About Explore Moor
“The story behind the work.”
“Sometimes the dream is not just the boat. Sometimes it is the life you are trying to build around it.”
Explore Moor is the personal story behind Narrow & Wide.
It follows the real-life journey of trying to build a better future from rural Mid Wales, while caring for family, living with health pressures, looking after animals, learning in public, researching boat life, and slowly turning ideas into something useful.
It is not a polished lifestyle brand pretending everything is easy. It is a place for writing, videos, notes, research, small wins, setbacks, hope, humour, chaos, and the honest work of building something better from where we are.
Why Explore Moor exists
Explore Moor grew from the same place as Narrow & Wide: real life.
Our family life is full, complicated, loving, exhausting, funny, and often held together with tea, animals, stubborn hope, and too many browser tabs.
I am building because I want a better future for my family. I want more freedom, more possibility, more stability, and a life that feels less like surviving and more like choosing.
The waterways became part of that hope because they represent movement, space, independence, and a different way of living.
Explore Moor is where that story can breathe.
Mandy and our family are part of the heart of this, but Explore Moor will always try to share the story with care, dignity, and boundaries.
What Explore Moor is
Explore Moor is a place for:
- •writing and essays
- •notes and reflections
- •videos and behind-the-scenes updates
- •boat dreams and research
- •rural Wales and home life
- •family, caring, and real-life pressure
- •animals and ordinary chaos
- •building Narrow & Wide in public
- •learning, changing direction, and small wins
- •honest thoughts about trying to build a better life
Some of it will be practical. Some of it will be personal. Some of it will probably be a bit chaotic. That is allowed.
What it is not
Explore Moor is not:
- a perfect lifestyle performance
- a fake narrowboat dream account
- a glossy influencer brand
- a place where every private detail becomes public
- a promise that everything will go to plan
- a channel pretending I know everything already
- a funnel pretending to be a friendship
- a drama machine
- a place for cruelty, pile-ons, or gossip
It is a real story, shared carefully.
Where Narrow & Wide fits in
Narrow & Wide
Narrow & Wide is the practical platform growing alongside the story.
It is where the tools live: cost planning, listings, directories, Learn, Boat Log, and the practical systems that make narrowboat and widebeam life easier to understand.
The practical platform for planning, finding, recording, and managing narrowboat and widebeam life.
Explore Moor
Explore Moor is different.
Explore Moor is the story behind the work: why it matters, what we are learning, what goes wrong, what changes, and what it feels like to try to build something useful from real life.
The story, writing, videos, research, behind-the-scenes updates, family life, rural Wales, and the human side of the work.
You can follow the story, use the tools, or move between both.
Where Moor & More Studio fits in
Moor & More Studio is the umbrella for connected projects from Millie Carter, including Explore Moor and Narrow & Wide.
For now, it simply gives the work a proper home. It holds the connected projects clearly, without pretending to be a big agency or a finished empire.
Small is allowed. Clear is useful.
Why the waterways matter
The waterways are not just scenery in this story.
They represent space, movement, choice, slower living, and the possibility of a different rhythm. A boat is not a magic answer, and boat life is not simple. It can be expensive, cold, cramped, complicated, and full of decisions that look romantic from the outside and very practical once you start researching properly.
That is partly why Narrow & Wide exists.
But the dream still matters. The dream gives the work direction.
Whether it is narrowboats or widebeams, the process involves deep research, balancing costs, making trade-offs, and frequent reality checks—all anchored by hope.
What I will share
The real journey
Family, caring, rural Wales, health, animals, hope, and the attempt to build a different future.
Learning in public
The research, decisions, doubts, mistakes, changes of direction, and small discoveries that happen while building something real.
Boat dreams, research, and reality checks
Costs, layouts, heating, toilets, moorings, propulsion, widebeams, narrowboats, continuous cruising, and the questions that come up before you ever step aboard.
Building Narrow & Wide
What I am building, why I am building it, what I am learning, what breaks, what changes, and what starts to make sense along the way.
Writing, video, and small moments
Substack posts, YouTube plans, updates, reflections, behind-the-scenes notes, and the smaller pieces of life that do not need to become polished essays.
The story has boundaries
Explore Moor is personal, but it is not everything.
Some parts of life will be shared. Some will be softened. Some will be delayed. Some will stay private.
Mandy and my family are part of the heart of this story, but they are not content. Caring, health, identity, home life, and family life deserve dignity and care.
The aim is to be honest without being careless.
“Real does not have to mean exposed.”
How to follow
The easiest way to follow the longer story is through Explore Moor Journal. Videos and shorter updates will grow around it over time.
One last thing
Explore Moor is not about pretending the future is easy.
It is about trying anyway.
It is about building from the middle of real life, with all the mess, love, animals, tabs, tea, mistakes, research, worry, hope, and stubbornness that comes with it.
If that sounds like your sort of story, you are very welcome here.
Welcome to Explore Moor.
We’re very glad you’re here.