All aboard the good boat Maria

Hand on the tiller . . . David Heyes MP steers Maria along the Rochdale Canal

MP David Heyes swopped the House of Commons for a horseboat when he steered a course along the Rochdale Canal yesterday.

He took the tiller on the horsedrawn boat Maria to take her from the Rose of Lancaster in Chadderton to Failsworth, along the restored waterway.

And boathorse Bilbo Baggins took the strain as the narrowboat Maria, Britain’s oldest surviving example and built in 1854, completed its 11-day journey from Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, to Manchester today.

The 33-mile trip was organised by the The Waterways Trust, which owns the Rochdale Canal, to link all the communities along its length, as part of the 2009 Rochdale Canal Festival.

There are now only five horsedrawn passenger boats in Britain, and horseboat Maria was fully restored by owners the Ashton Packet Boat Company in 1978.

Bilbo Baggins is in his second year of training as a boathorse, and he was led by Sue Day, chairman of the Horseboating Society,

David Heyes, member of Parliament for Ashton, which includes Failsworth and Hollinwood, is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Inland Waterways Group and the Hollinwood Canal Society. He said: “Quite apart from canal boating and other leisure activities associated with inland waterways they are also very important for regeneration, economic development and tourism and have great potential for bringing in new business.”