The May Bank Holiday weekend of 2023 marked an important milestone for us: our first visit to the Crick Boat Show and the beginning of our seven-year countdown to retirement aboard our own narrowboat.
We had enjoyed narrowboat holidays and trips with friends for years, but Crick offered something different. It was our first opportunity to step aboard a wide selection of newly built boats, meet the people shaping the future of inland boating and begin turning a distant ambition into something more tangible.
Our first Crick Boat Show
We arrived on Saturday to find Crick Marina transformed into the heart of the inland waterways world.
Rows of narrowboats and wide-beams filled the marina, while boatbuilders, equipment suppliers and waterways organisations occupied the surrounding showground. Everywhere we looked, there was another boat to explore, product to investigate or idea to consider.
Crick is the UK’s largest inland waterways festival and hosts the country’s biggest display of new inland boats. For two people beginning to think seriously about commissioning a narrowboat, it was difficult to imagine a better place to start. Crick Boat Show
Stepping aboard our possible future
Our priority was viewing the new boats.
Walking through them was exciting, but it also encouraged us to look beyond attractive interiors and consider how a narrowboat would function as our future home. Layouts, storage, lighting, kitchens, bathrooms and living spaces all began to take on greater significance.
Some boats impressed us with their contemporary styling; others offered ingenious solutions to the practical limitations of life in a long, narrow space. Even features that did not suit us helped clarify what we might eventually want aboard our own boat.
For the first time, we were not simply admiring narrowboats. We were studying them.
Learning what matters to us
The show gave us an opportunity to compare different builders and approaches in quick succession.
We began noticing how much character could be created through materials, colours and detailing. We also saw the importance of less visible decisions: power systems, heating, insulation, ventilation and ease of maintenance.
Our eventual boat build was still around six years away, so we were not ready to choose a builder or finalise a specification. Instead, the weekend was about learning the language of boat design and beginning to distinguish passing trends from features that could genuinely improve our life aboard.
A notebook quickly began filling with ideas, questions and things we wanted to research further.
Meeting the waterways community
Crick was about far more than boats.
The show brought together builders, suppliers, experienced boaters, aspiring owners and familiar faces from the waterways world. We also had the chance to meet some of the vloggers whose journeys we had followed online.
Those conversations made the prospect of our own future afloat feel more real. Each person offered a different perspective on buying, building and living aboard, reinforcing the importance of taking our time and learning from those already doing it.
Saturday night at Crick
When the boat viewing finished, the entertainment continued.
The beer tent became the social centre of the show, with live music, drinks and a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere. After a day spent discussing layouts, engines and equipment, it was time to enjoy ourselves.
We raised a glass to the future, surrounded by people united by a shared enthusiasm for boats and waterways.
Our base for the weekend was the nearby Holiday Inn at a motorway service area. It lacked the romance of sleeping beside the canal, but after full days walking around the show, it provided a comfortable and conveniently located retreat.
Neil and Naomi join us
Our friends Neil and Naomi arrived on Sunday, bringing their own experience of narrowboat ownership.
They were considering whether to upgrade their existing boat, so we explored the show together, comparing layouts, discussing features and exchanging opinions about what worked—and what most certainly did not.
Their practical perspective was invaluable. Ideas that looked impressive at first glance could be tested against the realities of spending time aboard, while seemingly modest details sometimes proved far more important than elaborate finishes.
Sharing the experience with friends also made the weekend considerably more entertaining.
From a dream to a plan
By the time we left Crick, we had gathered far more than brochures.
We had a growing list of ideas, a better understanding of the decisions ahead and renewed excitement about the life we were working towards. Our future boat remained several years away, but the route towards it had begun to feel clearer.
This was not yet Priscilla, Queen of the Canal. We did not know precisely what she would look like, who would build her or how all our ambitions would eventually fit within the confines of a narrowboat.
What we did know was that we wanted to create something distinctly ours: a comfortable home, an adventurous base and a boat capable of carrying us into the next chapter of our lives.
Crick Boat Show 2023 was where that long countdown truly began.