So how do we get the best boating experience? Well, you want to get the best out of your first boating experience as I would not argue with the Canal and River Trust's advice to choose a place you've previously thought you'd love with or an area you always wanted to explore and then do it by water. But I would add an honest plea for a new highlight to avoid setting ambitious targets for traveling long distances to complete some sort of ring or specific journey. That inferior boat will travel at three or four miles an hour and you can cruise eight or ten hours a day in the summer but that's missing the point. Quite apart from building in frustration when you have to slow down passing more boats or you make queues at the locks you won't get the major benefit from bouncing. That's relaxation. Get a map or even better one of the waterways guides available for your group and work out nice comfortable days of traveling that allow you time to stop and explore in a historic town or enjoy a pint or two in a vivid pub. A good harbour operator will discuss with you the routes available and steering a boat is really not difficult but learning all the little knacks that make life easier will take somewhat longer. Slower is almost always better than faster on the waterways and give yourself time as well as working out in advance the possible consequences of any maneuver you plan to make. Other than that just keep to the right when passing on coming boats there's no driving test to pass and you'd be giving a full be will be given a full hand over by the boat operator. First sight the cost of hiring a boat for a holiday seems considerable easily a thousand pounds plus a week and more in the high season but that's for the whole family. Go broad and you wouldn't bring at pain several hundred pounds ahead so break down the cost on a per person basis and it becomes very competitive especially in these days of the falling pound. One word of warning though both can become a bit of an obsession don't take my word for it one couple I talked to were on the umpteenth hard this time for a six week break on a harbour from Norbury Warfield in the structure union and they ended up buying a boat of their own. But that rich background is something I find common among boaters of all descriptions many people who they're interested in lives and want to go on being interested in life take up boating. Boating especially traveling widely on a boat gives them that ever changing interest as the scenery the places of history flow past their windows or portals depending on the choice of course.