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- Making her yours
Best gifts for narrowboat owners.
We make five things, so this round-up is biased: obviously. But the boater in your life is short on space, big on opinions, and probably already owns most of the obvious ideas. Here's what actually lands, and a…
- Buying her
Buying a narrowboat.
What they cost, what the survey checks, what the running numbers come to, and the honest downsides. Written for someone about to spend real money.
- Buying her
Buying her
The survey, the licence, the mooring and the running numbers, joined up before you commit to anything.
- Thinking about it
Can you legally live on a canal boat?
Yes, you can live aboard a canal boat legally, provided you hold a valid Canal & River Trust licence and either a home mooring or a genuine continuous-cruising pattern that keeps the boat moving.
- Making her yours
Canal boat art. Roses and castles.
Traditional canal boat art has a name (roses and castles) and a history that runs the length of the British canal network. Here's where it came from, what the motifs mean, and how the tradition carries into the…
- Making her yours
Canal boat holiday keepsakes.
You hired a boat for a week. You worked locks, you slept like the dead, you found a pub with a fire. Now you're home and you want something on a wall that says that happened.
- Making her yours
Canal boat signwriting. The name on the side.
The name hand-lettered on a narrowboat's cabin side is signwriting, a craft distinct from the roses-and-castles painting around it. Here's how boat names are traditionally lettered, what it costs to have done, …
- Buying her
Do I need a licence for a narrowboat?
Yes, any narrowboat kept, used or moored on the inland waterways needs a current licence from the Canal & River Trust (or the Environment Agency on some rivers), alongside a valid Boat Safety Scheme certificate…
- Making her yours
Funny narrowboat names.
The pun is a proper tradition on the cut: a recognised category alongside birds, weather and places. Here are the funny canal boat names worth the paint, and the three wells boaters keep going back to.
- Living aboard
How canal locks work.
A lock is a water lift with no machinery in it — two sets of gates and some sluices. Here is what happens inside one, what each part is called, and how long to allow.
- Thinking about it
How deep is a canal?
Most canals run three to four and a half feet in the channel — but depth is not the same across the width, which is what actually catches boats out.
- Living aboard
How do you go to the toilet on a narrowboat?
Narrowboats use one of three toilet systems: a cassette toilet, a pump-out tank, or a composting toilet: and which one a boat has shapes how often it needs emptying and where.
- Making her yours
How is a narrowboat painted?
A narrowboat is painted in two distinct parts: the hull below the waterline, which is blacked with a protective bituminous coating, and the cabin sides above it, which carry the colour, the signwritten name and…
- Living aboard
How many miles a day can you travel on a narrowboat?
A relaxed day's cruising on a narrowboat covers a handful of miles rather than a fixed number: canal speed is limited to around 4mph, and locks slow progress far more than open water does.
- Buying her
How much does it cost to run a narrowboat for a year?
Running a narrowboat for a year costs money across several separate categories: licence, mooring, insurance, Boat Safety Scheme certification, blacking and maintenance, and fuel: and the total varies enormously…
- Living aboard
How to steer a narrowboat.
The tiller works the opposite way round, the back end swings out, and there are no brakes. Everything else follows from those three.
- Thinking about it
Life on a narrowboat.
A short and honest guide to what life on a narrowboat actually looks like in Britain. Written for people who are thinking about it, people who'd never thought about it, and people who already do it but want to …
- Living aboard
Living aboard
Handling her, the day-to-day, and the questions nobody puts in the brochure.
- Thinking about it
Living on a narrowboat in retirement.
Retirement removes the two things that stop most people — needing to be near work, and not having the time. Here is what to settle before you commit.
- Making her yours
Making her yours
Her name, her livery, her portrait. The part that makes one boat unmistakably hers.
- Making her yours
Narrowboat Christmas gifts.
The boater on your list has a small cabin, firm opinions, and most of the practical kit already. So the Christmas gift that lands is the one tied to their boat: flat enough to fit, personal enough to keep. Here…
- Living aboard
Narrowboat interiors.
A guide to designing a narrowboat interior that works, and feels like somewhere you'd actually want to live. Six foot ten is a constraint. It's also the thing that makes every decision feel deliberate.
- Making her yours
Narrowboat name generator.
Most boats on the cut fall into one of seven naming traditions, and each builds its names a particular way. Pick the traditions you like, and it will build you some.
- Making her yours
Narrowboat names: the big list.
You can look up individual boats (CanalPlanAC indexes over 100,000) but there's no name-idea or availability database, because canal boat names don't have to be unique. So here's the practical tool: a browsable…
- Making her yours
Narrowboat names.
How boaters on British canals actually choose names for their boats: the seven categories that have earned their place, the official Canal & River Trust register most first-time owners don't know about, and the…
- More guides and references
Narrowboat questions, answered.
Short, direct answers to the things people actually ask about narrowboats and canal life: no padding, no invented statistics.
- More guides and references
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.
- Making her yours
Roses and castles. The painted boats.
The folk painting on Britain's working narrowboats has a name, a palette, and a history that runs the length of the network. This is where roses and castles came from, what the motifs meant, and who keeps the t…
- Buying her
The cost of living on a narrowboat.
Four costs are fixed and published. Two dominate the total and nobody publishes them. Here is how to price your own situation rather than borrow someone else's total.
- Thinking about it
Thinking about it
Before any of it costs you anything: what a narrowboat is, what the life is actually like, and whether it is a life you could have.