News

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.

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)

In 2012, British Waterways’ canals and rivers in England and Wales will be transferred to the care of a new waterways charity, called the Canal & River Trust.

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...

At a time when some businesses are struggling, our biggest problem at Boatshed Grand Union is that we seem to be selling too many boats – we have several under offer at the moment and are ready to take on more boats for brokerage. To meet the de...

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.

On Valentine’s day last year my husband and I were in a pub talking about getting a bigger boat. I said that my perfect boat would be a 70 foot narrowboat, green, with side hatches and a ‘boatman’s cabin’. I’ve always fancied having the ...

During the Industrial Revolution as the Irish navigators or “navvies” continued to build the waterways network, steerers were needed for the boats and lock keepers were required for a variety of maintenance tasks.

Why not take a canal boat down the Thames and get a fantastic view of the New Year’s Eve fireworks on the London Eye? Sadly, bravely cruising into the night without a place to moor is not as safe as it sounds. Moorings are usually passenger pier...

About once a month I take our boat to a marina to top up on diesel and empty the toilet. For her own safety my toddler daughter is sat on the hatch cover and secured to the roof with a safety harness while we cruise.
As we pass under a bridge...

Ah Christmas time. Time to winterise your canal boat and lock yourself safely into a warm house. Or is it? There are lots of festive events planned on the waterways this December.

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...