It’s almost 4 years since we decided to sell our house, cars, caravan and pretty much all of our possessions to have a narrow boat built to live on, so how has that decision played out in reality? Is this nomadic way of life what we thought it would be?

The decision to do something completely off piste (for us at least) happened as a result of being at home in lockdown and ‘seeing’ a life in the future that looked a little too predictable; as we were both self employed and in our 60’s, it felt like time for a change.

Sometimes, it’s the big decisions we make in life that feel absolutely right, even when people around you are scratching their heads wondering what on earth you’re thinking of.

Our ‘why’ was mostly based upon wanting to challenge ourselves by living a totally different way of life, having an opportunity to see new places from a different perspective i.e. the canals, being immersed in nature most of the time and living a life where every day is different.

We did consider whether to buy a big motorhome instead, but decided against it because we wanted (at that time) to get away from the madness of busy roads and traffic…..we didn’t know what was ahead!

I bumped into someone yesterday who used to come to my Pilates classes and she said ‘you’re living a lovely life’ and we are, but as with any type of lifestyle, it does have it’s drawbacks and limitations.

The first canals in England were built in the late 1790’s and much of the network is over 200 years old; the canals were originally built as transport routes in the industrial heartlands of the north and the Midlands. After falling into disrepair with the advent of steam trains, they began to be resurrected again for the use of leisure boats in the 1970’s.

The canal system requires a huge amount of maintenance which is costly and time consuming; although the Canal & River Trust manage the system, a reduction in government funding year on year means the system is slowly failing, which can make life difficult for those of us who live on the water.

Many reservoirs that feed the canals also require heavy maintenance programmes and when reservoirs are low in water, canal water levels suffer accordingly.

It’s becomingly increasing difficult to navigate the northern canals, largely due to breaches on the Bridgewater and Macclesfield Canals; most hire boat companies selling holidays on their boats have usually been able to offer circular routes for their customers (called a ring) but with the closure of navigable waterways, businesses are struggling too as people choose not to hire boats any longer.

It sounds as if the outlook is all doom and gloom which isn’t entirely true as there are still many miles of waterways to travel which are peaceful and beautiful too, but there is a definite deterioration in the system overall.

So, is boat life still meeting our expectations? Like all aspects of life for any of us, we have to be flexible, adaptable and open to change.

As the canal and river network doesn’t allow us to access places we still want to visit, we made the decision to add another mode of transport to extend our nomadic lifestyle even further…..who knew we’d be back on the roads 4 years after saying we wanted to get away from them?!

You might imagine retirement to be a time of settling down into a peaceful routine…not quite pipe and slippers, but not travelling around all over the place, but our motto is ‘if not now, when?’

The logistics of boat and van life are new to us, but we’re finding our way around being able to cruise on the boat and planning trips to places we can’t get to on the boat in the van.

We love being able to walk in the Peak District and it’s difficult to get there on the boat at the minute due to closures on the Macclesfield Canal; so, out comes the van and off we go.

Both the van and the boat meet our 'why, what and how' needs...seeing different places, walking in nature and enjoying the peace and quiet of the countryside.

Who knows how long we’ll live this nomadic life for, but for now, there are places to go and things to do….now, where next?

Even though we’re often moving around, we’re always ‘at home’ as we’re living in our own places and surrounded by our own things. This suits us better than hiring a car and renting accommodation; despite being nomads, we are homebodies.

I wanted to challenge myself in retirement, to step outside my comfort zone a little and to test my mettle. After decades of feeling I needed to control every aspect of my life, I’m learning to go with the flow, to trust more and to be comfortable with, rather than fear uncertainty.
To live a life of variety, to be able to travel, to challenge ourselves, to keep active, to enjoy an outdoor lifestyle and to take life one day at a time is a privilege we never take for granted.

I sometimes think there aren’t many opportunities in our lives when we get to do exactly what we want without having any responsibilities or commitments towards anyone or anything else; I’m not talking about being selfish or narcissistic, but being able to fulfill a dream or desire that’s held deep within you….to follow a path that is uniquely yours.

Most of us start school at 4 or 5 years old and often attend a nursery or playschool of some sort before that; the education system in the UK doesn’t allow for much individuation, so we follow the national curriculum and try to find subjects that interest us and that might eventually inspire us towards a career choice that lights us up.

We leave school as young adults and although we might choose to have a gap year before starting university or work, we’re pretty much thrust into the world of work and responsibilities for the next 4 decades at least.

I read something in a Sunday paper last week where a 70 year woman had had a ‘makeover’; she commented that she was usually dressed in jeans as she spent a lot of her time ‘running around after grandchildren.’ I have a photo of my paternal grandma who died at 52 and she looked at least 20 years older than that, as did many women of her generation; I can’t imagine her ever running around after anybody!

So much of our lives are taken up by education, work and sometimes family life; our children have their children and suddenly, we’re thinking about what our later years might look like.

I have friends who are choosing to continue working in their 70’s, others who’ve retired, but are involved in volunteer work; some are very involved in their children’s and grandchildren’s lives, others less so….

So little of our time is free enough for us to be able to step back and think ‘what do I want from my life?’

When we chose to sell our house and move onto a narrow boat, the primary driver was to have an adventure; being continuous cruisers (we don’t have a home mooring) means that we move around all the time, sometimes without a destination in mind.

We have been moored in a marina over this winter as we’ve been on 2 holidays and we needed to leave the boat somewhere secure, but we don’t have a fixed plan of where we going when we leave in a couple of weeks time.

It’s quite an unusual lifestyle and not having a settled base wouldn’t be everyone’s idea of a good time, but having a choice of where to travel is one of the positive aspects of life on the cut.

There are over 2000+ miles of waterways in the UK (canals and rivers) and travelling at an average of 2-3mph means it’ll take a while to cover the whole network!

As we prepare to leave the marina, our thoughts are turning towards where we’d like to go and what we’d like to do and see this year; we also need to take into account time we want to spend with family and friends and how we can integrate the different aspects of our chosen lifestyle.

Living in a house lends itself towards a more structured lifestyle with more opportunity for a settled pattern in the days of each week, whereas living on a boat often means tentative plans change as locks break down, canals close for a while because of a fallen tree or even completely breach because of a landslide (look up the Bridgewater Canal).

It’s helpful to have a relaxed approach when planning a route as invariably, there will be something that forces us to change direction. We’ve often met boats approaching a junction and shouted ‘which way are you heading’ and they’ve shouted back ‘we’re not sure, we’ll see which way the nose wants to go when we get to the junction’; most continuous cruisers tend to have a very relaxed attitude to route planning!

The last few years have been the first time in our 67 and 72 year old lives where we don’t have to go anywhere in particular at any specific time; we can arrange to meet family and friends to suit their schedules and our life is freer than it’s ever been.

Having said that, it feels like a bit of a golden time as we’re alive (good start), together after 40 years and happy to be so and we’re both fit and well; we actively (no pun intended) take care of ourselves and hope to be able to maintain this itinerant lifestyle for a few years at least, but there are no guarantees.

We always said when we made the decision to radically change our lives that we’d rather do it and regret it, than not do it and regret not taking the plunge…not literally.

So, it feels as if we have a window of opportunity to live a life with less responsibility and we’ve no idea how long that window will last. We had no plans to do any of this before we did it and that surely is the beauty of life….who knows what’s ahead of us?

We want to stay closer to our family this year (we spent last year ‘up north’) so we’ll stay within an hours drive of Birmingham and plan to visit places we haven’t yet been on the boat. Some of those places include Stratford, Worcester, Stourport, Gloucester and wherever else appears interesting along the way.

If you had a year (or more) to do exactly what you wanted to do, what would it be? Life is short, time is precious and although many people wouldn’t want to do what we’re doing, we all have a dream that we’d love to fulfill before we die.

Maybe now’s the time to look for and plan for that window of opportunity, maybe the time IS now…..your dream awaits!

During the last couple of years of my Mum’s life (when she was in her late 70s), I’d sometimes ask if she wanted to go out for lunch or come to us for dinner on a particular day and she’d refuse because she was going to the dentist/doctors/opticians that morning; it used to drive me crazy and I’d say to her ‘you can do more than one thing a day Mum’. I was so caught up in the busyness of my own life that I had little patience for anyone who wasn’t living their life at 100mph.

I so regret my attitude and behaviour now my life has changed so much and I can totally relate to wanting to live life at a different pace. For me, it has little to do with getting older and everything to do with choosing not to see busyness as a badge of honour.

My identity used to revolve around trying to pack in as much as I could each and every day and although being very busy and productive clearly fulfilled a need within me, it didn’t truly make me happy; I definitely wasn’t appreciating the present moment, but looking forward to all manner of planned events in the future.

When we sold our house, we spent 8 months living in our touring caravan whilst our narrow boat was being built. Moving into the caravan coincided with another lockdown in November 2020, so life changed dramatically.

When we sold our house, we spent 8 months living in our touring caravan whilst our narrow boat was being built. Moving into the caravan coincided with another lockdown in November 2020, so life changed dramatically.

Mum died in 2019, I was no longer working, we’d sold the house, we were in the middle of a pandemic and we had a narrow boat under construction despite having no boating experience whatsoever.

Sometimes life gives us opportunities for change that take time to understand, let alone embrace; when we’ve always lived life at breakneck speed, we need to adopt a change of pace before we can relax into a different way of life.

Of course, not everyone would make the choices I’ve made; living on a boat isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time, but we loved living in our caravan for those 8 months, so we were confident living on a boat would suit us just fine.

I now understand (and have adopted) my Mum’s ‘one thing a day’ attitude to life. I’m finding removing the need to be productive or to ‘achieve’ allows me to approach each day as it comes and enjoy the day as it unfolds; there are many days when I have no plans at all, yet seem to occupy myself and enjoy the simple things in life. I’m under no illusion that being retired allows me to live the lifestyle I choose, but it is a choice; many people choose to be busy at this age and that suits them too.

This week, we’re on a canal that we love and it’s close to where we lived in the caravan; we know where the best pubs, cafes, farm shops and walks are, so we’ve been able to stop and appreciate everything along the way.

The countryside is beautiful in this area and it’s a joy to walk along local footpaths listening to the sound of crisp newly fallen leaves underfoot. It’s lovely to walk in the afternoon and to see the milky late afternoon light gently envelop the fields as the sun sets…a real joy.

Some of my ‘one things a day’ this week have been a mocha coffee (literally the best mocha anywhere) and a bacon roll in a favourite cafe, several walks through much loved villages, lunch in a local gastropub, yoga (3 times!) on the towpath and chatting with a local lady who we met in lockdown when we were waiting for the boat to be built.

My Mum used to text me sometimes saying ‘I’m enjoying a G & T’ late in the afternoon and I always loved that she said ‘enjoying’ rather than ‘having’ a G & T. Although I had a busy life filled with regular holidays and a job I loved, I wonder how much I allowed myself to ‘enjoy’ those experiences in the moment. My propensity towards performing and perfectionism meant my mind was often tied up in either the past or the future; I was so rarely present.

Life changes for us all and there are opportunities to change direction if we choose to; We’re soon to become great grandparents and the reality of one of our grandchildren becoming a father has been an interesting concept! It’s a leveller when your children start having children, but when your grandchildren start having children, it feels like it’s time to embrace life even more fully.

Despite soon becoming a great grandma, it feels as if I’m only just beginning to know who I am; roles I’ve lived in the past have changed and I’m learning to adapt to the life I’ve chosen now. That’s not to say life is over…far from it! There are places we want to go and things we want to do away from the canals, so we’re making plans for new adventures too.

I’ve felt so grateful this week that I’m in a relationship at this point in my life where we share the same outlook (I won’t say goals as that sounds too ‘driven’); no relationship is perfect, but to be married to someone (for 39 years) who decides to make a loaf of bread and a rice pudding on a Friday morning (that’s 2 things a day!) is a keeper.

Being open to change in later life feels a good thing; I think my Mum would look at my life now and be pleased I’ve adopted her philosophy…after all, Mums do know best.

We've spent a significant part of this year on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal; we went up the Wigan Flight in February and came down in July.

We cruised up to Stanley Ferry on the Aire Navigation, turned around and came back the same way.

During our time on this canal,  we noticed a significant deterioration in lots of ways. Obviously, the seasons changed during our time there and moorings we'd enjoyed heading towards Leeds were totally overgrown as we headed back towards Wigan making it impossible to get into the bank.

The Bingley Five Rise locks were leaking so much more on our return journey and it was entirely due to the CRT Volunteers that we were able to manage the flight safely and without incident.

Most of the locks along the canal take some managing as paddles are often broken and water levels are difficult to manage.

When we came down the Wigan Flight in July, there had been an issue between CRT and the regular volunteers on the flight, so there was no one to highlight the problems to look out for.

We did have a very frightening situation where the button fender on the bow got caught on a gate and we very nearly sunk...not an experience we ever want to repeat.

The Leeds-Liverpool is such a lovely canal with so much to recommend it and so many great places to visit, but if it isn't better maintained in the future, I feel it'll become a 'ghost' canal.

We've spoken to many people who've said 'never again' when talking about Wigan and it seems such a shame. We know the financial difficulties CRT are facing, but it's clear the north is falling behind in terms of maintenance.

What happened to levelling up?

People often ask us how we manage to live on a narrow boat; what qualities are most important to maintaining an equilibrium and peace of mind?

For us, it’s flexibility of both mind and body…let me explain.

We ascended the Wigan Flight (of locks) on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal towards the end of February, planning to spend several weeks walking in the Yorkshire Dales. We’ve been to this area many times before in our caravan when we lived in a house, but never by boat.

We were taking our time heading towards Gargrave, so we’d arrive in the area as the weather improved. We hoped to base ourselves between Gargrave and Skipton to have easy access to the Dales and lots of walks.

As often happens on the canals, we received a notification from CRT that River Lock in Leeds would be closing from the end of May until the end of July. We didn’t really want to be ‘stuck’ on this canal until August, so we curtailed our time around Skipton and got a bit of a wiggle on to get to Leeds sooner than we’d planned.

We had thought about trying to tackle the Calder and Hebble Canal, but as our boat is 60ft long, we decided we couldn’t face the risk of getting stuck in the locks which are not designed for boats that long!

In the meantime, CRT reversed their decision to close River Lock, so we’re now heading back the way we came and hoping to do some walks in the summer sunshine after all.

The best plan to have when living on a boat seems to be no plan and having an open and flexible outlook to life helps to eliminate stress; after 3 years of living on the boat, we’re now getting used to just going with the flow.

As a former yoga teacher, I’ve tried to maintain a 3 times a week yoga practice, which isn’t easy with the unpredictable weather.

We’ve done yoga on the towpath, on lock landings, in children’s playgrounds, pub car parks, even a graveyard!

Despite the challenges of boat life, we’re managing to maintain flexibility of body and mind…long may it continue

When we decided to move onto a narrow boat, I knew there were over 2000 miles of canals in the English canal system, but I hadn’t taken into consideration the amount of that distance that would be unavigable because of maintenance closures at any one time.

I guess I had visions of us just pootling around choosing where we fancied going next…how wrong I was!

In my ‘old life’, every day was mapped out with a sense of purpose, although I always felt I lived my life like a never ending ‘to do’ list; coming onto the boat was a way of retraining myself to behave differently and be less of a control freak.

I had no idea how challenging it would be to try to change the behavioural habits I’d had for decades, plus how to cope with the constant disruptions to our travelling plans.

We’d hoped to get onto the Leeds-Liverpool Canal last year at the end of the summer; we planned to leave the Peak Forest Canal and descend the Marple Flight of locks and head towards Manchester and onto Wigan.

The Wigan Flight of locks are the access point to the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.

Not only did the Marple Flight close months ago (and is still closed) but the Wigan Flight closed too; both flights have major structural issues, hence we’ve been kind of hanging around in the north waiting to head towards Skipton….eventually.

We’ve been to the Yorkshire Dales many times with the caravan in the past and always planned to come back on board NB Grace, but it’s taken a lot of patience on my part (Rob is much more laid back than me ) not to insist that we abandon the idea and head south.

Wigan was supposed to open last Friday, but CRT then announced it would be this Friday; apparently the flight opens tomorrow at 10am and we’re within a couple of hours of the bottom of the flight.

There are 21 huge double locks to wrestle with, then onwards through Blackburn, Burnley and various towns before heading for the hills.

I often think our lifestyle looks idyllic in so many ways, but it’s not without it’s challenges.

I know, more often than not, that the challenge is within me; can I embrace uncertainty to just go with the flow and accept what is, rather than resist what I don’t want or like?

To be absolutely honest, I’m still very much a work in progress, but being aware of what I struggle with means ‘if I can see it, I don’t always have to be it’

This year has been a catalogue of changed plans on the cut due to all the stoppages and maintenance restrictions where we were cruising.

Issues with Bosley and Marple Locks on the Macclesfield Canal, plus Lock 57 on the Trent and Mersey Canal meant we spent a couple of weeks going around in circles, eventually retreating to the beauty of the Peak Forest Canal for a couple of months over the summer.

We wanted to head for the Skipton area on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal this winter, but with the Wigan flight out of action until the end of October, we decided to head for the delights of Nantwich for a few days.

It was only after we'd gone through Wardle Lock on the Middlewich Branch that we spotted it was due to close on November 6th which would mean a bit of a rush to get to Nantwich and onward to Blackburn because of yet more closures!

Navigating the canal system takes a lot of concentration at times.

To maintain a more relaxed approach to life, we decided to head for the Llangollen Canal; we'd been here last year in May which was very busy, so we thought the autumn/winter would show us the area from a different perspective.

As we headed towards Chirk, the trees really began to show their glorious autumn colours and there were very few boats around.

We spent a few days in Whitchurch, Ellesmere and Llangollen Basin and did an early morning yoga session at the top of the Mammoth Tower viewing platform near Whixall!

We're so pleased we decided to take a detour into Wales and are looking forward to seeing where our next adventure will take us.

Our travels this year so far have been anything but straightforward with the amount of different issues we've had with every canal we've been on.

We've had restrictions due to low water levels, broken locks and bridges on the Macclesfield, Trent and Mersey and the Peak Forest canals so far.

We're currently 'stuck' on the Peak Forest Canal because of a broken lift bridge, although we did have the opportunity to leave the canal on an assisted passage before CRT closed the bridge a few weeks ago.

We chose to make the decision to stay between Bugsworth Basin and the broken bridge (24) because there's just so much to do in the area and we love the town of New Mills.

There are 2 train lines running through New Mills giving us access to Sheffield, Manchester, Buxton and the Peak District and as we're keen walkers, we're happy to be able to walk in so many beautiful places.

We've been to Edale, Hathersage and Grindleford to walk in the surrounding areas and visited the East Lancashire Railway via Manchester and Bury.

New Mills is a great little town with a real community and there are fabulous cafés and pubs everywhere.

It seems perverse to choose to stay in one place whilst living on a narrow boat, but being able to fully immerse ourselves in the area feels very special and it really will be a struggle to leave when the bridge is finally mended....let's hope it's not too soon, we've still got walks to do!

Many of the places we’ve visited since living on the boat have been new to us, but being moored on the Peak Forest Canal allowed us to revisit somewhere we’ve been to many times when we were caravanners and even before that.

Many years ago, we were staying in a well known B&B in Castleton called the Ramblers Rest and we decided to climb Kinder Scout.

One minute we were following a long line of brightly coloured cagoules ascending the climb, when suddenly the weather ‘came in’ and there was literally no one around us. The rain was coming down so hard and the wind blowing so strongly that the Kinder Downfall waterfall was blowing upwards. The whole area was just a bog and we couldn’t see a thing.

We decided to head down to get our bearings and a Peak Forest Ranger in a Land Rover stopped to ask us where we were staying as we clearly looked lost! He was kind enough to take us back to Castleton where we tried to figure out why we’d got so lost.

Since then, we’ve been back to the Peak District many times and done lots of different walks in different areas. We’ve always loved walking hills and mountains and it felt so nostalgic to be back in Derbyshire after a few years away.

At one point, I said to Rob, ‘I feel really emotional being back here’. To which he replied with his usual empathy, ‘I’d save your energy for the climb if I were you’

We caught the train from Strines to Edale and decided to walk up Mam Tor and around the surrounding area.

Unfortunately, when we came down from Mam Tor to continue our walk, Rob informed me we were going the wrong way and needed to go back up!

A couple who’d passed us going up as we were coming down said ‘you’re never going back up again’….words sometimes fail me

All in all, we had a great day, a lovely walk and we’re hoping the CRT keep this canal open beyond July 31st so we can give our boots a few more ‘airings’

Back in the day, when I was an Further Education College Lecturer, my yearly party piece was greeting my entire new student cohort (between 25-30 students) by their first names when they came back from their first coffee break on day 1 of the course. My ability to remember so many names in such a short time always drew a round of spontaneous applause. I’ve always found it easy to retain lots of (often useless) information and remember people’s names easily.

Looking back, I’m astonished by the amount of information I had to retain in my working and personal life, but we all do it; it sometimes feels as if our brains are full to bursting.

Nowadays, our desire to quantify and target so much of our lives can also add to information overload; we try to measure how many steps we walk, calculate our heart rates whilst exercising, count how many calories we consume and even record our sleep patterns.

We met a couple on a boat recently who had just picked their boat up from their home marina to cruise locally for a few days. When we told them we were liveaboards, we had the usual conversation about ‘what did you do with all your stuff’ and it transpired they lived in a 4 bedroomed house, had a motorhome and a caravan and 10 cars! They really wanted to be able to live on their boat, but couldn’t make the psychological leap to start to dispose of some of their possessions to realise that dream.

I can’t help but think, the more possessions we have, the more ‘brain space’ we need to maintain them and it’s only now we have so few possessions and such a simple life that I can live more easily in the present moment. I always struggled with the concept of living in the present whilst I was working; the idea of being ‘mindful’ seemed like an unattainable pipe dream. When I was teaching, most days involved planning ahead (living in the future) or analysing what I could have done better (living in the past). I rarely felt as if I was living my life in the present.

At this point in our lives, the things we need to think about and make decisions about are relatively few. Today, we walked a few miles along the towpath to find somewhere we can moor for a couple of weeks where we can walk into the nearest city to explore. Most urban mooring spots are for 48 hours only and we need somewhere that is less restricted.
We need to find the next water point, so we don’t run too low on water and to find a supermarket we can walk to as the freezer is running low and we need to stock up on fresh food too.

We also need to find a suitable yoga spot, preferably somewhere flat without too many passing dog walkers....dogs love to bark at us and jump all over us for some reason. Maybe it’s our downward dog pose they can’t resist ha ha! The couple we spoke to this morning kept saying how brave we are which is a comment often directed at us, but we don’t feel brave at all. For us, it’s just about the choices we’ve made that feel right for us.

I’ve said before that this lifestyle isn’t without its disadvantages, but such a simple life literally frees up masses of brain space.

That mental space brings a clarity to life where you can truly hear the birds singing or a boat chugging past; you don’t feel compelled to calculate how many steps you’ve walked each day as having to walk to the supermarket or work your way through a flight of locks is ​‘exercise’ that is intrinsic to this lifestyle. Sleep generally comes easily; so much of our life is lived outdoors in the fresh air, so a 9.30pm bedtime is not unusual.

The irony of struggling to live in the present is that’s the only ‘place’ we can live, but life becomes so busy, it almost feels impossible. Work, family life, seeing friends and going to the gym fills our days and minds. The list of things to do seems endless; we lived that life for many years too.

Decluttering our minds takes awareness and is an opportunity to make different choices; within those choices is the freedom to learn new things, to discover new places and to meet new people. Simply having less to think about brings a mental clarity that allows us to live life as it unfolds and respond accordingly.

Clearly, it’s possible to declutter our minds without moving onto a narrow boat, but we need to find ways to do that which are compatible with a busy lifestyle and are suitable for us as individuals.

Some of the canal network is restricted at the moment due to low water levels, making route planning difficult; something we didn’t foresee when we moved on board. These challenges keep us mentally on our toes and mean we need to be adaptable and responsive to change.

We’re always conscious that life changes constantly and we need to be open minded to change, but decluttering our life has also allowed us to declutter our minds and truly live in the present.