A narrowboat holiday might not be everyone’s idea of luxury. But approach with an open-mind and you might be surprised. A number of canal boats nowadays are kitted out to a surprisingly high standard, and it’s perhaps more about the luxury of the lifestyle in any case – the slow pace of life and the ability to explore the UK’s canal network and the many treasures along it.

Our recent trip was arranged through Drifters, a collaborative marketing and booking consortium made up of 10 distinct UK canal boat hire companies that account for a collective fleet of over 500 narrowboats, which represents more than half of all the holiday hire boats available on the UK’s inland waterways.

It saw us exploring the Llangollen Canal aboard Starks Lark, a 66-foot, 20-tonne narrowboat available from ABC Boat Hire, one of the main Drifters members, with a reputation for boats that are immaculately maintained.

The welcome

Soon after getting out of our car at Whitchurch Marina, we were spotted by Laurie, warmly welcomed and escorted into the reception and shop where we picked up a proper, detailed canal map — absolutely essential if you want to know what to expect on your route and where you can actually moor up for the night. It was there that we also met Richard who handled our introduction to the boat and provided us with a thorough and much-needed briefing for novices such as ourselves. (I had been on a narrowboat trip before, but it was more than 30 years ago.)

The narrowboat

Starks Lark was our home for our…

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