national velvet

No continuous moorers at all as far as we could see this summer, it surprised us that there appeared to be no ccer's in this area at all either. No trouble either on any of the bits we managed to do in a couple of weeks. This was the second time we have visited the BCN and definitely not the last. Loads of canals, a bit shallow, but not half as full of rubbish as we expected. We heard dreadful stories about the Wolverhampton flight, but had a wonderful flight down ( first in the morning before all the scrots were up!) The stories of bad experiences seem to get magnified, these can happen anywhere, the trick is, as has been said to treat the possible trouble makers with a touch of humanity, and hopefully you can get through unscathed. We had kids trying to jump on top of the boat in Stone (Trent and Mersey) not a usual place to expect problems chatted to them and calmed the situation. If we avoid areas because of bad reputations, eventually we won't be able to get anywhere round the system!

This is a genuine sea otter, built by the sea otter team, I know one of them who works for the firm.They are still going all be it in a reduced capacity. Aluminium boats are not cheap, but the ongoing maintenance is far less than for a steel boat. Paint work, blacking is purely cosmetic. It is a genuine advert. The stern shape is a fairly new innovation, in my opinion much better on the eye than the usual square shape they used to have.

I think NBS has been skating on thin ice for some time. I know several people who have sold boats through them. They had a devil of a job to get the money from them once the boat had been sold. One went and sat in their office and refused to move until they paid him, because after numerous phone calls they did not pay up. Sounds like they had cash flow problems.

Tingdene Marinas are still selling aluminium boats made by ex sea otter employees at Staveley. They are exhibiting one at the southampton boat show in September. As previously said, they are good boats, although more expensive than steel boats. Take into consideration the lack of blacking, anodes, cost of getting out of the water etc they are something to consider.

Will be running 8 hours a day for the next week so boat will be lovely and warm from engine heat, just batten down the hatches and bask in the free heat.We find that if stove is lit this time of year the boat gets over hot, all hatches and doors have to be open and money spent on coal goes straight out the window!

Rugby boats will sell your boat from your home mooring, we sold our last boat this way, although we are located along way from the brokerage. We got excellent service, and would recommend him to anyone.

Perry bar locks, BCN. We had to spend some time hauling all the detritis (cans, bottles, bags,etc all mixed up with copious amounts of weed) out of the top lock before we could exit it. However the parts of the BCN we visited we found to be much better than we had imagined. We were astounded at the lack of boats of any sort. No Cc'ers or moored boats anywhere that we visited. Some days we did not see any moving boats any hardly any moored boats at all. Shame as apart from the very low water levels the canals are definitely worth a visit.

Mad O'roukes looks great - thanks for the tip, moral of the story, ask before you go away - not after!!

We were outside the museum, on the visitors moorings by the sanitary station a couple of weeks ago. Did not visit the museum as have done several times before, but not recently. It was always a good day out and packed. Shame if it is in decline. However we did a walk round the area to try to find a decent pub and were sadly disappointed. All we could muster was a place that should have died in the 60's. Had we known we would have stayed further up the cut near Tipton, as it has already been suggested, nice moorings and a decent looking pub.