Narrowboat Hire Homepage - Types of Narrowboat Holiday - Towpaths, Moorings & Bridges - Planning Your Narrowboat Holiday - Canal & River Navigations

Planning your Narrowboat Hire Holiday

It's a strange experience when you first go on board a narrowboat and step down into the back cabin or engine room. The first thing that strikes you is just how narrow it is! It's just less than 7 feet in width. Into this is shoe-horned a bathroom, sleeping cabins, galley (kitchen to land-lubbers!) dining and lounge areas. Design features on boats range from the downright luxurious with lots of living space for just 2 or 3 people to the more cost effective designs sleeping a couple of families, with privacy, and a smaller daytime living area. Most hireboats will have a flushing toilet which empties directly into a steel holding tank located below the waterline of the boat and under the floor. Emptying it is done at a boatyard where a pump out is performed, and you don't even need to watch! There will be good washing facilities and a shower or small bath. The galley will be equipped with everything you need in the kitchen at home. There will be a fridge with freezer, full oven and hob and usually a microwave and other optional extras. Most of your days will be spent outside the boat, lounging in a chair on the front or back deck, strolling along the towpath or opening and closing the locks and bridges.

When planning your trip take the time to find out whether or not there are any canal festivals or activities planned along your route that you might want to take part in. There are also several museums of waterways life at various places on the system that are always worth a visit. Wherever you cruise along the waterways you'll be travelling through history as you pass old warehouses, long forgotten wharves, the remains of old wooden cranes, lock cottages, basins at the end of short branches which once, in a previous century, were the scenes of frantic activity as narrowboats queued up to load and unload the heavy cargoes before setting off once again. The working boats of that era had a small back cabin (no more than 10 feet in length) where the boatman, his wife and children lived. Looking at restored boats it's almost impossible to image how it could be possible to bring up a family in such confined spaces; but they did. They were fiecely proud of their tiny homes and fitted them out in ingenious ways making every tiny space work and have at least one function. The cabins were decorated inside and out with the famous 'Roses and Castles' art still seen today on boat artefacts and souvenirs.