I’ve never thought of myself as particularly adventurous. I prefer staying home with a good book, my feet kept firmly on the ground. And yet, in June 2021, my husband Nigel and I decided—having never driven, slept, or even set foot on one—to live on a narrowboat. Everyone assumed it was his idea (I can’t blame them; as a seasoned rock climber and mountaineer, he’s far more adventurous than I) but in actual fact, it was mine. After 18 months trying and failing to conceive, worrying we’d never afford to buy a house, and generally feeling adrift in life, I had the strong, sudden, and uncharacteristic urge to make a radical—some would say reckless—change. And so, we bought a boat.
Of course, we needed to significantly downsize. We sold most of the furniture—including my beloved oak writing desk, easily the hardest goodbye—and streamlined our clothes, kitchen utensils, and general knick-knacks. The biggest job was sorting out the books. As a bookseller-cum-writer (me) and librarian (him), both with post-graduate degrees in English, we’d accumulated a vast collection over the years, at least a thousand individual volumes. It was a daunting task, choosing which to lose, but I found that once I started, I couldn’t stop. I felt decidedly rebellious, discarding all the books I’d carted around for years yet hadn’t read, finally admitting that I probably never would. It was like I’d set myself free from some imaginary syllabus I hadn’t even known I’d signed up for.
We did keep about a hundred books, which is still quite a lot for a narrowboat, but we have more space than you might imagine. Our boat is 60 feet long, and, like most narrowboats, 6’10” wide. We have an open-plan living area, with a fully equipped kitchen, breakfast bar, solid-fuel stove (our main source of heat), sofa, bureau, and (naturally) lots of shelving. Then there’s a walk-through bathroom, with a full-size shower and compost toilet (my least favorite part of boat life), and our bedroom, which is big enough to fit the crib (yup, I was pregnant within months of moving aboard), as well as a clothing rail and small chest of drawers. Our bed is built into the boat, and is slightly bigger than a double but smaller than a king (as well as being a weird size, it has a square chunk missing from the top left-hand corner, so I had to cut our mattress to make it fit, marking out the shape I needed with a Sharpie, then slicing through the foam with a breadknife). We will need more space one day—ultimately, I’d like our daughter to have her own bedroom—but for now we are quite content.
In some ways, our lifestyle is cheaper than it was. We don’t pay council tax or electricity bills (our power comes from solar panels on the roof), and we mostly forage for firewood, but we do have to buy diesel, coal, and gas, all of which seems to get more expensive every day. Water is included with our boat license fee (around £1,200 a year). We fill up our tank at taps along the canal, which usually lasts about two to three weeks. We’re “continuous cruisers,” meaning our licence requires us to move the boat to a new neighbourhood every fortnight. There are good and bad sides to this. I’m a lot more familiar with our city and its surrounding villages now, and, on a beautiful, sunny day, cruising along the canal is dreamy. It’s less dreamy in the pouring rain, though, and it’s not always easy to find a place to moor; narrowboat holidays are increasingly popular, and it can get pretty crowded on the water. Still, moving around all the time means we often bump into other boaters we know, which is lovely; it’s nice to feel part of a wider community, no matter how amorphous it may be.
Perhaps the most difficult time was last summer, during those record-breaking heatwaves when the temperature hit 104 degrees Fahrenheit. As you can imagine, a narrowboat—essentially an enormous metal box—is not ideal in those circumstances. At eight-and-a-half months pregnant, I had just started maternity leave, and, at the time, we didn’t have any refrigeration. (We spent the first year aboard without a fridge. My top tip is lactose-free milk, which takes longer to go off.) Each morning, Nige got up early and ran to the supermarket to buy big bags of “party ice” before they sold out so I could have cooling foot baths and cold drinks. I’d spend the whole day listening to audiobooks on the sofa, focusing on staying hydrated and moving as little as possible. In winter, we had the opposite problem. The boat takes a while to warm up, so we did spend a few nights camped out by the stove after going away for a few days. It can be challenging, but, on balance, the good things about narrowboat living easily outweigh the bad.
There’s so much that’s wonderful about life on the canal: the glimmer of light reflected by water, flickering across our bedroom wall; watching the bats come out at dusk, criss-crossing overhead, or the tiny splash of each raindrop as it hits the water (I delight in hearing rain from inside the boat, amplified as it bounces on our steel roof). There’s an immense sense of freedom in knowing you could move on at any time, taking your whole home with you. We’re never far from birdsong, or the thrill of starling murmurations, or the unlikely grace of a heron. In summer, I’m soothed by fragrant elderflower, which grows in abundance along the towpath; in winter, by the earthy scent of coal, as one by one each boat’s stove is lit for the season. The pace of life is slower, more considered, here. It’s peaceful.
I’m not going to pretend I wouldn’t like to own a house. Often, we’ll moor up in picturesque villages—all thatched roofs and glowing Cotswolds stone, roses and wisteria growing round the doors—and I’ll wander about, our baby girl asleep on my chest, dreaming of another life. That’s the thing, though. Once, I’d have settled for any house we could afford. Now, it would take somewhere pretty spectacular—a literal dream house—to get me away from the water. And if, somehow, I could travel back in time and magic us straight into that dream house? I wouldn’t do it. Reckless or not, I’m glad we took a chance on ourselves by embarking on this narrowboat journey, and I wouldn’t change it. I’ve learned so much, and have undoubtedly grown as a person. I’m more connected to the natural world, to my body, and my creativity. I feel capable, like I could tackle any challenge thrown my way. I’m ready for adventure.