TheBiscuits

Do you mean full?

That's plain rude. Name and shame that one! In general response to the rest of your post, I find there are tossers in all walks of life, and simply owning an old boat is no exception to the rule. That said, some of the old boats crews are the most courteous helpful people you are likely to find on the cut.

It's also worth noting that if you have the calorifier and a gas heater plumbed in without a changeover valve you get extra cold water mixed with your warm calorifier water through the unlit gas heater. You will end up with tepid at best.

You will also need to swap your aluminium anodes for magnesium ones fairly quickly. This can be done either at the two marinas in Rufford or at Mayor's Boatyard at Tarleton. Aluminium anodes are the correct ones for the brackish water in Liverpool docks but the wrong ones for freshwater on the canal.

Do the boaters also have to pay the omitted registration fees? It does make you wonder why CRT don't bother with doing this, as they regularly quote 4% of 35,000 boats being unlicensed. (1400 boats)

Quite agree, and a calendar of homes ranging from boats to chocolate box cottages to stately homes might be intended to make people think about what a home means to them.

Or cheat ... https://www.shewee.com

They moved it! https://waterwaynews.blogspot.com/2019/06/gate-failure-could-close-rochdale-canal.html

How do you know?

"Lloyds Loopers"

Yep, that would cover it nicely. (As above, my bowthruster has a 12' ash pole and a fondness for white wine. I understand the Vetus ones keep their opinions on my steering to themselves!)

The flow and geometry on the Douglas and the Ribble mean you always have to punch the tide whichever way you travel. Slack tide is generally around the Astland Perch whichever way you are travelling on the link. It is slightly easier to get to Preston if you get it wrong, despite being quite a way upstream - the cill heights are the dictating factor. I have often observed that the expert canal engineers of 200 years ago decided the Savick Brook crossing was not worth the effort! One of the last working boatmen to work the L&L and the Ribble Estuary used to have a technique that involved flagging the sandbanks (not the mudbanks because then you get stuck!) on the previous tide and then sitting on one at the mouth of the Douglas and waiting for the following tide. If he had not taught Harry Mayor at Tarleton some of the ways of the river, he would never have been let out at Tarleton in the first place, so it's definitely not a recommended way to do the crossing!

@NB Esk want another midlife crisis?! Think of it as spares ...

Yep. They might pull faces at you, but there is nothing other than tide timings stops you over-nighting in Preston on the way up - although I usually recommend to people they hang a left on the way down off the Ribble Link and go to Preston anyway. If you go up to Preston and then leave there on your way to Savick Brook, Please Please let both CRT and Riversway Port Control know *in advance* that is what you are doing. It saves them having to scramble the Lytham lifeboat to try and find you ... It's probably one of the places that should have been on the IWA Silver Propeller list - hardly anyone goes there, but it's a great little (40 acres in a city centre!) marina and dock basin. It is also the "safe harbour" cop out if you fail to make Savick Brook in time to clear the rotating sea lock cill, but you do need to pay a tenner a night for the privilege. If that's too much, make sure you moor on the bullnose outside the marina - on the floating buoys please! - and not on the riverbank. The Ribble has the second biggest tidal range in the UK - up to 8 M / 26 ft - so you really do not want to be over the deep mud on the riverbank when the tide goes out!

Just as an interesting thought, you don't need to book the Ribble Link to go to Preston Marina. The Ribble Link booking is technically to go up Savick Brook, not to drop Tarleton Lock and go down the Douglas and up the Ribble ...

You have missed the Stephen Frys ...

Wow! That's fairly high on my list of things thou shalt not do in a lock, coming immediately after cilling the boat. If nothing else you can't run water through as fast with a boat in the way!

There's an Aldi at Tunstall not far north of Westport Lake or just a bit south of Harecastle too.

Agreed, but this is roof paint and specifically says not for water tank use.