BARGE holidays are rather like childbirth. In that nobody will ever tell you how painful they are. They hurt. They really hurt. A lot.

But then - also like childbirth - I don't want me telling you how much it hurts to put you off. You would love a barge holiday. You really would.

When you finally hold that week-on-a-tin-boat in your arms, and look into its eyes, you will undoubtedly find it one of the most rewarding moments of your life. Especially if that moment happens at the lovely Lock 57 Brasserie in Cheshire, sitting at an outside table, looking across to the Peak District, and sipping a pleasant New Zealand sauvignon blanc.

But, back to the pain for a minute. Although there was a considerable amount of agony, most of it was, I will be honest, our own fault. For, perhaps unwisely, our maiden barge experience was doing the Four Counties Ring - through Shropshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Worcestershire - in just six days.

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It's a 110-mile, 94-lock circuit, with a stretch in Chester called Heartbreak Hill, where you have to knock off 31 steep locks in a single day.

If, on top of this, you introduce the concept of 2pm being “Gin Time”, and sink so much red wine over dinner that, on reflection, you are still pretty drunk when “Gin Time” comes around the next day, you will suffer. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that I felt as if I were 57-years-old for a week after our return.

But let's not think of that now. For, right at this moment, we are at Autherley Junction, Wolverhampton, just about to pick up our boat. The Elizabeth is an eight-berth navy-blue tin-bath, with coiled-rope fenders down her sides, “In case you crash,” the man from Napton Narrowboats says.

“Crash?” I ask. “Surely narrowboats move at the pace of custard? How can we crash?”

“Well, maybe you'll be lucky,” he says, showing us the kitchen, two bathrooms, bath, TV and tiller, before waving us off down the Shropshire Union Canal, towards Market Drayton.

Although we are, as expected, moving at about the pace of custard, it is immediately, nerve-rackingly apparent that narrowboats are called

“narrowboats” for a reason. And it is that the waterways they travel on are exceedingly narrow. Should you be navigating a stretch of water with moorings on one side, your margin for steering error is, roughly, the width of a tea-tray. Within minutes, both my husband and I had slammed into a moored boat, lost both our nerve and reason, and delegated the day's steering to Michael. Michael, Caroline and their daughter, Maddie, 8, are our great friends, whom we decided to barge with because the adults know a great deal about boats, wine and anecdote, while Maddie possesses the entire Doctor Who box-set, in case of inclement weather.

Michael makes it about seven miles north in four hours, where we moor in a flurry of ropes, cook a gigantic dinner, talk bollocks until 3am, and then go to sleep. The next day - a sunny, breezy example - is where we really get to grips with being on a boat. Not least because Michael appears on deck wearing Captain Jack Sparrow eyeliner and a pink sarong, declares a Pirate Republic, and first moots the concept of 2pm being “Gin Time”. Even though a barge isn't a real boat - no sails, no open water - there is still a pleasing bustle to the business of operating one.

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