What living on a narrowboat taught me about life and love | Books | Entertainment

After a break-up, some people hit the gym; others cut their hair or embark on a rebound relationship. In the aftermath of her own break-up seven years ago, Hannah Pierce, then 30, bought a narrowboat named Argie Bargie. Plunged into life on the water on her 45ft-long boat, she quickly learned to grapple with exploding toilets, diesel refuelling and one constantly repeated question from passing pedestrians on the towpath: “Is it cold in the winter?”

“‘Of course it’s cold in winter. It’s a boat,’ I always reply,” says Hannah, revealing a deadpan wit that infuses her compelling new book about navigating life, love and locks.

Rather than rent a tiny studio flat or live in a house share in south-east London for £1,200 a month before bills, she took to the water. Her cost-saving solution led to some very specific challenges – and disasters – that characterise the art of living on a permanently disintegrating vessel on water; a reality revealed in her book’s title, All Boats Are Sinking. The comment came from a fellow boater, who added wryly: “Just at different rates.”

Hannah’s own narrowboat disasters include getting hers wedged inside a lock north of London while a team of volunteers attempted to use brute force to set her free.

It didn’t work. It was only after the Canal and River Trust rejected her suggestion to take an angle grinder to the lock walls – which she thought was an inspired solution – that she resorted to allowing a fellow boater to take a few inches off her beautiful steel hull with the grinder instead.

This painful and noisy ordeal lasted several days. However, once the sides of Argie had been properly butchered, she was set free and able to cruise once more.

There is something fabulously appealing about life on the water, not least to the rest of us who have lapped up several TV shows about narrowboat cruising. Sometimes branded “slow TV” they include Grand Canal Journeys (originally presented by Timothy West and Prunella Scales), Narrow Escapes and Canal Boat Diaries, featuring Robbie Cumming and his narrowboat the Naughty Lass.

Hannah’s enthusiasm for life on board remained undimmed as she embraced every challenge, including learning how to restock her water supplies from standpipes and to strip down her engine. She tells me: “I grew to love that DIY repair aspect.

“Caring for the boat is caring for yourself and you must address issues promptly as the dangers are slightly more acute. A hole in a flat is not as dangerous as a hole in a boat, so you end up feeling you’ve really accomplished something when you fix your engine and are then able to have a tranquil cruise to your next destination.”

All the while Hannah was being buoyed up – during the occasional lull in luck – by a close circle of friends who loved to escape their bricks-and-mortar homes for a weekend on the water. And then came the pandemic. Hannah’s solution was to patiently await a window in lockdown policy that enabled her to glide out of London in May 2020 on a hidden network of undisturbed mirror-calm canals to embark on a glorious narrowboat odyssey.

She spent the rest of 2020 heading up hundreds of miles of beautiful British waterways. Very slowly indeed, her journey took her from the bustling streets of London to the tranquil waterways of West Yorkshire.

“I got the boat mainly because I didn’t want to share a flat with a bunch of people,” she says. “Having lived in London for seven years, I was familiar with the canals that run through its boroughs. Camden, King’s Cross and Little Venice – places that I would otherwise never dream to call home.

“I’d also worked on a cruise ship and enjoyed the experience of being on water, and I thought my friend Megan, who had lived on a narrowboat for a year, had a life that looked like fun.”

Soon Hannah was obsessed by the idea of tiny kitchens and curtains fitted on to brass window frames, as well as roof gardens with cats hiding among the miniature floating wildflowers.

After having the chance to boat-sit for Megan in June 2017, and having broken up with her partner, Hannah took the plunge and decided to buy her own inflation-busting floating home.

Six days later, thanks to some help from her parents Hugh and Sarah Pierce, aged 74 and 73, she was the owner of Argie Bargie – an ex-leisure cruiser in royal blue moored in Teddington, west London.

She fell in love with it while descending the staircase and spotting a dark wooden floor beneath the polyester carpet. It made her realise she had something to work with. She says: “My mum initially wondered what I was talking about but she could see I was convinced about it and, after doing her own research, she became as keen as me on the idea.

“A lot of people’s reactions were that it sounds great but isn’t for them, so Mum has been amazing.”

The best thing about Hannah’s new life was waking up every two weeks in a different location. “It was magical,” she says. “The way the light comes in during the early mornings, the foliage rustling along the water’s edge and the change in seasons.

“In a flat it’s the same temperature all year round but on a boat you are there with the elements. As hard and demanding as the winters can be – and cracking ice in the morning in the sink isn’t unheard of – it was lovely.

“I always enjoyed the simplicity of a coffee in the morning. You put a camping kettle on a stove-top with a limited amount of water and gas. Everything is stripped back but then you wander outside to sip your coffee out on deck. There are definitely more pros than cons but it’s not for everyone.”

Not least because on a narrowboat you simply can’t be in a rush. After steaming along at four miles an hour, you enter a lock system that can take several hours to negotiate on a busy day.

“For me, I loved that pace. It causes you to relent and to give into it. It’s canal time,” adds Hannah, who relished the nomadic spontaneity of narrowboating. “I could move my home and I got really good at it, which increased my confidence.”

She always had a sense that she was being drawn towards each new horizon in search of a different destiny.

“The romantic side of me had a fantasy that while cruising I would meet a guy, get a book deal and come back to London,” she laughs. And so it was that her passion for life delivered her dreams when she met her Welsh partner, Dan, while moored in Coventry in early 2022 to open an arts venue. They are now expecting their first child, due in early August. “Dan absolutely loved the boat and we took long cruises together on the Thames and the Oxford canals,” says Hannah, adding that one of the most enjoyable aspects of narrowboat life was the relaxed approach to socialising.

“Often you are moored up for a few days and enjoy your neighbours, then you resume your journey eventually, assuming you’ll see them again soon, and that does happen.”

However, she and Dan are not living on Argie for now. Hannah has a job as head of creative programming for an arts venue in east London, from which she is on maternity leave. They are using the time to plan a grand waterborne adventure with their new arrival.

Hannah says: “When the baby is born, we are eyeing up a journey of some length that will enable us to jump from ‘real life’ back into boat life.”

The plan is to cruise down the Kennet and Avon river towards Bristol. But there are plenty of different journeys to be made on the UK’s 4,700-mile canal network.

“I wasn’t desperate to meet someone but it was a priority, and Argie was my coming-of-age story,” she says. “I had to find myself before I could meet someone.”

Living ashore while Argie is undergoing refurbishment presents its own challenges after the freedom of the waterways, she adds. “When I lived aboard full-time, Argie was a core part of my identity, so I’ve had to shift my identity a little bit. When you close any chapter – whether it’s leaving the house you had children in or moving to another country or leaving life aboard for life in a flat, it can feel very emotional and difficult.”

But there are several compensations “such as having more time on my hands and enjoying a fridge and a washing machine”.

On the boat, options included smalls in the sink or the local laundrette. “Now I’m obsessed, and forever doing washing in my machine,” smiles Hannah.

Going forward, Argie will be there as a holiday getaway. “We are incredibly lucky and I am very excited about offering my child the chance to discover nature via the waterways,” says Hannah. “There is so much to explore in the UK, so we are incredibly fortunate. It doesn’t take long from anywhere to find beautiful surroundings.”

While living aboard, she also discovered a new passion for running and would head down the towpath to scout out the next mooring spot. She became so passionate about the process that in October 2022 she ran the London marathon.

“Living on Argie has changed me,” she reflects. “I long for the simplicity of that life and I try to incorporate it in my current life by finding sunlight and a nice spot outside to read. I’m a keen walker and rather than plugging in, I definitely lead a more outdoorsy life following Argie. I now have a new sense of purpose.”

● All Boats Are Sinking by Hannah Pierce (Octopus, £10.99) is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25