Forget Venice: How to explore the UK’s City of Canals by kayak

A monochrome cat peeps tentatively through a narrowboat’s cratch cover, eyeing my kayak with mistrust. Nearby a flock of Canada geese waddle nonchalantly along a slipway while skeins flit overhead.

Elsewhere down the canal, a cheerful vendor sells fudge from a boat galley and drinkers chat on sun-shrouded terraces. The serenity is fractured only by the fuzz of chatter emanating from grinning friends, groups of shouty teens and the odd hen and stag do crowd revelling in weekend jaunts.

In such surroundings, it’s hard to believe I’m in a city. And not just any city – this is Birmingham, the UK’s second city. And, as it turns out, the country’s City of Canals. Rather staggeringly, it boasts more kilometres of canals than both Venice and Amsterdam, but its historic waterways are somehow largely overlooked.

Hopefully that’s about to change. Amid last summer’s Covid restrictions, charity Roundhouse quietly tested out guided kayak tours along Birmingham’s city centre canals. Buoyed by their success, they’ve just launched them again for their first full season in the hope of changing people’s perceptions of these often-misrepresented titans, and giving visitors and residents alike a more sustainable way to enjoy the city.

“It’s heritage by stealth,” says Keith Wraight, Roundhouse’s programming and partnerships manager, who has helped launch the Bustling Birmingham Kayak Tours. “They’re fun to do but over two hours you learn a lot about Birmingham’s heritage and history without realising it. Because of Birmingham’s industrial heritage, there was always this image of the canals not being a nice place to be. But now people have turned around and embraced the canals and we want to show that off.”

The tours are part of the culmination of an eight-year project between the Canal & River Trust and the National Trust to renovate and repurpose the Roundhouse, a Grade II-listed circular brick building dating from 1874 and originally used as council stables and stores. Now housing a visitor centre with exhibitions plus offices, the newly refurbished block is also the launchpad for a range of sustainable city tours, both guided and self-guided, on foot and bike as well as water.

Roundhouse has trained up volunteers as British Canoeing Instructors to use as guides, who will give…