Eating out on a canal boat holiday is one of the joys of the whole trip. Of course, the beauty of choosing a canal boat holiday is that you take your kitchen wherever you go. We encourage our guests to bring enough food with them for their entire vacation. This is because you can never predict when a pub or restaurant will be closed unexpectedly or if a delay on your route means that you Read more
The Boutique Narrowboats are in the news again this week, with a fabulous review from the team behind Market Harborough Living. The magazine offers news and lifestyle features, and we are delighted with their article which followed their stay on Marbled White. “As soon as we peered down the hatch,” writes Clare and Nicholas Rudd-Jones, “we were amazed by the level of finish – stylish furniture… a Nespresso machine and a wine fridge no less.” Read more
Our canal boat holidays are nominated for a top national award!! We are so excited that our canal boat holidays are nominated for the British Travel Awards 2023. Our aim is that the Boutique Narrowboats are amongst the most luxurious canal boats on Britain’s waterways and we are delighted to be in this year’s line-up in the category of Best Company for UK Short Breaks. So now we need your help to give us a Read more
Our canal boats are in the local news again, thanks to the fabulous Market Harborough Living Magazine. We are always so excited to see our boats in print, and this article explains a bit more about how we all got started. Unlike many of the experienced boaters we encounter daily, Aaran and I are relative newcomers to narrowboats. We love to tell how we fell in love with the canals during a mini-break from Market Read more
We’ve signposted seven must-see canal features on a narrowboat break in the UK. Consider them a bucket list of items to tick off, as you cruise through your weekend. Setting off from Market Harborough, you will undoubtedly encounter all seven, as you learn to handle your narrowboat on your journey towards becoming an experienced boater. UK narrowboat break top 7 features Some features on our list may seem daunting at first if this is the Read more
Our 2016 mini-break on a canal boat could have gone horribly wrong. The interior was like something from a plywood time warp, all brown varnish and stale carpet. The toilet smelled, the shower curtain was mouldy and the mattress woefully-skinny. English holiday narrowboats are not known for their contemporary styling, and this was a case in point. Our romantic weekend plans looked decidedly lacklustre. A new kind of experience But once the training was Read more
A hire boats review published this week has declared that the Boutique Narrowboats are incredibly different to most hire-boats when it comes to their interiors. Respected industry magazine, Waterways World, has devoted six pages to its review of our hire boats. The journalist, Mark Langley, visited us to test out Marbled White. He told us he’d never seen anything quite like it when it comes to hire boats. This is a man who has seen Read more
[sswp-slide sswpid=2855] A narrowboat could be the perfect Valentine’s Day present – it leaves you with a radiant glow long after the adventure is over, and there are swans and pubs. Read on to find out the five best bits about holidaying on a narrowboat… 1. A barge is a romantic hideaway that moves. That’s pretty cool. The view changes every day and it is impossible to get bored. You’ll start the day with Read more
We are lucky enough to have four day boats for hire at Union Wharf marina, which is brilliant news for those wanting to try things out before committing to a holiday narrowboat. These are bona fide narrowboats, identical in almost all ways to a long canal boat. You will need to use all the same skills to drive one and get to experience the tranquility of the waterways while you do so. How day boats Read more
Increasing popularity of UK boating holidays UK boating holidays on the canals and rivers of the UK are gaining in popularity. Since the 1950s and 60s, the inland waterways network of England, Scotland and Wales has offered a variety of boat holiday options. But the difference between the hire boats of then and now, are vastly different. Traditional boating in the UK Following the demise of the commercial canal boat industry after the Industrial Revolution, Read more