Cambridge reporter looking for interviewees for long-form feature on issues of long-term boaters and bargees

[Debbie Luxon]

Hi! I'm the Community Reporter from Cambridge News reporting on Travelling and nomadic groups. I'm looking for interviewees that are currently around Cambridgeshire/ Peterborough/Norfolk/Suffolk for an article about long-term/ multigenerational boaters and bargees. If anyone is interested in being interviewed please drop me a message or email me at debbie.luxon@reachplc.com

[Athy]

57 minutes ago, Debbie Luxon said:

Hi! I'm the Community Reporter from Cambridge News reporting on Travelling and nomadic groups. I'm looking for interviewees that are currently around Cambridgeshire/ Peterborough/Norfolk/Suffolk for an article about long-term/ multigenerational boaters and bargees. If anyone is interested in being interviewed please drop me a message or email me at debbie.luxon@reachplc.com

Welcome to the forum, Debbie. We do have quite a few members here who are liveaboards (the usual term), so I hope you get some response.

[Jim Riley]

What angle are you taking on the story, that might affect who wishes to talk to you?

[Debbie Luxon]

Hi both, thank you for your input! I'm aiming to have the article be an in-depth feature on the lifestyle and political/ structural issues surrounding liveaboards, boaters, bargees and how people navigate these issues. It will be a sympathetic look into this walk of life and I am looking for both phone and video interviewees to contribute to the article.

[Athy]

When you say "Cambridge News", are you referring to a newspaper or to Janine Machin's evening T.V. programme?

(Or neither of those)?

[enigmatic]

Hi Debbie. I am from the region, currently live aboard and am on the Ouse. However I only bought the boat last year with no family history of living on boats, and will be travelling to other parts of the country soon, so I'm not sure I'm exactly the sort of person you're looking to interview.

 

Some relevant background detail to hopefully help your article

 

Most of the UK's canal network was built specifically for carrying goods directly between industrial regions, which was undertaken by liveaboard boaters/bargees. In East Anglia, however it' mostly natural rivers (slightly altered for navigation as well as flood control) and drainage channels, so boat and barge traffic was never as important to it as other canals and it probably never had as many working boaters. Northampton is close to some of the most historically important canal routes, but getting there by boat from Bedford or St Neots is a journey of over 150 miles along winding rivers via Ely, Downham Market and Peterborough taking several days, instead of 30 miles up the road! The Norfolk Broads are connected only by sea.

 

Related local issues for boaters are:

- Unlike most of the UK's canal network, there is no automatic right to moor nearly anywhere along a towpath. The rivers and Middle Level are lined mostly by private land, and there are only a few designated mooring spots where itinerant travellers (and the many people taking their boat out of the marina for the weekend) have the right to moor. Also, the banks simply aren't as easy to moor up against, and there are fewer facilities like water points outside privately-run marinas.

- The Cambridgeshire rivers are maintained by three different organizations (the Environment Agency, the Middle Level Commission and the Cam Conservancy) instead of the Canal and River Trust that maintains most of the UK's canal network. Each has their own rules and licenses, and the licensing situations have changed recently in ways which are complicated but basically increase costs for many boaters inside and visiting boaters outside the region (other people understand and are passionate about these details more than me!) 

- The rivers and Middle Levels are also much more involved in flood defence than most canals, and often aren't actually safe to navigate after heavy rainfall. 

- the traditional style of narrowboat common across most of the UK is not actually native to this region except parts of Northamptonshire (although people actually living aboard are likely to prefer modern variants of this design to the ubiquitous white plastic leisure cruiser)

 

I suspect this will mean that finding multigenerational liveaboards who move around mostly or exclusively in this region more difficult, although obviously the river is very popular with leisure boaters and many people have in more recent decades chosen to live in Cambridgeshire marinas. The Great Ouse Boaters Association - goba.org.uk - might be able to help you too,

 

Some more general points about boaters

- although cost is often cited as a reason for living in boats, it's a bit of a myth that it's a cheap lifestyle. If you want to live somewhere expensive like Cambridge your only real option on a boat is join a years-long waiting list for very expensive rented moorings. Marina berths elsewhere might be more available and affordable, but once you've added maintenance/licence costs not necessarily cheaper overall than renting a [bigger] flat in say Peterborough. Moving around saves marina costs but has rules that you actually have to keep moving and not keep going back to the same place which are easier to follow in much of the rest of the country

- Most people choose the nomadic lifestyle as an interesting way to spend their life rather than because of family history. Most boaters make a choice to live this way in their adult lives, without any background of itinerant travelling like gypsies or circus folk. Remote working and retirement obviously makes this easier, and more and more people are doing it everywhere

- we're vastly outnumbered by the leisure boaters enjoying the sun on their boats or paddleboards at the moment, especially in Cambs

 

Also, parts of the Cambridgeshire waterways are very nice indeed.  

 

Happy to answer further questions and chat if you want to message me (you can even visit me if you like- I'll probably be in St Neots for the next few days)

[Athy]

Mr. Matic (or may I call you Enig?), a greeno for that most excellent summary, which I'm sure will give Debbie plenty to work on.

[Debbie Luxon]

18 hours ago, Athy said:

When you say "Cambridge News", are you referring to a newspaper or to Janine Machin's evening T.V. programme?

(Or neither of those)?

Hi! I work for Cambridge News (the newspaper) and Cambridgeshire Live (the news website) - same company but different names. However I am hoping to interview people in-person if possible with a camera if they're comfortable for the online piece.

[Mac of Cygnet]

I would be very pleased for someone to explain to me what is meant by "the political/structural issues surrounding liveaboards"

[Debbie Luxon]

Hi! What I meant by that was any issues that impact some or the majority of liveaboard people i.e. access to healthcare, education, registering to vote, rights as tenants etc.

[Alan de Enfield]

15 minutes ago, Debbie Luxon said:

Hi! What I meant by that was any issues that impact some or the majority of liveaboard people i.e. access to healthcare, education, registering to vote, rights as tenants etc.

 

The major problems for boaters are a little more basic than that and are the main things at the bottom of Maslows heirarchy of needs.

 

Where to empty the toilet, where to fill up the water tank, can I get to moor anywhere near shops for food, security** and safety.

 

There are articles written in the National press pretty much every month, and since C19 they seem to be even more frequent about the 'wonderful' boating life, few ever actually look at the day to day issues and needs of boaters - by doing so you could have an (almost) unique feature article.

 

** Boaters, even on paid for moorings, have no security of tenure and the law does not protect them at all, they can be evicted at a moments notice and no reasons needed.

[enigmatic]

Lack of places to empty your toilet is certainly one of the issues on the Great Ouse.

 

That and most of the moorings having 48hr limits on them, especially near the towns,

 

 

 

It's just as much of a pain to get an NHS dentist using family members' fixed addresses as on a boat!