Everyone loves water and boats, but a trip on the canal also offers teachers a great educational resource. The museum has its own mooring where your boat will depart and return back.

Education Afloat

For boat trips, we ask you to make your own arrangements. There are two alternatives.

• You could hire one of the commercially-operated trip boats for the day. These can take large parties, but are more expensive.
• Alternatively, and recommended for most school groups, you could use one or more of the local community boats. These are limited by the terms of their licence to taking 12 passengers per trip (max 10 children and 2 adults). During the time of most school visits each boat can fit in three round trips (our standard trip is through Islington Tunnel and back), so for a group of 30 pupils you will only need one boat – for a group of 60 you’ll need two or alternatively, you can take shorter trips. The community boats listed are all well-used to working with school groups at the museum and have qualified skippers who are good with children. Their prices vary from one to another, but average around £300 per boat per day.

Please see our Community Narrowboats page for details of the community boat charities but note that London Narrow Boat Project and The Floating Classroom are out of area for day trips.

Please see our Boat Trips page for details of the commercial boat operators

Safety

The safety of the children is, of course, paramount. It will be reassuring to know that canal boat travel, with proper supervision, is very safe. The canal is 3-5 feet deep (the deepest part is usually in the middle). It is almost unheard-of for a boat to sink, and if it did, most of the boat would still be out of the water. Other types of incident are, thankfully, extremely rare. Care and supervision are required when boarding and alighting and it is important that children fully understand that hands, arms and legs must not stray over the side, especially near bridges, tunnels, wharves, locks, other boats, etc. Risk assessments can be found here and through the boats’ own websites.