Guide To Starline Narrowboats

Summer holiday canal boat trip for a very reasonable price, friendly staff, dog friendly boat. All we could ask for to be fair. Not luxurious by any stretch but a good reliable boat and everything worked. I would definitely recommend and use Starline again. Cheers to all involved in our little break.

If you want the swank value of an immaculate boat, everything appearing to be brand new, and are prepared to pay for it, then Starline may not be right for you. But it suited us perfectly. Definitely charged less than the big players, but even if the paint was fading, everything worked exactly as it’s supposed to with no problems at all. And all the team were friendliness itself.

Please don’t make the mistake we did.

New to boating, batteries were regularly going dying. Luckily the 2 amazing guys, Yure & Gary sorted our problems, they were great.

Terry (the owner) however, is a totally different story. He offered mooring for £5 a night, connected to shoreline. A month in, he charges us around 6 times the amount for electric that we have ever had to pay for in a house. He told us it was because of our boat & someone would come and check it out. Twice. Nobody came.

Moved onto new mooring, using all the same things and actually the electric costs less than £1.50 per day, compared to his £25 per day. Which he could only show via a printed jumble of numbers and handwritten prices alongside.

On trying to leave, we were blocked in by his hire narrowboats. He told us “2 minutes I’ll get it moved”. 2 hours later and rapidly getting dark, i had no choice but to move his hire boats by hand, rocking them around as he wouldn’t turn them on. On finally getting out, he said “oh, by the way, the mooring cost was actually £9”. Just him on a funny one because we were leaving.

He believes we still owe him £200+ in electric, which of course wasn’t true.

HE HELD OUR PASSPORTS UNTIL IT WAS PAID.

Of course, when finding out this was illegal we went to retrieve them- Terry couldn’t produce a bill to show us what was owed. He couldn’t produce any meter readings to prove we owed anything.

In fact, all Terry did was slam his fists down repeatedly, whilst screaming at us.

All you need to do is look at Trustpilot to see what I’m saying is true… he has conned people over and over.

There is so much more I could say, but I think I’ve said enough to surely show how bad this company is. Please don’t use them, look at Trustpilot! Those poor people he has conned, the elderly, the widowed, all kinds of people. Don’t let yourself be one of us that let this happen.

Wonderful boat and Tony was great at making us feel comfortable with the boat and locks. Took bright star out for a day while on holiday in England and got a fantastic taste for the narrow boat life. Kids and grown ups had a blast- will be back for more and a longer cruise!

Such a lovely holiday the boats are easy to handle and was well instructed on the boat handling staff were friendly