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Narrowboat Hire for Holidays

At some time in our lives most of us feel the need for a 'get away from it all', slower paced holiday. We need a break from the endless hassle of crowded airports and disappointing package holidays. One of the options on offer is that of a holiday on a narrowboat on one of Britain's beautiful inland waterways - the rivers and canals.

Most of the old 'navigations' have been dredged and restored; lock gates and bridges have been replaced or repaired and towpaths have been cleared and often re-surfaced. You don't have to own your own boat to enjoy this freedom - rent one for a weekend, a week , 2 weeks or even longer! There are numerous companies, all over the country, offering narrowboats for hire on our waterways and a holiday on the canal offers something different from the more usual holiday. The first and most obvious difference is the pace of life. From 30 miles an hour or more we suddenly have a speed limit of 4 miles per hour! There's opportunity to see and enjoy the passing scenery whilst on the move. This has a knock-on effect in that all aspects of everyday living tend to slow down to a walking pace instead of our usual frenetic rushing around.

The navigation system, including navigable rivers and canals, covers England from as far north as Lancaster to Devizes and London in the south, Cambridge and Lincoln in the east and Llangollen and Monmouthshire in Wales. Some stretches of canal are landlocked at each end but the majority interconnect and you can get to most places (even if it's by a rather circuitous and 'scenic' route!).

A narrowboat is not a longboat or a barge! The term 'Longboat' should not be used - they are not manned by Vikings! They are 'narrowboats' and not called by that term for nothing. Many of the canals, constructed to carry heavy loads such as coal from mines, lime from the kilns, stone from the quarries etc., were narrow and not unnecessarily deep (around 4 feet) so the boats had to be long, narrow and with a shallow draught (a very good reason for the prudent boater not to take his boat to sea!) The canals followed the contour lines of the land wherever possible, to avoid the construction of locks which would slow journeys down considerably. This meant that many of the waterways twist and turn so not only did the boats have to be narrow they also had to be no longer than 70 feet if they were to navigate all the canals. Some canals were wider and had correspondingly wider boats along them but they were limited to those waterways and the navigable rivers. The term 'barge' shouldn't be applied to narrowboats, either. Barges are wider craft such as the 'Thames Barge' or the 'Dutch Barge' and are frequently sailing boats on wider inland waterways and rivers..