Painted Boats appreciates the gentle rhythm of traditional canal life, whereas Ted's ambition is to get off the canals and into mainstream life at the earliest opportunity. World War II intrudes when Ted is called up for military service, leaving the future for the pair uncertain. Location filming took place on the 20-mile stretch of the Grand Union Canal between Stoke Bruerne and Braunston in Northamptonshire, including the Blisworth Tunnel – at 1.75 miles (2.82 km) in length, the third-longest canal tunnel in Britain. Insert shots feature the industrial landscape of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, the famous Anderton Boat Lift in Cheshire and
Southampton Tunnel partial construction of the Salisbury and Southampton Canal tunnel, which the railway tunnel crosses at an acute angle and slightly higher. Because the canal tunnel was lined with clay "puddle" it collects water which ends up in the rail tunnel making the latter very wet. In the 1960s an access was cut into the canal tunnel in order to examine it, although this was later sealed behind a new segmental wall structure when, between 1983 and 1985, the tunnel underwent extensive engineering works and the line through it was worked as a single line for long periods while remedial work