All smiles during the boat trip<\/p><\/div>\n

Leicester City of Sanctuary is a charity run entirely by volunteers with a range of projects supporting asylum seekers. Seventeen\u00a0of its members were treated to a boat trip on the Grand Union Canal by\u00a0the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus, who had collected money from pre-Christmas shoppers in Queens Road, Leicester, to fund the project.<\/p>\n

In the autumn of 2015 the club had taken elderly and disabled people on the boat, hired from the Peter Le Marchant Trust. That day was such a success that members\u00a0decided to do it again.<\/p>\n

Most of the passengers on April 27 had\u00a0no\u00a0knowledge of the\u00a0history of Britain’s canal network, nor of the engineering behind the locks. Two of the guests, Muslim women engineers, went to examine them as the boat passed through Barrow Deep Lock.<\/p>\n

The volunteer crew of six were amused to notice that old technology was meeting new technology; one of the guests was Skyping a friend in Nigera, giving him a running commentary with moving pictures as the boat slid through the green countryside.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All the guests said they had enjoyed their day out, despite being forced inside by a brief cold and rainy spell, during which a bit of ‘community singing’ proved that everything was going to be all right…<\/p>\n

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