Canal Boat Diaries

Background

Robbie Cumming first lived on a narrowboat in the winter of 2012/13 when a school friend, Sam Martin, asked him to house-sit and maintain her vessel while she tried to sell it. He lived rent-free on the condition he kept the boat moving and well-maintained, and he grew to love canal life. Two years later, he bought his own narrowboat, naming it The Naughty Lass as a pun on The Nautilus from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.

While working from home, he began filming his travels for a YouTube channel called Robbie Cumming's Voyage Logs, which gained a substantial following. Television producer Stuart Woodman, impressed by the authenticity of Cumming's storytelling, proposed adapting the concept into a television series. The BBC commissioned a five-part travel documentary series in 2019. The first four series, each with 30-minute episodes, were produced by the BBC.

After the broadcaster dropped the series in 2023, UKTV purchased the rights in October 2023, and production company Middlechild developed a 10-episode fifth series with 60-minute episodes. That series explored Birmingham's canal navigations, Braunston (considered the spiritual home of narrowboaters due to All Saints Church, known as 'the cathedral of the canals'), and the Grand Union Canal. A sixth series in 2024 covered southern England's waterways, ending at Regent's Canal where Cumming's canal passion began. The seventh series travelled from west to east, visiting Wales for the first time along the Llangollen Canal, crossing into the Shropshire Union, then through Lancashire's waterways and the Peak District, culminating on the Rochdale Canal—called the 'everest of the canals'—where he climbed all 92 locks before finishing in West Yorkshire.

Reception

The series has received critical praise, with Cumming affectionately called the 'Canal Man' and building a loyal following through his television series, vlogs, and livestreams. Christina Collins commended Cumming for showing the stark realities of narrowboat life, describing him as a sign of the times during the cost of living crisis, noting that while Prunella Scales and Timothy West popularised the canals' green corridors, Robbie is grassroots and young, striking in austerity Britain. The series has been credited with encouraging more people to spend time on Britain's canals. The first episode of series 6 was the highest rated unscripted program streamed within a month of its launch on UKTV's streaming service.