About Narrowboat Insights

Although this book is primarily for boating novices or those contemplating acquiring or hiring a narrowboat, I hope experienced skippers will enjoy reading the stories and reliving similar events from their past.

The book is all about learning to become a competent narrowboat captain. The book is part adventure

story and part training manual. It’s essentially ‘learn by example’ via a collection of twenty narrowboat journeys that took place over the period 2005 to 2020 when Covid forced their end.

The book is not a travelogue. All the locations mentioned have excellent descriptions and images online and elsewhere. No, it’s a piece about family and friends and their adventures on hired narrowboats. It’s about the pleasures of spending a week or two aboard these quaint craft. It’s about recovering from mistakes and learning from those experiences. And finally, it’s about living in the moment in a parallel universe as glorious British countryside drifts by at less than four miles per hour.

Waterways World Magazine

Andrew Denny, well known as Granny Buttons, Britain’s foremost waterways blogger and Waterways World Magazine assistant editor said: “I wish more people would record their holidays in such warm terms and tell us their stories.”

And of the many insights in the book, he said: “I particularly liked the one ‘Driving a narrowboat is akin to steering a shopping trolley’...” 

Waterways World magazine published abridged versions of two chapters – in the February 2022 and September 2023 issues.

Reviewed on Amazon in the United Kingdom in February 2025:

I’ve found Peter Hills' writing style delightful, making this book an easy read. With an excellent turn of phrase, he describes many trips taken over the years with enough detail to make them entertaining yet informative. Great detail about the routes with maps and photos. Imparting his knowledge gained at the tiller brilliantly, inevitably when narrow boating doesn’t go to plan, he proves there’s always a way out of the dilemma! Well worth a read for those on the canals or not.

Reviewed in "Dragonfly" the April 2025 newsletter of the Wilts and Berks Canal Trust
‘Narrowboat Insights’ is aimed at those unfamiliar with narrowboat operation. After all, steering from the back of a long boat takes some getting used to. Although I’ve spent hundreds of hours at the tiller, I gained a few new insights from Peter Hills, who has an entertaining style of writing, covering the many different hire boats and hire companies he’s used over the years. Hopefully this book will prove useful to those new to boating our inland waterways.