Bacchus

If you forget narrow canals, a Peter Nicholls Huffler will take you a lot of places...

There's a skipper 17 facebook group - not a massive group, but very knowledgeable about the marque (I have a skipper twin lifting keel - lovely little things, although I haven't actually sailed it yet...). I was rehearsing getting the rig up only yesterday with a saily mate.

Oh, and a bit more advice for the OP - do the research, look at dozens, maybe scores of boats, decide on exactly what you want, and then fall in love and buy something that doesn't tick any of your boxes, but speaks to you! Can't speak for everyone, but that certainly seems to be what I do...

fair, but the OP said that he/she wanted "to view a range of boats and different sizes to get a better understanding of everything". Whenever I have been to a brokerage, it has been to view a specific boat. I wouldn't have thought a broker would take kindly to showing someone round every single boat they have. Going to a boat show will give them an idea of what they think they want to purchase, then they can start looking at actual boats for sale - and anyway the OP didn't specify second-hand. The boats at a show will be for sale too, and they may have just won the lottery 🙂.

I should have thought the best place for a novice to pick up information would be at a boat-show. You're not wasting anyone's time there, they're literally there to tell you about their products. If it's canal boats you're interested in, you could do a lot worse than going to Crick (https://www.crickboatshow.com/) If it's other types of inland/sea-going boats, one of the boat shows at Southampton or Excel might be better.

I bought a house in Reading with an EOG and had mooring/fishing rights "automatically". Maybe things have changed, or maybe it was because it was on a river part of the K and A. As far as the OP is concerned, a good place to go for ideas (although perhaps a little far...) - plenty of variety, including what looks like an old narrowboat being used as some kind of garden building.

Get on a little boat, tootle along the canal, and see what others have done...

Have you checked all of it? Because there is quite a lot of information if you look closely.

actually I have just checked the local recycling centre and they do accept gas bottles (and don't specify that they have to be empty... I guess they all have some gas in so they must be able to deal with it) Cool. Ta all. Jobs a good 'un

I did that! A friend of mine wanted to go into movie special effects, once we built a farmhouse out of plaster of paris, and wrapped the can in a paraffin-soaked rag, set fire to the rag, then shot the can to see what it would be like "on a film-set". To scale it would have been if someone had accidentally set "Little Boy" off in the farmhouse... I live in Surrey. They do eff-all. The recycling site is so expensive that most people seem to just fly-tip around the local lanes (which, of course, costs far more to clear up than it would to run a proper recycling facility, but Surrey put the moron into oxymoron when it comes to "council logic"!

I did contemplate flaring it off like an oil-rig...

I did think about that... somebody recently took a defunct mitre saw that I left by the bin for that reason. Bit worried about it going in the crusher half-full of gas though! I wondered why it always feels so roomy!

I did wonder about an art-thing, or maybe a stool/coffee table, but there's a lot of gas in it which can't safely be used. It literally leaks from the valve as soon as the valve is opened.