Day boat hire on your local canal is a great way to enjoy the countryside this Spring. We offer day boat hire from 17 boat yards across England and Wales, with prices starting from less than £10 per person. Full tuition is included so if you are new to canal boating, you can get the […]
Following the Government’s announcement last night (22 February), sadly all our holidays booked to depart prior to 12 April have to be cancelled. We will contact everyone affected. We will offer to either move or refund your holiday. Please bear with us as this will take a little time. If you have an urgent query, […]
There are over 35,000 boats licenced for canal cruising in England and Wales, including over 1,000 hire boats. With the current focus on domestic holidays, narrowboat holidays have never been more popular. And many people are planning their first holiday on the canals this year. You don’t need a licence to steer a canal boat, […]
There are over 1,800 locks on the 2,000 miles of navigable waterways in England and Wales. Locks allow boats to travel up and down hills, and have been around for hundreds of years. With around 35,000 boats licenced to cruise the canals, there are approximately 3.85 million lockages (uses of a lock) each year. A […]
Narrowboat holidays provide a floating holiday home. Cruising along at just four miles per hour, watching out for wildlife along the way, you can take all the supplies you need for an adventure afloat. Drifters offers over 550 boats for hire, operating from 45 bases across England, Scotland and Wales. Narrowboats range from 32ft to […]
Clare from the Mudpie Fridays blog enjoyed a Drifters narrowboat holiday on the Kennet & Avon Canal last year. She travelled with her husband and two boys, aged seven and three. On their weekend break, they began their journey at our canal boat hire base at Hilperton, near Trowbridge in Wiltshire. They cruised west to […]
Narrowboats provide a floating holiday home, so it’s possible to take all sorts of pets on the canals. And as well as hundreds of dogs every year, here at Drifters we have accommodated many other kinds of pets aboard our canal boats. From rabbits and hamsters to caged birds, goldfish and tortoises. Here are our […]
Britain’s 3,000-mile canal network is made up of thousands of historic structures. From impressive flights of locks to soaring aqueducts, these engineering marvels are exciting focal points for canal boat holiday-makers today. Aqueducts were originally invented by the Romans. But the idea of a ‘canal in the sky’ was initially ridiculed by the canal builders. […]
From rural retreats to vibrant city centres, narrowboat holiday-makers can use their boat as a floating holiday home to explore Britain’s beautiful 3,000-mile network of inland waterways, with the choice of hundreds of waterside destinations and historic canalside pubs to visit along the way. Here are Drifters’ Top 11 canal boat holidays for 2021: Explore […]
Kerstin Rogers took a Drifters canal boat holiday, travelling from our Brewood base on the Shropshire Union Canal. In her blog, ‘Slow food on a Staffordshire canal’, she describes the relaxing effect of the journey, which took her along beautiful tree-lined sections of waterway. As well as this ‘forest-bathing’ experience, she enjoyed the ‘digital detox’, […]