‘Canal life is so good we may put off having family’

Emily started living on a narrowboat as a student unable to find digs but is now bitten by the bug of freedom it offers, writes Fran Ivens

Emily King started living on a canal boat eight years ago when she wasn’t able to find student halls as a first-year student at Bath Spa University. Now 26, and working full time as a recruiter, she and her husband Cameron are so enamoured by life on the water they are considering putting off having children in order to stay afloat.

“The plan is to stay on the boat until my parents want to live on it,” she says. “It is a bit snug for children. So we go round and round about whether we should stay on the boat or have kids.”

Emily says that when her parents retire on to the boat, she and Cameron may move into a house and buy their own boat later in life to enjoy with their own children one day.

For now, Taliesin, their 57ft narrow boat, is moored in Bath but summers are spent travelling around making the most of the freedom it gives.

Deena Ingham and her husband Steve’s move on to their narrowboat was also unplanned. When they bought Preaux, their 34-year old boat named after a village in northern France, it seemed a good fit.

“She had been in a marina most of her life, she hadn’t travelled,” says Deena of the boat. However, the Covid pandemic changed their aspirations. Realising that as an academic and a landlord they could live and work from anywhere, Steve set about renovating the boat to make it liveable.

Three years later they now rent out their home and roam the UK’s waterways with little intention of returning to dry land. “I can’t tell you how much we got rid of, so much stuff. Most things double up,” Deena says. They live by the Swedish principle of lagom, just the right amount. The sofa becomes a double bed, things like that. We live much more simply.”

So could you do the same? Telegraph