Rob-M

At a minimum have a carbon monoxide alarm and make sure it is working.

If my numbers come up tonight it would definately be on my short list.

Or wait for the next repeat on Quest as it is regularly repeated, perhaps they may have made enough from repeat showings to cover the fitout costs of Dover.

The Heritage Working Boat Group are always happy to welcome new members (www.heritageworkingboats.org.uk). We also assist the CRT Explorers with school events which are a great way of demonstrating working boats to youngsters and showing them how canals work. It would be good to get some younger volunteers to help with boat moves, educational days and talking to the public at events.

That will be because I only looked at the top page of the boat listings when I looked at the site on the archive. The code in Jim's site won't work on the archive site so sorry not a good work around.

The web site address for Jim's site is http://www.jim-shead.com. Put this in the Wayback Machine box and click Take Me Back. From the page of dates click a highlighted date to see the web site from that date. Edited to correct spelling

If you go to the web archive site, http://archive.org/web/web.php you can put in the address for Jim's site and view the boat list.

I don't have contact details as I just post the event list on our website but the Tipton festival is organised by the Tipton Community Association I think. Last year I believe there was a good public turn out. Windmill End is also popular and that is organised by the Black Country Boating Festival (Link to 2012).

Yes, HWBG will be at Windmill End as well. The Tipton event is out on the Main Line at Coronation Gardens before Tipton Junction rather than in BCLM.

The Heritage Working Boat group have an event at The Black Country Living Museum for that weekend. We have Coronation Gardens listed as being the weekend before.

The whois lookup shows it as expiring in April, perhaps he is changing hosts as there has been an update to the record today.

Yes work has already been carried out, it was drained earlier in the year with an open day and a chance for the local school children to take a tour.

You need to carry a short loop of rope and a karabiner to clip round the handrails of the two gates to hold them closed whilst you then walk to the other end and draw the paddles, remembering to go and reclaim your kit once the water is rising.

Personally the Stourport Ring as there is more canal than river cruising and I prefer being on the canals as sometimes the rivers are high banked and not much to see especially the Severn. We also had time in Birmingham so the kids could go shopping in the Bull Ring which they don't normally get to do when we are out on the canals.

Many years ago I took two boats around the Avon Ring in a week from Alvechurch. I had plenty of crew but they were all Japanese school children and didn't understand going ahead and setting locks. It was a hard week but they did manage a bit of sight seeing in Stratford. We did the Stourport Ring this year and that was a leisurely week with two adults and two children.

Paddle Ale, Deep Cut, Full Pound.

I last did the four counties a couple of years back going clockwise and seemed to find more boats going anti clockwise so we seemed to fly through where as there were queues at locks in the other direction. I tend to like to boat long days in the summer but use Canal Planner to give a rough guide especially on a one week hire doing a ring where you have to get back on time. I had a crew of wife and two young daughters so we weren't rushing but still got back early. I look for a target point fir mid werk and plan to that, on that trip it was making sure I had cleared Harecastle tunnel mid week.

We generally book last minute in school holidays when hiring and have always found a good bargain on some good boats. In the last few years we have used Countrywide Cruisers, Ashby Narrowboats, Lime Farm Marina and Kate Boats. It depends whether you want to gamble on getting what you need at the last minute but personally i would say it is worth holding on.