Lily Rose

Just a contact issue then, not a potentially two boats stuck situation.

Thanks Alan (and everyone else). I am definitely hoping not to meet someone at the kink (I assume there is only one) as that is probably the thing that concerns me most, which is why I'm not worried about Crick. However, is it possibly/easy to tell when you are getting near the kink so that, if necessary, speed can be adjusted?

Thanks all so far. Interesting about the CRT man. I'd assumed I should ring CRT to check re widebeams if I wanted to go through before, say, 8.30 as I didn't think they would send an employee or two along but perhaps I'm wrong.

Thanks for the advice so far. To confirm, my boat is a narrowboat.

I don't know that it is a problem. The point is I just don't know as I've never been through a long tunnel and I've never been past the Braunston Marina winding hole so I don't know that stretch of canal. Perhaps in a few days time I'll be wondering why I asked for advice. In fact your reply is already making me wonder why I bothered.

Hi all, I'm not exactly new to boating but still (just) within my first year of owning a narrowboat and my only experience of tunnels are the short ones at Snarestone and Rugby so hopefully this is the right forum to use. Early this week, probably on Tuesday, I will be heading through Braunston locks and then the Braunston Tunnel (and Crick tunnel a day or two later) for the first time after setting off from below Calcutt locks sometime on Monday. I've been advised to go through early in the morning or in the evening. The evening would be easier in the sense that I could go through after doing the locks without needing to moor overnight but I'd rather not go into a tunnel full of a day's worth of exhaust fumes. Also, as it will be my first long tunnel I would feel more comfortable going in early in the day when in the (hopefully unlikely) event of a breakdown there would be potential rescuers along fairly soon. Going through in the evening increases my fear of being stranded at a time when potential rescuers would be few and far between. Worst case scenario, stranded all night until the first boat comes through in the morning! And what if it was a widebeam? So I'm pretty sure I want to go through early, say about 8am (presumably I need to check with CRT first to make sure no wb passage has been booked?). However, I don't fancy doing 6(?) locks before 8am so would like to moor overnight between the last lock and the tunnel entrance. Is that advisable and are there likely to be spaces? What is it like in that area, is it a deep cutting? (I'm wondering about how effective my new solar panels will be there if it is) Should I be aiming to get through the locks to find a mooring early in the afternoon or will I still be OK at about 5 or 6pm? Any other advice from experienced Braunston tunnel users would be much appreciated. After reading other tunnel threads I have already bought myself a 12 volt LED spotlight to aim forwards at the tunnel roof in addition to the normal tunnel light. Hopefully that will make navigation a bit easier/less scary. Thanks, Sean

I bought a Huawei E5573 a couple of months ago and used it for a return trip from Calcutt to Snarestone at the top of the Ashby. Device was velcroed in the window and I did NOT connect an aerial. In the 12 day period, and about 20 mooring locations, we got a decent signal every time and only one of those times was 3G, all the rest were 4G according to the Huawei app. http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devices/Huawei/E5573_4G_Mobile_Wi-Fi?memory=0&colour=White On a 1 month contract, which I cancelled promptly in order to buy a 12GB/12 month SIM for £30 (so I'm not shelling out monthly subscriptions when I'm not using the boat), the upfront cost was £39 c/w c£60 on Amazon.

Similar, if a bit more drawn out before finally taking the plunge (so to speak) very quickly (in about 4 weeks) at the end... 2010 day boat Early October 2011 1 week hire Early July 2015 midweek hire Early August 2015 bought a 45' narrowboat Very expensive outcome from the 2015 midweek hire but still glad we did it.

Are you the ex-wife then?

I think I'll pass thanks. I suspect you're off to the dentist tomorrow to be measured up for a complete set of false teeth to replace the set of real ones that have now been ruined.

Thanks, that appears to be the Rescue Ladder from Miracle Leisure Products at £110 then. I think I'll get the 1.93 metre one from Hewitts at £50 as it's a lot cheaper and I don't need the plank bit as I already have the dedicated and none-too-cheap Midland Chandlers one. The 2.43 metre ladder looks like being a bit of a tight fit in the car so the 1.93 will have to do. It's also a bit lighter so hopefully more manageable for the missus when I'm in need of rescuing.

I've been re-reading this thread with renewed interest after the missus and I both recently got up close and personal with the North Oxford Canal (she fell, I jumped in straightaway after her without thinking whether or not that was a good idea, I got out easily thanks to the ledge at towpath side, she only got out with the help of folks nearby) and am interested in utilising Theo's splendid idea. I currently have a Midland Chandlers rope ladder but I'm not sure how much help that would be so I'm thinking of buying one of these... http://www.hewittladders.co.uk/ladders/Single-Class-1-Ladders and taking it to the boat (need to check what ladder length I can get it in the car first, 2m should work and hopefully 2.5m but 3m will probably not fit) to rig up as Theo did. Theo - these ladders range from 2 metres to 6 metres, what length is yours? My boat is trad stern and has suicide seats which I have not yet found a use for, perhaps this is it. I also wonder if I might be able to wrap something (rope?) around part of the underwater section to hold the steps 2 or 3 inches from the sides to make for easier toe holds and perhaps at the same time protect the blacking from scrapes. Do you raise and lower the ladder before/after cruising? I was wondering about ropes through several rungs so it can be lowered quickly if necessary to make it easier to get onto the first rung.

I've got three. I started with one when I got the boat last year but soon got fed up flipping it over the mushrooms, and will be having a couple of solar panels fitted in June which would make things even more diificult, so I soon added one of the spares as a 2nd line. So then I had one each side. Recently I sorted out a few spare bits of rope I found in a locker and one was a 14mm rope that had been cut in half for some reason. I've now added this as a 3rd centre line which is kept near the centre ring and run side to side so I can access it from either side. This sometimes comes in hand for quickly securing the centre of the boat temorarily, e.g. in windy conditions, so I can tie up fore and aft without having to keep pulling the boat back in. I find it easier and quicker using a short rope for this.

I don't understand how they decide which stores to do this in. My local Tesco in Abingdon, which I wouldn't have thought is a hotspot for trolley dumping, brought the £1 trollies in years ago and yet I recently went into the Tesco at Brownsover, Rugby, which was a 5 minute walk from where I had moored the boat, and there was no such charge. Perhaps they have some other way of stopping trollies being taken off the site although but I didn't notice anything. Didn't spot any in the cut though, fortunately.

Surely they've been filled in by now, it's been almost 50 years!

If you are going the Huawei way then why not give 3 a go. (Note: it worked fine for me over a number of days at different spots in the Rugby area). I found the Huawei device was £60 to £65 on Amazon but by buying it direct from 3 on a 1 month contract it cost £39 up front plus £10 for the first month's 2GB of data plus a pro-rata amount for however many days you use it before giving 30 days notice. The device is unlocked so you could cancel quickly if 3 doesn't suit and get a SIM from another network. If you are happy with 3 you can amend your data plan online to get more data for not much more money. Better still, when I phoned to cancel (having bought a 1 year SIM containing 12GB for £30 as this means I'm not paying for data on contract when I'm not on the boat) they offered me a cheaper price. I declined as I'd already bought the aforementioned 1 year SIM.

I had read about the aerials but I thought I'd give the thingy a chance without it and see how it got on. The answer, so far, is... splendidly. The device has been put in the window on a bit of velcro tape so I can easily remove it when I go home at the end of each boat visit. I have trouble getting phone signals inside the boat on both Three and O2 even with phones close to the window but with the Huawei device reception so far in all 20 - 30 places I've tried it has been excellent.

Blenheim Palace still has a great play area for kids. It's at the other end of the narrow gauge railway line from the palace. However, if you are only going to the place once you really need a whole day to do it justice and include walks to the secret garden and along the lake to the cascades as well as the palace itself. You would also do well to have a look round the small town of Woodstock that adjoins it. Probably best to do all this at another time if possible rather than use up a day of an expensive narrowboat holiday.

Here's my recenct experience of mi-fi... I bought a Huawei E5573 from Three just over 2 weeks ago (http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devices/Huawei/E5573_4G_Mobile_Wi-Fi?memory=0&colour=White) at £39 plus £10 per month for 2GB on a 1 month contract as it was cheaper than just buying one on Amazon. I will now cancel the contract (30 days notice) as I have bought a 12GB sim for £30 which lasts one year so I'm not paying for data when I'm not on the boat. We have just been on a 106 mile round trip from Stockton to Snarestone over 13 days and not once did we find we had no signal in probably 30 different locations. Pretty much every day we got 4G rather than 3G and it seemed very fast for emailing, web browsing, Facebook etc. Didn't try streaming or downloading. The unit was placed halfway up one side of a window (near a 12v socket to make charging easy as battery life seemed to be the only downside). We did not use, or feel the need for, an external aerial. So far, so good. It proved much better than I expected and we will use it in the marina as well as out on the cut as performance was streets ahead of the marina wi-fi.

I've never tried that before... Until now. Seemed easy enough to me.

You could try one of Paul Smith's discovery days at Calcutt (a few miles south of Rugby). According to the link below it's £199, or £149 if you are prepared to share the day with another person, for a very full day covering all aspects of life on a narrowboat, not just how to steer it. Have a look and what some of his other customers have to say about it. https://livingonanarrowboat.leadpages.net/narrowboat-discovery-day/

What, the sign? If it is then I failed to notice it in December and January when I turned there on my short lock-free winter runs from Calcutt to Birdingbury and back. Mind you, I'm only 45' so I didn't really penetrate Kate.

It's a Barrus Shire 1552 dating from year 2000 or thereabouts. I thought bleeding would be neccessary if the fuel cock was used which is why I was hoping there was an alternative.

My main concern is what to do if the solenoid fails and it appears that just shutting off the fuel at the cock is the answer for that as I don't believe that there is anything on my engine itself to enable an emergency stop. I think the solenoid has to be removed to do it manually and that's not in an easily accessible place. Regarding runaway engine scenarios, I have no reason to think that will ever happen but I'd still like to know what to do if it did. My conclusions (at the moment) after reading this thread plus a bit of Googling (including this... http://www.autoevolution.com/news/heres-how-you-quickly-stop-a-runaway-diesel-video-87344.html) is that if the engine is onfire or already revving alarmingly fast then get the hell out of there and keep fingers crossed that it won't completely destroy itself before it seizes up. On the other hand, if it isn't yet going crazy then it sounds like the CO2 extinguisher method is less scary than the plastic bag method as the former only needs a small engine cover beside the air filter to be opened in order to quickly spray in from outside and still being able to make a quick getaway if it feels too scary. However, the latter requires removing the large horizontal board over the engine to be lifted and then getting up close and personal with a runaway engine.