James York

I nominate Alrewas lock on the river trent As you can see in the foreground the main channel meets the canal then another 50yards further on (just next to the lock) a smaller faster flowing channel enters. Can be a pain if the trent is in flood.

A very good place to stop is Shardlow, the atmosphere in that little place is great. I can also advise going into Barton-Under-Needwood and going into the Middle Bell, great food and again a good atmosphere. Watch out for Stenson lock as its one of the deepest on the network and can be quite fierce at times espicially when going up. If you get a heavy period of rain (i hope not) then i'd advise ringing BW and checking the state of the trent as that river can get nasty after a bit of rain. Hope you have a nice holiday!

Also a good website to use is www.waterscape.com they offer some good info for free.

The thing with rust is it looks much worse than it is. Quite a few mm of rust is equvilant to very little metal. This coupled with the relativley low oxygen levels at the lower depths means bottom plates corrode very slowly.

Yes i agree with you Gill. I can highly recommend the Middle Bell in Barton Under Needwood. Its good if you like a bit more of a modern venue. The food is very nice again modern dishes and very proffesional in there.

Yes the RC car scene has certainly improved a lot in the last few years. The best battery you could get when i got into it was a 2400 NiCd. Now as already stated you can get up to 4200 NiMH. The devlopment of the ESC (Electronic speed controller) from the old MSC has been phenominal too. Just shows how fast technology can change. This is all in the space of about 3years

The one thing ive always hated doing is going down the weed hatch. Luckily ive only ever done it once and it turned out to be a bit of rope. So whats the worst thing you've ever dragged out the weed hatch. Im guessing the worst place is b'ham and so far i have managed to avoid it. PS. Sorry if this had been discused before

I met one of those huge dutch barges comming down the lower part of the Trent & Mersey. With boats moored on one side trees and shallow bed to the other i had two options either back all the way up (about 100m) or force it on to the bank. Well me being me i went with the latter. Luckily it worked quite well. As he passed his wash pulled us off the bank and we were on are way again, but had an inexperienced crew been in charge of either boat it could have got nasty. I don't think they are a good idea at all, they are just too big and they create a bigger wash

I actually quite like it. Its something diffrent!