Picking a boat hire
Your experience on the canal will also depend on the boat hire you use. The search term “narrowboat hire” should return pages and pages of results. Some of those results are to specific boat hires and some to booking services, the clue will be if they let you inquire about any waterway or canal in the whole of the UK. Booking services may have an additional fee and some boat hires will say it’s cheaper to book directly with them.
If possible, choose a boat hire that’s convenient to a lock so that you can get hands-on training turning a lock.
Some of the boat hires have bases on several canals; some are specific to a canal or ring. You may want to use a larger boat hire with bases on many canals if you hope to use a yearly loyalty reward and travel different canals. On isolated waterways, you may not find many boat hire companies. You can also look for boat owners who hire out their boats in the canal newspapers and magazines listed in the Resources chapter.
Search for reviews of the boat hire you want to use. Just be aware that online reviews should be taken with a grain of salt.
How far can you travel
during a mid-week break?
Number of hours
Day 1: 3 hours (pick up boat at 3 p.m.)
Day 2: 7 hours
Day 3: 6 hours
Day 4: 9 hours
Day 5: 1 hour (return by 9 a.m.)
Total: 26 hours
Minus lock time
Number of locks: 10 locks x 2 = 20
Number of swing bridges: 3 bridge x 2 = 6; @ 20 minutes per lock/bridge: 8.7 hours
Net hours: 17.3 hours
Total distance traveled
17.3 hours @ 2.5 mph = 43.25 miles
Direction
The boat hire you choose may determine which direction you travel on the canal. If the boatyard is at one end of the canal, you’ll probably travel out in the opposite direction. And it’s a silly thing, but if you have a guidebook to your canal, look in which direction the guide is oriented. If the pages read east to west, it’s a lot more convenient to travel east to west. Of course it will still be backward on the return trip, but by then you won’t need the guide as much.
Return
You will almost always have to return the boat from where you picked it up. You generally pick up the boat in the afternoon and return it early in the morning.
Cancellation fee
Most boat hires offer a cancellation fee that will protect you should you or a member of the crew become ill or if there’s a death in the family. The cancellation fee is probably about £50 for a week-long trip and I recommend paying it. You can waive this if you have trip insurance, but you’ll have to supply proof of this. (Trip insurance still might not cover a narrowboat rental.) Some credit card companies offer trip cancellation insurance for travel booked on common carriers, such as airline and train travel, but again it probably doesn’t cover hiring a narrowboat. Also, you would have to have paid for the trip with that credit card.
You really can’t go wrong
Every time we watch a documentary about a specific canal, that’s the canal we want to travel next. It seems every canal has something to offer, so I doubt you can really go wrong just picking one at random, but once you’ve picked one, I suggest you study it thoroughly. A 30-lock flight is something for which you want to be prepared.
