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[title]Hanging plants, theatre posters and a sketch of a Christ-like figure named ‘Canal Jesus’ adorn the walls of Rosie Barwick’s narrowboat. Tess, her elderly dachshund, occasionally pipes up with a little bark, but apart from that, the spot she’s moored in near Westbourne Park is quiet – a good place for spotting waterfowl and watching cyclists teeter along the towpath.
The 26-year-old has been living onboard for six and a half years after dropping out of university and buying the boat with inheritance money. ‘I’ve always been thoroughly against the idea of just throwing money away to some faceless landlord that I don’t know and isn’t really providing me with a service – I wanted autonomy over my own space,’ she says. Barwick shares the boat with her friend, Tom, who works in the creative industries and became attracted to the lifestyle after being faced with homelessness when his landlord ended his contract a year early.
As a part-time charity worker and theatremaker, living on a boat and not being liable for rent gives Barwick the financial freedom to pursue work in sectors which are notoriously underpaid. ‘This lifestyle has allowed me to actually explore, and become the person I want to be,’ she says. ‘It’s given me the freedom to get it wrong and for that to be fine and for me not to lose my house over it’.
Barwick is a ‘continuous cruiser’, meaning she does not pay for a permanent mooring and is bound to certain regulations when using the waterways. She must move her boat every 14 days and travel a ‘fair range’ of the Canal and River Trust (CRT)’s network – it’s against the rules to switch between two nearby spots every two weeks, for example. Continuous cruising comes without the cost of renting a mooring (around £2,000 to £18,000 per year, depending on the location, mooring type and boat size), and allows licence holders to travel around the waterways, which many see as a key part of the lifestyle. ‘If you’re buying the boat, and then you’re paying for a mooring, you might as well rent a flat,’ says Barwick. ‘That way of living is a rich person’s hobby. My mates who live on boats are tattoo artists and dog walkers and singers and musicians who don’t make a lot of money, but are really committed to the lifestyle that we do have, and that’s why we live on these boats.’
However, many of London’s continuous cruisers fear that their way of life is at risk due to a recent independent commission into the British Waterways Act 1995, the piece of legislation which originally allowed for boaters to live on the canals without the need for permanent mooring. The CRT, who initiated the commission in December last year, says that the rules for continuous cruisers are vague and outdated, and the commission is designed to make them clearer. But some boaters are suspicious about the motives behind the action. They feel that there has been an effort in recent years to clear the waterways by upping prices for continuous cruisers via licence fee surcharges and prohibitively expensive temporary moorings, leading to a hostile environment and a ‘class-divide’ on the waterways between those who can afford permanent moorings and those who cannot.
Houseboats have been mooring on London’s waterways for decades, and spots like Little Venice have become renowned for their beautiful narrowboats lining the towpaths. But could the itinerant boating lifestyle which so many people enjoy be in jeopardy?
Home sweet home
Boating is not always the idyllic way of life it’s often idealised as. Rose Sinclair, who works for a feminist economic think tank, is moored up in Hertford on the River Lea when we chat, and has to board a train every time she wants to dispose of her bin bags. One of her boating friends didn’t have running water for 18 months, so made do by collecting it in five litre bottles and transporting it home on their bike. Meanwhile, Barwick doesn’t have a washing machine, so has to walk around with bags of dirty laundry trying to find laundromats or friends’ houses to wash her clothes in. ‘We don’t live on boats because it’s easy,’ she says. ‘On a summer day, when you can lie on the roof, it is lovely and kind of romantic, but in the depths of winter, when it’s snowing and you’ve run out of coal, it’s not. It’s really hard work.’
But when it’s snowing and you’ve run out of coal, it’s not romantic
Boating isn’t as cheap as many think, and some costs can come as a surprise. ‘Blacking’ (applying a protective coating to the boat to prevent rust and damage) can cost up to three thousand pounds every three years, and, just like with owning a house, any issues are the responsibility of the boater to be funded and fixed. ‘If the engine falls out tomorrow, that’s my problem. I just try not to think about it,’ Barwick says.
Another unexpected cost is getting rid of toilet waste. The CRT, who are tasked with maintaining 2,000 miles of canals and rivers across England and Wales, provide ‘pump outs’ at regular intervals along the waterways, but boaters tell me that these are often far apart and can be poorly maintained. Many have started using a composting system where their waste is collected, for a fee, by other boaters. Another alternative is using a marina’s pump-out facilities, but this can cost between £20 and £30 each time. It’s not a cost that anyone I’ve spoken to expected, especially when paying hundreds of pounds in CRT licensing fees per year.
That said, the CRT says that the pressure on facilities in certain parts of the network is mainly due to misuse by a minority of boaters, rather than a lack of maintenance, and notes that providing additional facilities would be extremely difficult due to the current availability of necessities such as foul pipework. They point out that there are new boater facilities coming onstream at Harlesden later in the spring, which demonstrates their ‘commitment to improving boater satisfaction’.
Despite the challenges, the community is what keeps many boaters going. Sinclair hadn’t realised how ‘narrow’ her life working and renting in central London had become before moving onto the boat she bought in 2020. Now, she asks online boating forums how to make a repair, and someone will offer to come and have a look in exchange for a cup of tea. ‘I’ve learned a huge amount that I can now pass on to other people, but in the process, I’ve also made a load of really, really wonderful friends,’ she says. Community was an unexpected bonus of the boating lifestyle for Sinclair. ‘When I moved onto the boat, I was quite worried about being lonely, especially given I’d be living alone and moving around. But I’ve met the best people of my life on the water. I’ve formed really meaningful friendships. People really pull together.’
Mooring up
Some permanent moorings in London, like at Ice Wharf in King’s Cross, can cost as much as £1500 per month. Others, like a mooring in east London that Lydia Larson – an actor who shares her boat with her partner, Liam, and their jack russell, Kenny Biscuit – are less than half as expensive, and much cheaper than renting a flat in London, on average. The couple pay £8,000 per year to moor, plus a couple of hundred pounds annually on insurance for the boat they’ve owned for eight years. Occasionally they’ll be faced with unexpected issues like a damaged hull, and have to fork out £5000 to get the boat craned out and fixed, and when I chat to her aboard the boat, they have no hot water. But cheaper costs in general mean that Larson can live in London with a job that is often precariously paid, and her partner can afford a studio for his creative work. ‘If it wasn’t for the boat, I don’t think I’d still be in the city,’ she says. ‘I think it’s disgusting, what’s happening with the renters market, that you’re paying extortionate fees to landlords for substandard living.’
Larson appreciates the stability the mooring provides her, even if costs go up slightly each year, and loves the ‘intergenerational, vibrant community’ she’s met through living on a boat. She is concerned about the commission, even though it is unlikely to impact those who have permanent moorings, as she feels it risks the unique ways of living that boaters have adopted. ‘Trying to regulate this lifestyle makes me concerned that it could be exploited at the same time,’ she says.
Some boaters who are supportive of the CRT’s commission cite continuous cruisers who ‘bend the rules’ by staying in the same area to commute to work or school, and shuttle between different spots, as an issue for the waterways they say are already overcrowded. Sinclair, who travelled 125 miles last year between Hackney and Maidenhead, points out that ‘in any group of people, you’re going to get people taking the piss’, and that mechanisms are already in place to tackle frequent offenders. Boaters can have their licenses shortened, or in extreme cases, removed, if they do not comply with the regulations, but enforcement is rare.
Staying afloat
Charges for continuous cruising licences, which run between £900 and £1800 for a 12 month period, are more expensive than licences for boaters with permanent moorings. They’re set to rise by 25 percent by 2028, which many continuous cruisers feel is unfair given the standard of services for pump outs, bins and other things they receive in return. This, coupled with new chargeable temporary moorings on some parts of the network that are popular with continuous cruisers, has left many boaters feeling priced out of the lifestyle they love so much.
I’ve met the best people of my life on the water
The introduction of chargeable moorings in Angel, north London, were a particularly personal blow for Barwick. She was previously able to moor her home in Islington, where she works with domestic abuse survivors, but the 50 metre stretch of canal now costs £35 per night to use. ‘I felt incredibly connected to the community, and I was a part of it, and that I really gave something to it, and I was socially cleansed out of it,’ she says. Now, much of this stretch of canal lies derelict as boaters cannot afford to, or do not want to, pay to use it. The result, cruisers say, is a less safe towpath for boaters, cyclists and pedestrians alike.
Jenny Poulton, a trainee teacher who moved onto her boat a year ago, says that she had bottles thrown at her home when it was moored on the Angel towpath recently. ‘It’s an abandoned canal, and abandoned canals don’t feel safe.’ Sinclair has never moored in Angel because of the cost, and says she likens the choice by the CRT to monetise this part of the canal to turning ‘a thriving street into a disused alleyway’.
Some continuous cruisers feel there has been a hostility towards them from the CRT in recent years, a view they say is supported by the fact that the Trust cited boats in areas of high demand as having ‘created challenges for the Trust both from an operational, financial and reputational perspective’ in the Terms of Reference of the commission. The findings from the report are not due out until later this year. The CRT, who say that part of the reason for the commission is mainly due to an ‘86 percent rise’ in boaters on their waters since the trust was created in 2012 (of that, boats without home moorings increased by 257 percent), does not know what conclusions the commission will draw.
But Barwick believes the real reasons behind the commission are financial. ‘[The CRT] will raise a lot of money if it can sell off parts of the canal to public developers, to private moorings, to waterways transport that will raise the revenue that it actually needs,’ she says. ‘And in order to do that, they have to clear us.’ The Trust have, in the last year, put land assets up for sale in Paddington, as well as further afield in Leicester, Gloucestershire and Leeds.
A sinking ship?
The Trust was victim to funding cuts under the Conservative government in 2023, which will see their annual grant drop from £52.6 million to £50 million in 2027, and five percent less each year after that, meaning that by 2037 it will be just £31.5 million. It’s this loss of income that former CRT chief executive Richard Parry said was the reason behind licence fee hikes: ‘We must act now to plug the funding gap, or we risk seeing canals decline and, ultimately, the risk of closures.’
We must act now to plug the funding gap, or we risk closures
The CRT sends out a yearly survey, intended to gather the views of boaters on how the waterways are being managed. Last year’s survey revealed that just 46 percent of boaters, both continuously cruising and permanently moored, are happy with the service the CRT provides. When I speak to Barwick, 2025’s consultation has just gone out. She has no faith ‘that anything that comes out of that survey is actually going to be reflected in the policy that [the CRT] creates’, but also feels powerless to change anything as a community of ‘free spirited people that are just really, really bad at organising ourselves.’
Some groups, such as the National Bargee Travellers Association, aim to represent the interests of itinerant boaters, and have spoken out about their concerns with the new commission. However, they are often criticised as being a particularly vocal pressure group who don’t necessarily speak for the majority of continuous cruisers, who make up about a fifth of all licensed boaters in the UK.
Walk along any populated towpath on a sunny day, and you’ll see the community that Sinclair, Barwick, Poulton and Larson all love being a part of. Cyclists chat to boaters, music streams from the open doors of colourful narrowboats, and cruisers moving their homes help each other out with locks and maneuvering. Having a group of people who’ve made their homes on the water keeps the canals and rivers of London healthy, safe and vibrant. But could all of this disappear, if boaters are priced out of the way of life?
Sinclair is despondent at the situation continuous cruisers are facing. ‘I’m just worried that we’re going to lose this massive community asset that benefits everybody, and that I’ll lose my home in the process,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what for. I don’t know what is being achieved by that. This boat and this community have been better for me than any pill or therapist.’
The Canal and River Trust head of boating Matthew Symonds said:
‘Our charity’s canals have never been busier – there are more boats on them than at the height of the Industrial Revolution.
‘It is our charity’s job to manage the canals fairly for all – including for those living afloat. This means interpreting and applying legislation that dates back many decades.
‘Some boaters tell us that the legislation doesn’t go far enough, whilst others believe there shouldn’t be any regulation of boater activity at all. So, without prejudging what the Commission will conclude, this is one area that it will consider over the months ahead.’
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