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If you do a detailed efficiency analysis (fuel consumption) comparing a diesel engine with the series hybrid (generator + LFP batteries) for typical canal use, you find that on average the hybrid uses about half the fuel (50% saving) of the diesel -- I've posted such an analysis on another thread (or maybe earlier in this one, I forget which). This is because the generator runs for short periods at maximum efficiency (around 25%), the diesel runs all the time at lower efficiency (20% down to much less than 10%), especially when going slowly or in locks. This ignores energy input from solar, in other words it assumes that all the power comes from the generator. In summer, even when cruising all day you would expect about half the required power to come from solar, which means the hybrid saves 75% of fuel. If you only cruise for short periods each day or a couple of days per week then solar can supply all the power needed in summer, so fuel saving is 100%. In winter there's much less power from solar so the saving would drop back to closer to 50%, but there would still be a little bit of saving. So from a "green" point of view hybrids make a lot of sense -- though having 35000 boats go this way makes negligible different to the planet compared to 35M cars. From a money point of view they don't make sense today, the fuel saving is there but the installation cost is so high it's doubtful that this would be paid back before the death of the owner. But that's not why people are adopting them, they're doing it to get rid of engine noise when cruising -- and possibly to salve their green conscience... 😉 That's the point of view not from an enthusiast like Peter, but somebody who is well aware of all the pros (and cons) of a hybrid boat but is fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay for silent cruising. Others may well think this is a waste of money, that's their equally valid viewpoint. If in future charging bollards appear than that will change the picture (and economics) completely, but there's no credible plan for this 😞

Summary of current situation (from an Audlem resident): Bridge Inn open, good pub food every day except Tuesday, cheap beer (Marstons) and even cheaper on Tuesdays (but no food) Lord Combermere closed, but reopening 10 October (menu here https://www.audlem.org/lib/lord-combermere-menu-F692893.pdf ) Shroppie Fly closed, Star Pubs are advertising for new licensees Ayaans Indian Cuisine, takeaway indian food + pizzas, burgers etc. - excellent, large portions. https://ayaansindian.co.uk/ Village Chippy, closed Sunday - excellent Tearoom @ No. 11 - open daytime from Tuesday - Saturday Old Priest House, home cooked meals, open daytime but closed Tuesday. Believed to be changing hands at end of September. Linden Stores, expensive but reputedly excellent meals - check website https://www.lindenstores.co.uk/ for more details and opening times There's still lots of good reasons for visiting Audlem, including Audlem Mill for the biggest selection of canal books in Britain, gifts and needlework.

As has been pointed out many times, the lockies are suppose to ask if you want help. If they don't, tell CRT. Apart from that, they just mostly just seem to be people who are interested in canals, but who can't afford a boat, and are usually good for a chat. Or at least the ones I've met have been, but maybe that's just me. But anyway, there aren't many of them about, so none if this matters.

Hello Everyone, thought I would post a little about our trip that we returned back from on Friday. Day 1 Picked up the boat from Whixall which is a lovely marina with a good Cafe - we were on our way quickly but were happy with the standard of handover from anglowelsh. motored along to Ellesmere with a quick diversion into the town for some tea and sugar (we forgot) and some hand soap (anglowelsh forgot) and made plans to return - all the local shops were shut as it was after 6 but looked nice. the towpath was very busy along here with moored boats including the small arm into ellesmere which had another anglowelsh boat moored in the winding hole being repaired - ironically the one we hired in march but had no problems with - glad we moored up outside and walked in. had BBQ for tea but left no trace on the towpath. incidentally if you want less of walk moor on the llangollen side of ellesmere rather than hurleston but be warned the towpath is much nicer on the hurleston side. Day 2 got to frankton junction at 9am exactly right as the CRT arrived - brilliant we thought. we were 3rd in a queue of 4 but were happy enough wed be through the locks within an hour. however there were no less than 8 boats waiting to come off the montgomery as the locks were closed the day before due to the bank holiday - no boats could be let down until the first 6 had been let up due to the extreme narrowness of the canal at the bottom. we made up our minds to be early in the queue the day after when leaving the monty. we also met a lovely pair of brothers who were in the queue ahead of us along with their dog Lucy. we finally got onto the montgomery at 12 oclock! we went to the end of the monty - its a very pretty canal and the wildlife was the best we saw - i assume this is due to the less used nature of the canal. we turned around and made way to the queens head wharf - we knew the pub was closed but planned to walk to another pub 'the punchbowl' about 15 minutes away. sadly this does not serve food. if you are planning on visiting the Montgomery and visiting pubs along the canal do not visit monday to wednesday - most of the pubs are shut those days and those that are open dont serve food. we motored on and tried to find a mooring close to the locks but had a nightmare as there is no armco or mooring pins for a long way. we ended up mooring on the bottom lock landing of graham palmer lock - someone had already moored on the top and made our emergency curry for tea! day 3 after making bacon for breakfast (some was shared with lucy whose owners were actually the boat on the top landing of graham palmer lock, theyd struggled to find a mooring as well) and pulling a full pair of pants off the prop (we think we picked them up late on tuesday and didnt bother to check then) we managed to go through frankton back onto the llangollen quite early on wednesday and cruised chirk aqueduct and tunnel which were an amazing experience if hard work as the flow through both seemed very very strong. we moored just by the lift bridge before Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and had food and drinks in the aqueduct in which was absolutely fantastic if a bit of an uphill walk. would recommend it to anyone. after our evening meal we traversed the aqueduct which was the perfect time in my opinion - the magic hour of sun set was absolutely superb and the view was spectacular. we planned to turn around in trevor basin however it was completely full of boats. we then had to reverse our 70ft boat out past moored boats and anglowelshes remaining hire fleet at trevor. luckily those moored were very generous and gracious with their help including steering our boat as we have very little experience reversing so far. we managed to wind in the turning off the aqueduct and into the narrows towards llangollen. we made our way back over the aqueduct (much quicker thanks to the flow now helping) and were surrounded by bats which was incredible. we then really struggled to find a mooring as the sides were concrete and we were unable to bang in pins. we managed to find one but it was much later than we had planned and ended up mooring in the pitch black. if going to trevor/llangollen recommend you find a mooring early as the choice was extremely limited. day 4 we cruised back towards new marton when i noticed a vibration in the rudder. while waiting for the first lock i opened the weed hatch and pulled off some more fabric/plastic bags. and then we hit our biggest problem. the boats engine would not start. luckily some CRT staff were on hand - they had a look and also couldn't start it but decided to manually take us through the lock to save the full load of water from the boat coming up which we did - i acted as horse and was absolute beat by the time we'd reached the bottom. luckily after 30 minutes the boats engine magically restarted and we moved on again - we were glad as there was a queue of *12* boats waiting to go up and it would have been a nightmare dragging our boat past all of them. we arrived back at ellesmere around 3 and had a wander around the now open shops - would really recommend this it was a lovely market town with some really good local food shops, delicatessen and bakery. we ate massive steaks in the red lion and returned to the boat to move on a bit closer to whixall before mooring up for the evening which was probably our least dramatic mooring. day 5 the last day started not great as the engine took a while to get going again. we managed to get going eventually and after a quick ring anglowelsh were very understanding and we arrived back at whixall around 10. after telling them about the issues which included a very very leaky stern gland (wed used a full cartridge of grease in 3 days wed had the boat and it was running in by the end of each day, taking 10-15 turns to drop the water) and the engine issues we left and went to Llangollen for the day as we hadnt quite made it in the boat and had a lovely lunch in the Corn Mill! also managed to get some of one of my favourite cheeses 'rock star' from the snowdonia cheese company and few bottles of mead froma lovely delicatessen next to the main car park. if anyone would like some more information please let me know!

Get your builder to use epoxy blacking inside the tube and weedhatch. If the steel is prepared properly it should last many years (my BT tube epoxy blacking showed no signs of wear after 12 years) as it won't be subject to knocks, only wear from the BT propellor.

Just what I was thinking too. This thread is now over 120 posts, about a piddling little switch, let's hope Blackrose never tries to install a LiFePO4 system like yours. It would be the first one million post thread, I bet!

I have aJP2 in my boat. When I had the boat built I specified a 25 x 19 prop, as recommended by a well known Lister guru. In use the boat always felt very slow and underpropped, so at the first blacking,I took the prop to Norris's to ask their advice. I asked them what would be the maximum they could increase the pitch to. The answer was 25x23, but they would recommend 25x21. I had it repitched to 25x23, which makes for relaxed cruising but stopping is not great, and the boat can slew across the cut under hard braking if I'm not careful. The moral.....listen to Norris's advice, and try not to have more pitch than you really need.

It seems one of my replies has got lost in the ether, maybe vapourised?😉 Diesel vapourises at about 75oC, and you will not get a pool in the pot once it has warmed up. Kerosene vapourises at about 38oC so this is why it performs better than diesel, but its calorific value is less than diesel. I had mentioned about the catalysers, the various rings and meshes in the pot. I'm not sure what is in the Refleks, but the Bubble has a small mesh cage covered by a cone of wires supporting two rings. These help maintain a consistent temperature in the pot and will glow red. As I said before, the big problems with non performance are air leaks in the combustion chamber which stops the natural draw through the burner perforations.

We're planning to head from Bunbury towards Beeston today so I looked up the Shady Oak's website to see when we could go for a meal. They closed on last night until sometime in the spring. I can't say I'm enjoying the Sunlit Uplands of Brexit very much. MP.

This post was about food in Audlem, but it has been hijacked by people with personal agendas which have nothing to do with the subject. Can we get it back onto track please?

Have you not heard? It's all those nasty transgender people taking our jobs and our houses now. Next week it'll be the woke teachers again. Then the railway unions. Then Megan Markle will probably be due some hate. It's getting hard to keep up with who we're supposed to be angry with.

Cheap EU labour did have some very positive effects- e.g. the very difficult and nasty farming jobs were done using EU labour, and we had cheap prices for many UK produced foods for many years. Our farms were very competitive, at least within the EU marketplace. (Obviously they can't compete on price with huge industrial farms in the US and Australia, which is why I believe many of them will go out of business within 5-10 years.) I don't have data for this, but personally think the reason we employed so many EU workers was not just economical, but also because we simply don't have enough young people in the UK anymore to fill all the jobs in the economy. My impression is that although we have a high population density, it is an increasingly ageing population, with a trend of fewer young people each year to start on careers and replace the ones retiring. The EU labour was filling that gap, and as a by product it was bringing a youngish workforce into the country who were contributing to the economy. In my view, the start of the benefits culture- where entire streets and villages of people were claiming benefits, and when it became normalised and socially acceptable to live on benefits- was back in the 80s, when they were all thrown out of the mines, steelworks, car plants etc as a result of the policies of Thatcher's government.

Good luck!

Fascinating!

They don’t. We did, several times. They still don’t.

It had, may still have a Spoons and an Indian restaurant that doesn't sell alcohol, also a proper pub and an Italian restaurant

To put Volockies into context this just came up on Facebook

What exactly are the symptoms your stove is exhibiting? I have a Kabola Old Dutch stove, which initially didn't work out (regulator gummed up as it hadn't been used for 7 years) and having been unable to find anyone who could service or repair one, decided I would have to do it myself. Over the last few years I have become quite good at servicing it. As others have said, it is usually the burner pot needing to be cleaned (don't forget the tiny holes on the lower edge, invisible unless you have a led lit mirror on a stick), the supply feed blocked (use the scraper or a bent instrument screwdriver to clear the feed hole) or the regulator needing cleaning or adjusting (easy with care). I have been told that Toby Oil Control Valves for AGA's can be used are cheaper than Refleks, although the high and low flame setting may well need adjusting to suit. https://www.heating-parts.co.uk/s-211672/toby-oil-control-valve-4-8cc-aga-don-manual-auto-ocv/?refid=2&gclid=CjwKCAjw-L-ZBhB4EiwA76YzOeFCLKGSlOFK5tySjMX5L9Pt5ycuT7x0erJA-6KgzMQ6o88yiotNCBoC3_4QAvD_BwE

I put an inline filter in my Reflex and have not had an issue. Is yours fed from a separate tank and how clean is it? If the tanks clean and the diesels good once the regulators clean there shouldn’t be an issue.

But you haven't paid to use locks. They're just a very small fraction of it rarely taking up an hour or so of a boating day at most, often much less. And on the Weaver or the Ashby you don't get to play with them at all, so presumably you hate the things. You've paid to have a boat on the water, and that's it. If you just want to go up and down a flight all day, I think you've rather missed the point.

Because they know no better and don't understand what they are doing

The Welland No.7 name derives from the house name that the original owners lived in As an update to this post - Matty, thank you greatly for confirming the boats age, the year of commission as I understood it was 1982, but I had very limited information and it is likely to not be 100% accurate. I have since reached out via a public Facebook forum for the area that the family lived, the family name is indeed Dorken and I have been in contact with the next of kin of the late Mr n Mrs Dorken, who spent many happy years with the boat stationed at SHM who enjoyed it as a 'very lively' marina. To say they have a treasure trove of information on this boat would be an understatement, Mr Dorken was a meticulous man, with dozens of rammed photo albums of their retirement years spent cruising this boat on every available mile of canal and navigable river of the time, he kept a highly detailed log book of every movement that this boat made up until 2001 when it was sold. My understanding right now is that he held the original commissioning paper work that is missing from SHM records along with a very detailed service history for this boat which was craned out and maintained every year by Pete Hill at SHM. In his later years he wrote an unpublished memoir of his and Mrs Dorkens journeys on Welland No.7, the next of kin has very kindly offered for me to be able to digitally document all of this information so that it can remain attached to this boat for as long as it continues to stay afloat. Myself and my partner have spent that last 4, approaching 5 years and a considerable sum to ensure that this boat continues on for many many happy years to come and the massive history that comes with it will also be an important feature that we have continued to add to. Will be meeting the NOK in October to see for mentioned trove of information and very much looking forward to it! Brad. Circa 1986 - Original Paintwork commissioned by The Dorkens and produced by PH and Les. Circa 2018 - In 2001 the boat was sold with a brand new paint job and in 2004 the engine was replaced with a brand new Beta35 Greenline. There was issues with it and the new owner claimed on faulty paintowork, plagued by bloating and blistering issues for many years, we repainted the boat when purchased and suffered the same faulty paintwork issue which we believe and have later hopefully rectified was due to moisture trapped inside P38 bodyfiller, classically used by SHM in the early days to cover dips in steelwork or welding joints. The P38 was not the main fault but the moisture that was allowed to become trapped inside of it during the repaint of the boat in 2001. Unfortunately we did not inherit or know about the above beautiful paint job when first restoring her in 17/18. Circa 2022 - After a long run in the dry dock from April 2022, this is the current situation for the Welland No.7 - every layer of paint has been removed including all below the waterline (this is when we discovered the P38 bodyfiller. The profiling has been resolved with 2 pack epoxy based underwater suitable filler and I have then set about repainting both the top and bottom with 2 pack Jotun Epoxy paint - The bottom is a 5 coat system and the top is a 12 coat system that has had me spend many hours after dark scrubbing my body to get this stuff off my skin, hair and nails. The boat has also undergone a great deal of welding work this summer, a new chine has been welded around the full circumference of the boat and thankfully due to the heavy care this boat received during the first half of its life, it has only needed 3 small overplated steel plates added to the waterline, all works carried out by Paul at PRH Marine fabrication (Standsted Abbots marina) with 2 surveys this year I can confirm that 85% of the boat is in the same condition as when it was commissioned in **1984/5** and the rest has been resolved including new diesel tanks and repairs and replacements to D bars around the bow and stern of the boat. We do intend next summer to take inspiration from the original paint job to pay homage to the history of the boat now know as 'TheWellandTruly'.