Rob-M

Great Haywood is a half day cruise from Stone so makes a good weekend trip or similar to Fradley or Penkridge.

Yes, locking in to Portishead marina. It is quite impressive when they just start opening the gates with a full lock of water.

Not really gate paddles as they let water in by slowly opening the gates but I'm not sure I would want my bows that close to the gates as the water started to flow...

Have you got pictures of them all as well, you could produce a book "Hudson Narrow Boats Today". It would be like a modern boat equivalent of the "Historic Working Narrow Boats Today" books.

It seems that auto notify of replies is now on by default, when I post this is on.

I was looking at producing something where you just visited a web page and clicked a button to submit current location so it would just need a device that had internet and location services.

You may want to check which have vacancies as that may reduce your options, I know Great Haywood is usually full unless you only have a short boat under 50ft.

He'll be packing his trunk.

Hope you have an enjoyable trip. When we went up the Caldon earlier in the year we only saw a few boats moving.

I started playing with an online Google map that you could post current location on as a way of others tracking where each boat was but much the same, work is a bit in the way.

If they are close enough I would hold the bridge and let them through and assume they will do the same at the next one. If they aren't that close I would close up and carry on. If there are multiple boats then I might rethink but if you have unlocked with your keys then it is either close it in front of someone or wait for somebody to come and swap keys with you.

I agree with John, if you want to go to Llangollen then do the trip. Plan for your three days each way but you may need to make an early start or longer days if you are held up significantly. When we last did the trip about 10 years ago we did Preston Brook to Llangollen and back as a 10 day trip but we like to boat daily and not just do a few hours every other day.

Very good aerial shot and of course the shot of poleing in one of the Dudley Tunnel caverns. I agree the Railway Inn is certainly on the "don't bother visiting again" list.

I'm pretty certain when I passed the oil boat his sign said free oil disposal.

The last few times I have been through there have been boats moored both sides above the top lock overnight and on the towpath side after Broad Street bridge. There is the offside secure mooring as well but no access off the mooring. The services in Broad Street basin normally have a CRT workboat moored in there and there are signs saying no overnight mooring.

You should have come round to Tixal, there was an early rush of boats Sunday morning but then seemed to go quiet. One boater said Colwich lock had been damaged and was going to be closed to repair the top gate.

Hi Lindsay, Nearer the time there will be a thread on here for the 2018 challenge which will have all the members on here who are taking part. If you ask again on that thread anyone looking for additional crew will likely be in touch. Welcome to Canal World by the way.

^^^ Exactly what I was going to suggest.

As Athy said. I would never use a rear seat whilst the boat is moving as there is always the risk the tiller will be suddenly swept round or you may have to make a sudden hard over movement with the tiller. Often you see a couple boating along, steerer happily stood in front of the tiller arc and somebody else sat relaxing on a rear seat. If something jammed in the rudder or the steerer had to hard over to avoid a collision then their passenger may suddenly be in the canal and a high possibility they will be pulled through the propeller. There were seats on our boat when we purchased it but I had them removed.

Having looked through some CSS this morning with the IE Debugger tools it seems that the Opacity is set using the ipsFaded class, although it is quite difficult to pick things apart from only being able to see the presented web page, and the Opacity level is changed when the mouse is over a post. A search of all CSS files could be done to change the ipsFaded opacity level to something nearer 0 then it wouldn't be quite as faint. The only issue with modifying the CSS in the theme is if there is a theme update any customisations will be lost unless IPS provide a way to override core settings which is what I am used to with Drupal based sites. I am using the Shift theme with the default colour scheme. Mac may be using the Legacy theme or changed colours which would be why he has white backgrounds.

Never heard of them but half a dozen boats listed on canal plan boat listing as being built by Calm Waters.

That's fine if you have a more but on a tablet or phone you have to select a post by touching it before the Report Post the white. I am sure it will just be in the CSS, I don't have a plugin on my tablet to view the applied style. When I'm next in the laptop I'll have a look at what styles are applying.

They don't give much away do they. What about number of berths, number of batteries, is it 12v, 24v, any 240v. What is included in the sale.

Didn't somebody fall to their death last year when they lent on a piece of railing and it gave way...?