MalcolmH

Carlt, I was intrigued by your mention of 'Jetboil'. I just had to investigate further and it looks like a superb piece of kit. Ideal for brewing on the move when its to hot for the boatmans stove. What model do you have?. Mal

We've just returned from an out and back trip from Audlem to Ellsmere port. On our return journey to Audlem we stopped near the old Barbridge Inn so we could have a meal. Firstly, we arrived on a Saturday evening and there were only handful of tables that were not reserved. The place was buzzing with people both inside and out, canal folk and locals; it was great to see this. The drink and food is a little more expensive than other places we visited. We had two large fish and chips plus a pint and a half of beer and one large and small glass of wine, with a small tip this came to £36.00. The quality of the food was good. The portions were extremely generous (probably what you need after the Adderley and Audlem flights!!), our fish was hanging over the side of the plate. A lot of the locals were going for the Steak Pie. This looked incredible. It consisted of a proper fully encased square pie that looked delicious. There is the option for smaller portions which we would consider next time. The beer was from a small local brewery and was very good. We'll certainly plan further stops at this hostelry. It was very enjoyable. If your plans mean that you'll be eating there on a Saturday evening I would recommend booking. By the way the, the trip to Chester then on to Ellesmere Port was fantastic, do try and make it to Ellesmere if you can. Plan for at least an afternoon looking round the BW museum and Manchester Ship Canal, it was very interesting. Have a great time Malcolm and Caroline

Just to close this thread. I managed to source a chimney from Brenmarl Engineering. The manufacturer/distributor of parts for the Epping Stove. They provide(d) Phil Trotter with collars, stoves and Chimneys for the RW Davis Norwich Traders

Can anyone tell me where I can source a chimney that will fit over a collar that has and outside diameter of 4 5/8". All I can seem to find are ones that are 6" o/d

When wanting to do a 180 at a winding hole when the wind is on your back I imagine its best to put the bow into the hole and use the wind plus engine to push the stern round in the direction you want to go. What about when the opposite is true, when your travelling into wind and want to turn. I'd be tempted to pass the winding hole, try to reverse in and let the wind push the bows round. This is probably fraught with the danger of getting the stern stuck in the mud but I imagine it could be tricky if not impossible to force the back round into wind on engine power alone. I've never had to deal with this yet, anyone got any experience to relate.

We went down the flight last week and they simply padlocked locks 1, 6 and 11 at 16:00. They re-opened at 8:00 the following morning. As mentioned previously theres lots of good mooring before lock 6 (going down) if you get stuck. You can get an ok meal at the Kings Head as well, they also allow well behaved dogs.

Hi Robin2 Are you talking about during the burn process. For me this is all done at home so irrelevant. I hadn't considered the power output during playback thinking it was insignificant. Go on, tell me it's going to exhaust my 4 leisure batteries after half an hours use?. Cant use any more than a cd player can it? Just checked the power consumption of my NAS drive. 12W in operation and 5W in sleep mode.

I've recently researched all this for my boat. Its a mine field and gets quite complicated. I dont think theres any need to compress. Burn you cd's onto a NAS drive in FLAC format. You can then convert these to mp3 if you use an ipod. The point is that with FLAC you have a direct copy of the cd with the quality of the cd as well. I used MAX (on a MAC, theres more choice of burning software with Windows) and burnt all my cd's onto a QNAP NAS drive. I used FLAC format. I back all this up on another external hard drive. Eventualy I'll have one NAS for the boat and one for home. The poster that says devices aren't available that read FLAC files must be thinking about something else. Sonos, Revo, Roberts, Squeezebox, Naim, Linn to name but a few, there are countless others, they all support FLAC. In order to play your cd's from NAS to a streaming device you'll need a media server which sits on the NAS. I use Twonky. This came pre-installed on my NAS When burning the cd's you need to have thought about a tagging strategy. This is very important when it comes to accessing your Cd collection, getting artwork to be presented etc. Particularly so if like me you like classical music. I need to re-do a lot of this as I got it wrong first time. This is where it gets complex and I'm not really experience enough to comment further. Your probably better of researching one of the audio forums for more info. Having your CD/DVD collection on a NAS drive seems to me the ideal solution for a boat, it takes up so little space. You can also stream music to all parts. I have a device in the boatmans plus one in the saloon. I'm waffling so I'll stop there, just hope you've realised that all this requires a little thought and planning up front. I also wanted to put right the fact that there are plenty of FLAC devices available. Malcolm

I'm also researching this for my boat and couldn't find a dongle into which an antenna could be connected. I found this router: Zalip CDG561 router You slot the Simm card in the router and the areial connects directly to the router. The router has four ethernet sockets for direct connection to PC or music streamer etc. I now have my cd collection on a QNAP NAS and am installing a couple of RJ45 cables; one in the boatmans and one in the saloon, the above router should satisfy all my music streaming requirements. A wireless network is also available Can anyone see any shortcomings. Malcolm

Love the look and feel of the Piper boat also love the idea of a range cooker on a narrowboat; but the above photograph illustrates that the position of the range may compromise the corner storage space (and indeed the usefulness of the work surface) between the edge of the cooker and the side of the boat (gumwhale?). I can understand why the range should be central but couldn't counterbalance weight be added to compensate for the weight of the range being positioned close to the side. A similar situation occurred on our recent Middlewhich hire boat (Rohan) where two galley cupboards were in corners and that space wasn't utilised, just seemed a waste when space is at a premium. As an aside, during our first week on Rohan we did the Cheshire Ring and popped in to see Braidbar out of interest. Thought we'ed only be 10 to 15 min's having a look round. One and a half hours later after looking at four boats in various stages of completion we came away very impressed. Malcolm