Visiting Crick Boat Show May 2016

There are many options for getting afloat in a narrowboat:

• Hire one every year
• A sailaway
• Buy secondhand
• Buy an ex hire boat
• Buy a sponsor boat
• Buy a twelveth share in a narrowboat
• Have a narrowboat designed just for us

To explore some of these options, we visited Crick Boat Show in May 2016

To view most of the narrowboats on display, you need to book a viewing slot and we'd done this well in advance and had about five viewings lined up - Silver Melody, Once Bitten, Dolly Blue, Lyndon (strangely painted all white), Chrissie and a couple more we managed to get on without a slot at the end of the day

We mentally spent a fortune. We loved Silver Melody, but not the price which was north of £150,000. In fact we were shocked at what seems to us extremely high prices on some of the bespoke narrowboats - some were £170,000+. You can buy a three bedroom detached house for that where we live! 

We spent a lot of time on the Ashwood Marina stand and were astonished to be invited to view Sammy Rose and her partner's traditional narrowboat at the end of the day, which moored up near the tunnel.  This had been her father's boat and they had made lots of improvements to it. It was wonderful to see a narrowboat actually being lived in as compared to the show boats, which were pristine and with none of the clutter that the Simpson household invariably brings to anywhere we inhabit.

We learned so much from Sammy as she showed us round her wonderful boat and are now on their mailing list for any secondhand boats they received meeting our requirements

In terms of narrowing (ha ha) our choices down, it looks like being either an ex-hire boat (Black Prince are said to be one of the best), or a pre-loved boat which meets our requirements as closely as possible. Whilst a bespoke boat would be our absolute dream, it looks like this may be way outside our budget

Our research continues . . . . .