A “water gypsy” who has lived on a canal boat for two years says waking up to fresh air and beautiful views every day is the best part of her adopted lifestyle. Jennifer Bunting is a continual cruiser, meaning she moves every two weeks and travels 32km (20 miles) in one direction every year to keep her licence.

But she has no regrets about life on the boat, which she shares with her young son and daughter.

She said: “This is one of the biggest boats on the Grand Union canal. It is 65ft long by 12.5ft wide and there is only three inches either side when we are in the lock.”

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Ms Bunting featured on an Alternative House YouTube video, where she can be seen giving host Roman a tour of her three bedroom property.

“I was self- employed so couldn’t get a mortgage, then I saw a boat on a canal one day and thought “that’s the life I want,” she said. “I Wanted a three bed but they are hard to come by so I designed this, which took ten weeks to build at a cost of £87,000.”

She added: “It was brought by lorry from Liverpool and put onto the water using a crane. It cost £10,000 to fit out and took seven weeks.”

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Ms Bunting had to make sure that the boat was balanced so put her two children’s rooms on one side and her IKEA custom built kitchen on the other side.

The bedrooms, which are 5ft wide and 9ft long, have cabin beds with small single mattresses, a wardrobe and storage and play space under the beds.

The kitchen is equipped with a cooker, fridge, freezer and washing machine and the living room doubles as a workspace, where she practises massage, one-to-one yoga and holistic therapies.

A small dining area is also home to her office and there is a shower room and master bedroom complete with a window seat and front decking area.

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She said: “When I wake up in winter there’s ice inside of the windows and I sleep in a beanie hat, jumper and dressing gown and have lots of hot water bottles in the bed.

“We all get changed around the fire in the winter because it is so cold in the bedrooms.”

Outside there’s a storage compartment at the front where the family stores logs for winter and an opening where a tank is filled with 1,000 litres of water every fortnight.

The boat’s roof is currently used for yoga, eating or chilling but Ms Bunting hopes to expand on her current herb garden with this space next year.

Monthly payments are £111 which covers water, bins and towpath maintenance.

In addition, Ms Bunting runs the engine for two hours per day in the winter to generate the electric, which costs £50 per month in diesel.

Gas bottles cost £50 and last ten weeks and solar panels on the roof are used to run the fridge.

With house prices pricing many out of the market, more and more people are opting to live on boats.

In 2021 the Guardian reported that record numbers of people were spending time on Britain’s rivers and canals and the Canal and River Trust said: “There are more boats on our canals now than at the height of the industrial revolution.”

In May, The Canal & River Trust’s annual National Boat Count showed a 1.9 percent rise in boat numbers on its network across England and Wales.

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