The last Bude Canal tub boat is on show at Helebridge

Two miles down the towpath south of Bude, tucked behind stone walls the Canal Company raised in 1840, sits a wooden boat unlike anything else afloat in Cornwall. Most people out for a Sunday walk have no idea it is there, and for most of the year it stays shut. But every Sunday until the end of September, the doors open.

📷Credit: Bude-Stratton Town Council

A two mile walk, and a free look inside

The Canal Barge Workshop sits at Helebridge, EX23 0JA, at the point where the old towpath from Bude meets the canal’s original wharf. It is run entirely by volunteers from the Bude Canal and Harbour Society, who open the building every Sunday afternoon between 2pm and 5pm, right through until 27 September. Admission is free.

Most visitors arrive on foot, following the level towpath out from Bude past the lock gates and up the canal, a walk of around two miles each way that suits wheelchairs and pushchairs as easily as boots. There is also a small car park at Helebridge itself, on the far side of the bridge from the workshop, for anyone who would rather drive out and walk back.

📷Credit: Bude-Stratton Town Council

The tub boat that gave the canal its name

The centrepiece is the Bude Canal Tub Boat, one of the wooden, wheeled boats built to carry sand up from the coast into the Cornish and Devon countryside. The Bude Canal was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1819 and completed in 1823, engineered to solve a problem few other canals faced. Instead of locks, it climbed the steep ground inland using a series of inclined planes, six in total, hauling boats out of the water altogether and running them up rails on wheels between one level of the canal and the next.

The cargo was sand, not coal or stone. The beaches around Bude carry sand unusually rich in lime, and for centuries farmers had known it worked wonders on the poor, acidic soil of the surrounding parishes. Before the canal, getting it any distance inland was slow and difficult. Afterwards, tub boats could carry it up through Helebridge and on towards Launceston and Holsworthy, climbing 433 feet above sea level along the way. The canal outlived its usefulness once the railway reached Holsworthy and cheap manufactured fertiliser arrived, and it closed for good in 1891. The boat on display at Helebridge is the sole survivor of the fleet that once worked the system.

📷Credit: Bude-Stratton Town Council

Victorian tools from Bude’s own engineering works

The tub boat shares the workshop with a wider collection of heritage artefacts, including items from the late 19th century Gregory Engineering Workshop, which once operated in Bude itself. Belt-driven lathes, drills and vices sit alongside more everyday survivors of the canal age, giving a sense of the trades that kept the waterway, and the town around it, running.

The Sand Rails, rescued from the sea

New for this year is a display telling a more recent story. The Sand Rails were the narrow rail line that once carried horse-drawn wagons of sand from Summerleaze beach up to the canal, and sections of the original track survived alongside the walkway for well over a century. In May 2023 the lower section had to be closed on safety grounds after wave damage weakened the canal wall behind it and left the surface uneven underfoot. Cornwall Council carried out repair works through 2025, and the restored access way officially reopened in September 2025, with North Cornwall MP Ben Maguire cutting the ribbon.

Original concrete setts and lengths of rail too deteriorated to be reinstated on the walkway have now been given a second life at the workshop instead, on permanent display alongside the tub boat. A new access ramp has also gone in at the workshop entrance, making the building easier to reach for visitors who cannot manage steps.

📷Credit: Bude-Stratton Town Council