The First Year

Wow, what a year!  To think that a year ago today we were just about to collect our narrowboat from Oxfordshire.

We may have seemed a little quiet of late, but believe me, like our name suggests, we have been behaving like ducks (gliding gracefully along the water, legs flapping like crazy below!).  We’ve been maintaining and improving the boat: increasing battery power, re-blacked the boats hull, added a more ipod-friendly stereo system, and we’re working hard to promote ourselves ahead of our second season.

However, as we race to get everything ready for the first scheduled trip of the new season on the 15^th March (already half full), it’s also important to take a breath, sit back, and reflect upon how the first year of operating has gone.

Our inaugural season has been something of a research period for Wandering Duck.  As you’ll know, there were no other hostel boats on the water when we set up our business, so the concept was unknown.  That comes with huge challenges.  If, for example, you start your own café business, you can set yourself apart from your competition with your own detailed touches; Barista trained staff, quality Colombian Rainforest Alliance Fairtrade coffee, some cool electronic tango background music, and some worn leather sofas.  OK, so perhaps that’s a future project, but you know what I mean.  You benefit from your potential customers at least knowing what a café is, so you’re half way there.  For Wandering Duck, we’re bringing a new experience to a whole new group of younger people.  International backpackers barely know anything about the canals, and in the UK there is still an outdated perception that the canal is just somewhere to dump your shopping trolley.  Then there are the boating community themselves.  They at least have discovered the beauty of this kept secret, but then we have the pre-conceived ideas of what a hostel boat may be.  We often have to explain that we’re not for school children, scouts, or the disabled.

Slowly, we’re making progress.  When we first started trading last April, we naively expected the online bookings to come flooding in.  Backpackers rushing with excitement to experience this new kind of tour.  A unique way to experience a slice of the UK countryside by boat.  The perfect mix of idyllic meandering waterways, history, British pub culture, late night jamming sessions on a guitar on the boat.  That sounds ace!  Lesson 1: Nobody cares about what you’re doing as much as you do.  I think we received one booking from a friend (hi Sara) in the whole of the first month.  This was incredibly deflating and we really questioned what on earth we were doing.  We were so sure of ourselves and our vision that we didn’t really have a plan B.  It felt a bit like planning your wedding day for a year, only for nobody to show up.  It was a nerve-wracking time.

The Olympics came, but the tourists and backpackers didn’t.  Not that we could see anyway.  Presumably they were enjoying watching the Olympics at home on the telly like we were.  We also had the wettest summer since 1912.  This was not what we had in mind.

Summer trips were fairly quiet, but then things started to pick up.  We ran more trips in September and October than we’d had in any of the Summer months.  The weather improved somewhat, and word was starting to travel about these new tours we were doing.  From talking to people we’d also discovered a different group of customers.  It came to light that there were a whole group of people who would like to experience a canal boat break, but who didn’t want the responsibility of hiring their own narrowboat.  We hadn’t really appreciated this at all when we set up Wandering Duck, and as a consequence we’ve now split up what we do in to two areas – private skippered charters, and scheduled tours.  We even did a private charter trip at the end of November for a lovely group of 4 people which was for a 65^th birthday present.  We had planned to finish our season at the end of October, so we were really pleased to learn that there was still some demand for trips so late in the year.  This beautiful winter weekend even entailed a little ice-breaking with the boat which was a lot of fun.

By this stage we’d had lots of fantastic feedback from our guests.  We’ve appeared in a few magazines, including Derbyshire Life and TNT Magazine, and again these features have been incredibly positive.  Unfortunately in December Guardian Travel published a full-page feature on Wandering Duck which was extremely uncomplimentary.  It seemed that the journalist of the piece hadn’t really appreciated what the experience would entail, and had taken her misguided expectations out on our business.  It was a missed opportunity.  Had the journalist been able to get into the mindset of the independent traveller, it could have been a fantastic piece of publicity for us.  However, every cloud has a silver lining.  The Guardian website received 34comments, all encouraging us on.  We received booking enquiries, messages of support, and even phone calls of support following the article.  Fortunately for the UK tourism industry, the writer in question hasn’t written anything for Guardian Travel since. Lesson 2: Before you invite a journalist on your boat, make sure it’s somebody who would choose to be there.

After such a quiet start, we were really pleased with the progress Wandering Duck made last year.  Of the customers we had, a few were friends and family.  Some were canal lovers who had been on canal boat breaks before.  But on the whole our customers were new to the waterways.  They’d never been inside a narrowboat, or seen a windlass.  These days, with sites like Trip Advisor ruling where we go and what we do, it’s no wonder that the majority of people will wait for the reassurances from their peers before trying something new.  As a new business and a new concept, all of our customers over the last year took a chance on a very alien experience they knew very little about.  Whether they booked a tour on their own, or shared the experience with friends, we’re extremely grateful to each and every one of them.

As I say, the feedback from our guests has been exceptional.  But there has also been lots of support from the boating community too.  Particularly in the early, quieter days this acted as a real lift when we needed the encouragement.  It helped us to appreciate just why we wanted to show off this side of the UK to begin with. 

This year we have a Photography Workshop Weekend planned, and in May we’re hoping to launch a 1 night tour through Manchester and out to Worsley.  To have designed a 1 night trip, our shortest yet, with half the time travelling through Manchester city centre, will be a surprise to many.  But this only goes to reinforce our concept as an experience.  Manchester is the second most visited city in England, and this tour will give city lovers a whole new perspective to Manchester, as well as a nice short cruise out to a pub in the village of Worsley, along the first major canal in the country.  A tour of the worlds first industrialised city travelling on the very transport link that helped create it.  At around £60 per person, we’re also going further to make a canal boat break accessible to those on the smallest of budgets.

We’re taking small steps forwards.  We’re not about to rush out and buy another boat anytime soon, but we feel immensely proud to have turned our vision in to a reality.  We thank everyone who’s helped us, who’ve come along on a trip, who’ve helped spread the word and who have offered words of support and encouragement.  We are immensely grateful to you all. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you again soon.