News

I love the charm and history of the old working boats, even though I know that the reality of life for a working narrowboat family was a perpetual struggle of hard graft and making ends meet. Not to mention the accidents at work and the short life...

A long time ago, when I sold my beloved first ever boat, a 45 foot red narrowboat with a cruiser stern, the boat broker told me that she was a little “tired looking” and labelled her as a project boat for sale.

If you’re considering living aboard you may enjoy this series of blog posts about living on a boat. Whilst they were written with canal boats and narrowboats in mind, a lot of the information will be helpful to anyone considering living aboard. ...

What's happening on the English canals and rivers at the moment? There were grim findings in the Regents Canal in London last week. We've also had water shortages and CRT council elections argy bargy so I thought I'd write a cheerful story for the...

My winter mooring this year is very close to the Tring Reservoirs, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and an incredibly beautiful area for boating, walking, angling and cycling. It’s also a major feature of the southern Grand Union Canal, and...

There are almost 35,000 canal boats on Britain’s inland waterways*, but it’s quite difficult to estimate how many of those are floating homes. I was recently interviewed by a journalist who seemed to want to find out what ‘type’ of people...

Following my earlier blog about How to Sell a Boat on the Inland Waterways
I thought I’d share a bit more about who we are at Boatshed Grand Union.

Check out these quality boats in the next BoatBid.com boat auction.
The Auction starts in less than 9 days from today.

So, voting has now opened for boat owners to elect four boaters to represent licence holders on the Canal and River Trust’s National Council. The council will consist of 35 members but only four of these will be boaters! Voting is open until noo...

I recently wrote about #BoatsThatTweet, but you will find that a lot of canal and narrowboaters who tweet, are also boats that blog. Many narrowboat blogs are cruising logs, and while some are a written diary, others are more focussed on keeping a...

As usual, Boatshed Grand Union will be attending as many festivals this year as possible. We will be showing our ever-growing list of Narrowboats for sale at many of them. (Those in bold)

The following article is by our good friend and top boating lawyer, Hannah Cash. As well as being a leading authority on the legal aspects of buying a boat, Hannah has lived aboard Katherine of London (which we have for sale here) for a good few ...

I have heard many figures quoted for the number of miles of navigable waterways in the UK: It is certainly several thousand. How do you find your way around such an extensive network?

Yes, I too was one of those people who asked, “What is the point of Twitter?” I had already wasted hours on Facebook keeping in touch with my friends’ status updates, and I didn’t need a whole other social world on line to mysteriously suc...

British Waterways are about to close the Tring Summit from Lock 39 Startops to 49 Northchurch. This area is not river fed and is suffering from the worst water shortage in many years.

New website backs Government’s encouragement for living on boats
THE world’s number one online yacht brokerage system is about to launch a brand new website which could boost the government’s campaign to have more people living on the wa...

How does the old song go? You say potato, I say tomato? A narrow boat was traditionally a cargo carrying boat found on the British inland waterways from the 18th century onwards. On the UK navigable waterways locks and bridge holes are a minimum o...

Most people who know me, know that I live on a narrowboat.
“Peggy lives on a barge,” they say, assuming that they are one and the same. I usually smile and nod. But a barge is “a long flat bottomed boat for carrying freight on canals, r...

I live aboard a narrowboat with my husband and two young children. The first questions that people often ask us are about safety. Our children were born on board and have had the risks stressed to them every day. If you are planning to move a fami...

I was recently asked how practical it would be to keep a pet if you are a living aboard a canal boat?