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

Types of Narrowboat Holidays

Depending on what sort of holiday you want you can choose strenuous and challenging and travel the elusive waterways of some of our busy towns and cities, like Manchester, Birmingham, Chester and, of course, London. If it's pastoral beauty that you crave then choose a departure point in one of the more rural regions for instance on the Llangollen canal or the Kennet and Avon. Don't forget, the type of scenery you choose will help to determine how many locks you'll pass through on your journey! Get hold of a Inland Waterways Navigation map which will show you the accessible canals and, most importantly, how long each stretch is, how many locks and an approximate length of time needed to travel along it. The boaters 'Bible' on the waterways is the 'Nicholson Ordnance Guide to the Waterways', usually just referred to as 'Nicholson's'. These guides, in several volumes, cover the different regions of England and are almost indispensable. There are a few pages of general information on canal features and history and then, yard by yard it takes you along every canal in the region. Each page has a successive length of canal down one side showing individual buildings, bridges, locks and any other relevant features or information. The other side of the page has a brief description of what to see or expect along that length and details of boatyards, pubs, restaurants and nearby places of interest etc.

Some boaters choose to plan their trip as a circle whilst others may prefer a more leisurely approach and travel outwards for half the holiday and then turn back and travel back along the same route for the second half. Don't automatically think, 'that could be more boring'. It certainly isn't. More relaxing? Yes, quite possibly. You will have a different perspective going the other way; just think about a train journey - the view is quite different on the return journey.