Our very own narrowboat home

Dear Molly,

Our latest canal trip has just ended.

Being right in the middle of England, on the waterways, settles me in a way nothing else can. It is where my heart exhales. Where the grass is greener than anywhere else. Where life slows to the pace it was always meant to be lived at. Out between hedgerows, still water, and fields, I feel a kind of peace that is hard to describe and impossible to manufacture. It simply is.

Perhaps that is why the canals stir so much in me. They don't just offer escape, they also stir memories, with a long wooden stick, in a deep puddle, with leaves and twigs floating in it. I am 10 years old.

This trip was threaded through with my childhood. In the quiet moments, I could feel my younger self close by. At times, I could see her clearly, in you. The two of us sat together on a lock gate, waiting for the water to empty, while our narrowboat, Georgia, hovered below, ready to enter the lock. It was one of those moments that felt small from the outside, but more from within. Time folding in on itself. You beside me, my younger self somewhere within me, and the boat waiting patiently below, and somehow aware. Our own narrowboat.

Two years ago, I wrote, here, about how happy I was that we hired boats regularly. That felt significant, then. We borrowed slices of canal life. Temporary homes, familiar escapes. Now, here we are, with our own narrowboat home. Our canal story strengthened.

There is something moving about stepping into a space that belongs to our family in this way. Georgia is not just a boat. She is becoming part of our family story. Her wooden interior displays my paintings of birds on the walls, the woodburner warming us on a chilly evening, the sofa we chose, the cushions and blankets (one crocheted by my dear friend) that grace every corner and make the whole space feel like home. Not a home from home, but our own little home on the waterways.

This journey was quite an adventure. 40 or so locks completed, including a staircase, a stop lock and some single and some double width locks. We navigated Braunston Tunnel, cold, dark, and deeply eerie, stretching for just under two kilometres. It was one of those places that makes you feel every sensation more sharply. The damp air, the echoing drips, the closeness of the brickwork, the strange stillness and the low hum of movement through darkness, the light from the cabin, casting window shaped yellow lights on the wet tunnel wall and, with all of that, comes an awareness of the astonishing engineering involved in building this tunnel. To move through a tunnel built some 230 years ago is to encounter history. I feel it with every part of myself.

We were moving Georgia, from her original home near Derby, to Crick, bringing her an hour closer to us. The interesting thing was that everything about that journey felt right. Not merely practical, but right in a deeper, more instinctive sense. Crick feels more like the marinas of my childhood memories. More rustic, less polished, more rooted, somehow. It has the atmosphere I remember. And now Georgia is closer to home, which means more weekends, more spontaneous visits, and more opportunities to drift off into the surrounding, rolling, countryside.

There is joy in ownership, but even more than that, there is joy in continuity. In realising that something you loved as a child has not lost its magic. In watching you step into that same place. In building a life that makes room for old loves and new traditions side by side.

And so, our latest trip has ended, but it feels, in truth, like another beginning. Our canal story continues.

I love you,