent out moorings to private boaters. (54257610)Īnd it continues to be the home to Fox Narrowboats and can be seen from March by-pass Fox Narrowboats at their former base in West End, March. The business was thriving so well by 1980 it had outgrown the riverbank premises in West End and a purpose-built marina was established by Charlie on the outskirts of town. Just a few short years later in 1976 Fox's launched its first narrowboat hire fleet, allowing people the chance to cruise the River Great Ouse to Cambridge, Huntingdon and Bedford or River Nene to Peterborough and Northampton. Later in the 1960s he started hiring out a retired lifeboat, offering overnight stays for the first time.īy 1973 the business was thriving and the firm's first narrowboat was built at its premises in West End for local boating enthusiast and former town mayor Bernard Keane. Having dipped his toe in the boat building industry with his smaller craft Charlie took the plunge to start his first hire fleet which comprised of rowing boats and canoes. In 1963 he moved to West End in March where he started building larger clinker fishing boats, along with canoes and rowing boats.
0 kommentar(er)
