re. Silsden Boats. A bit late in the day for this thread but for what it's worth we had a short holiday with Silsden Boats last Spring (2011), going from Silsden to Foulridge and back. We were hard-pressed to find anything wrong with our narrow boat, which was only one year old, very clean, modern (they fit out their own boats) and comfortable. The only point of minor complaint was that the electrics weren't up to operating the microwave, but I thought trying to run a microwave on a canal boat did seem a bit ambitious !
Living only half an hour from Silsden and passing through there regularly we had chance to view the boat before booking it which helped -we just called in un-announced one Saturday during the winter and they were happy to show us round some boats. Lastly their prices, at least last year, seemed very reasonable.
Not having had a canal holiday in quite a few years we were happy having watched the pre-journey DVD on lock operation etc and any questions we had were answered. There was also a DVD on the boat and plenty of other safety and boat operating information. The boat hand-over was very thorough and overall I was very impressed with the company and would go with them again without hesitation if we had another canal holiday on the Leeds - Liverpool.
