Article in the Guardian, includes a chapter that's refreshingly honest on skiff camping, and the photo also includes the Salters pleasure boat 'Wargrave', built in 1913, which put me in mind of the passenger services that Salters ran on the Thames, many of which were tied in to railway services, allowing various one way trips to be taken.

At a time when there's likely to be a meticulously researched book on any small facet of the railway system, longer distance pleasure boat services on the Thames are a somewhat unexplored facet of transport. I've never come across a personal account of a trip on the very long running through service between Kingston and Oxford which lasted long after the majority of its passengers had disappeared.

I heard that what finally made this service and others struggle is that there was a change in policy at the Thames Conservancy - previously the Salters boats were given priority passage at locks, which allowed the services to maintain a timetable in the same way that you'd expect a bus or train to turn up on time, but after this was dropped and the services had to queue in turn at the locks, that did away with the punctuality.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/aug/23/my-best-ever-british-holiday