Craig Fearn: Founder and Author

The writing on this site is mine. Twenty-three guides, the answer pages, the gift collections and the product pages are written here rather than bought in, and they describe what we make. Where a page names a size, a paper or a colour, it comes from the same catalogue the checkout charges against, so a page can't promise a product we don't sell.

The rule the guides run on

An open notebook, a pencil and a mug of tea on a fold-down table in a narrowboat cabin, the canal through the porthole — Every cost figure carries its source and the date it was checked.

Canal writing repeats a great many numbers no one can trace, and the licence and mooring figures are the worst of it: they are revised annually, quoted everywhere, and dated almost nowhere. The rule here is that a cost figure carries the body that published it and the date it was checked, or the figure goes. That's the rule. The licence cost guide is the clearest case, and it is the reason this site links to Canal & River Trust as often as it does. They set the prices. We quote them and say when we looked.

The same rule is why some pages here say plainly that something is not settled instead of picking the version everyone repeats.

What I write about

The guides: what a licence costs, what living aboard costs, how deep a canal is, how to steer one
Boat names and signwriting: the naming tradition, and the roses-and-castles lettering that carries it
The questions: the short answers people look up before they buy anything
Making her yours: what a boat name on a wall is for

What we make

Three things, all printed to order. A personalised name print, which sets a boat name, a waterway and a date in the traditional canal palette. A photograph printed as it is. And a photograph made into a portrait in a house style, previewed free before anybody pays for it. Every upload is measured against every print size before purchase, and any size that would print soft is withdrawn, not sold with a warning attached.

Getting hold of me

Corrections are the useful kind of email, particularly on the cost pages: if Canal & River Trust has moved a price and this site still carries the old one, I'd rather hear it from a reader than find it six months later. hello@narrowboatgifts.co.uk reaches me.

Questions before you go

Who writes the guides on this site?

I do. The guides, the answer pages, the gift collections and the product copy are all written in-house, not commissioned or bought in.

Where do the licence and mooring costs come from?

Canal & River Trust, who set them, with the date the figure was checked stated on the page. They're revised annually, so a cost quoted without a date isn't one you can rely on.

Are the prints made to order?

Yes, printed to order. Nothing is held in stock.

Useful reading

Making her yours

Her name, her livery, her portrait. The part that makes one boat unmistakably hers.

Notes from the cut.

Long-form notes on narrowboat life, gift-buying for boaters, and the small particularities of canal culture. Written by humans who own a boat, not by a content farm.

Canal boat signwriting: the name on a narrowboat's side.

Canal boat signwriting is the name hand-lettered on a narrowboat's cabin side, a craft distinct from the roses-and-castles painting around it. This guide covers how boat names are traditionally lettered, what it costs to have done, and how a printed name sign works alongside the painted one.

CRT fees: what a narrowboat licence costs

CRT fees are charged by the length and the width of the boat, then adjusted for whether she has a home mooring. A 12-month licence cost is set out below, read from the Trust's own calculator on 30 September 2026, and where the number can be brought down.