Valleyman1982

Excellent question. I'd like to hear the answer to this too.

As someone who lived on a boat when I first moved down south (uk), let's just say it takes a certain type of person. I did it because I thought it would be fun, cosy, cheap and give me the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I had a romantic ideal about what it would entail. To be honest I enjoyed it for the first six months or so, but by the time a year was approaching I literally jumped ship at the first opportunity.

Sitting having a beer in spring, plodding up the river in the sun and the 'idea' of it are as you'd expect. Lovely. But on the flip side... Freedom on a boat is overrated. It's slow and you're very limited where you can go. As someone who had a fixed job location though this may just be me.

Winter. Eugh. It's damp, getting the stove up to temperature and keeping it warm is a constant ball ache. Visit friends/family for a couple of days? Welcome to two days of getting the damp out again (or at least superficially hiding it) when you get back. Showers are shit at the best of times. You essentially shit in a bucket you have to empty, and space is a precious commodity. And lugging fuel etc (riverside prices are steep where I was so I tended to travel further afield) is a constant shit storm (10kg of smokeless fuel at about £4 will last a day. Where do you get it? How do you store it?) Getting deliveries, a pain in the ass.

And what should have been a positive? The community. Turns out the community are not particularly welcoming of newcomers, especially those desk jockey workers like myself. The life they have tried to escape? And on top of that a significant proportion of boat people are a little, um, odd. Odd like they are trying to escape something serious, and are suspicious of outsiders, odd. I caught more than a couple snooping in my time.

Fuck boats.