Houseboat Hotels, Sheffield Victoria Quays

I rarely let the opportunity pass to visit a new canal location and so during a brief visit to Sheffield this weekend, I was able to take yet another walk down memory lane and check out Sheffield Canal basin which seems to be known better these days as Victoria Quays.

The basin isn’t the easiest place to reach by boat and you certainly wouldn’t want to moor outside on the towpath on the way into the city, so I find it rather amazing that a recent Canal World Forums discussion mentions that Calder Valley Marine are now in charge of all moorings in Sheffield, including visitor moorings, although on site there is no sign that this is about to happen.  I hope it doesn’t.

Amongst the permanent moorers in the Basin are Ruby and Lily May – better known as Houseboat Hotels (.com).  I notice from their website that they have a number of awards for innovation and I only wish there were more of these around the country.  Hotel boats normally cruise in summer and lay up in winter so this is a nice alternative.  The only other I know of was in Birmingham where the Away2Stay hotel boat offers B&B in Gas Street Basin.

Both of these operations offer very reasonable prices when compared to renting a cloned box room in the new mass market hotels which have sprung up near all city centre canals.  I know where I would be booking into, assuming of course, that I was not visiting by boat.