Life afloat is like being in a constant David Attenborough documentary...

Even if you're sometimes at the mercy of Mother Nature, writes author and Thames dweller GEORGINA MOORE, who lives in one of the UK's largest houseboat communities

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HERE'S an eternal fascination with houseboats and, when you live on one, you really have to get used to all the questions, the most frequent being: “But isn't it really cold in the winter?” The answer, in case you were wondering, is no. We have central heating and, because the boat’s made of wood, it warms up fast!

Anyway, even if it was a bit cold, it'd be worth a few months shivering for the idyllic summer months, living on the glittering water alongside paddleboarders and rowers.

The other question is where I keep my clothes and shoes. Er, in a wardrobe of course. People often confuse canal boats with houseboats. They’re chalk and cheese.

Our houseboat on Taggs Island in the River Thames in Richmond upon Thames is more like a floating two-storey home than a canal boat. It has mains electricity, mains sewage, a garden and even a parking space!

Our island has 62 houseboats around its perimeter, some in a lagoon in the middle. They are all attached to steel girders deep in the riverbed and don’t have engines, so they’re not going anywhere.

Most of the time, once you’re on one — were it not for the incredible views, the occasionally noisy geese and the light reflecting from the water all around — you could easily forget it’s not a traditional house.

Like traditional houses, we still have to pay council tax — and all the usual bills hit us the way they do people on the land. One of the downsides of houseboat life is that you cannot get a mortgage, so you have to be a cash buyer; it’s something that puts off a lot of people.

But if we were trying to buy a house in the Hampton Court area with river views, there’s no way we would be able to afford it.

With something like 15,000 Britons living afloat, and some 1,000 of those based on the Thames alone, we're not that unusual. Though it can sometimes seem so. That’s why it makes such a brilliant backdrop for a story.