About us

Thanks for stopping by at the Chris and Shell website, to keep you up to date with our plans and adventures, whether that be by Narrowboat, Van, Motorbike, Bicycle or on foot. We are a married couple who have chosen to live a minimal life on board a 57 ft Narrowboat, Oddstruck Belle (OB) since 2017.

We had been saving hard for a mortgage deposit, and it was a healthy sum we had accumulated. But it wasn’t enough to be in a great position if we did pursue the traditional deposit and mortgage route. We were aware that we wanted to live, not just survive! We wanted our life together to be full of love, fun and adventure.

Then a minor operation led Chris to be seated for 3 weeks unable to do anything. And in that time, discovered alternative ways of living on YouTube!

We watched Cruising the Cut, Narrowboat Experience, Robbie Cummings and the Indie Projects, who at the time had their little Narrowboat. We also discovered the tiny house movement and van life, all of these alternatives to the traditional bricks and mortar, we were very inspired!

This led to a search for an appropriate boat. With our budget the narrowboat was always going to be a fixer upper, but we soon came to realise it would mean a lot of fixing and upping!! We found our narrowboat, Oddstruck Belle and the adventure began! It was a huge leap, but undettered by the challenge we got stuck in and ripped OB apart! A trial by water ensued as we came to realise the magnitude of this decision by embracing this minimalist lifestyle.

We were married in 2019 and on our honeymoon touring Hong Kong and Thailand, we were very inspired and decided to reignite our efforts on living a more creative life. As neither of us fulfilled our early passion for art and utilised our art degress, Shell is a Pattern Design graduate and Chris is a Fine Art graduate.

We have been documenting our life restoring our home, living and creating in a tiny space on our YouTube channel Chris and Shell

To join us on our adventures please visit HERE