Birdman

By the way, this deal is only available from Sept 18-25th. Reg price or earlier price is £999. But we can now build our trip and flights around these dates. Hopefully the weather will also cooperate ...

THanks so much to everyone who made suggestions here ... most helpful. Really helped us to narrow things down for our trip. It appears that our best boat option is to go for the Nene 76 from Gailey (42') listed on Latelink and, as mentioned, there are many route options around Birmingham that we can decide on during the time remaining (did look at the route planner .. very helpful). We found that the Nene seems to be owned by ABC Boat Rentals and they have 3 of them, - the 76, 84 and 78. Does anyone know these boats or what the numbers refer to? Year of birth? Perhaps they assign one of them to the Latelink group who offer it at a discount. Although that price doesn't include fuel. Thought we might try to call ABC tomorrow to see what they say.

Many thanks for all these good ideas and suggestions! Have checked out some, working on others. I think we are pretty open to a variety of options/scenery .. don't want to spend all our limited time going up a lock chain so probably wouldn't put Caen Hill at the top of the list. Both active old fogies though .. Cliff runs every morning, I still stagger around a soccer pitch, so we are happy to be as active as we can. Enjoy walking, would love to have a small bike on board. Certainly do our own locks. As suggested, the later weeks in Sept seem cheaper than earlier. Latelink site has some great options .. mostly long boats though ~60'. Did find one at 42' for 17th, a Nene Class, good rate £599 for the week, based at Gailey. 'The Gailey base is located near the northern end of the delightfully rural Staffs and Worcester Canal just south of Stafford. The site is well placed for a variety of one week scenic cruises including the highly popular Four Counties Ring.' Any comments on this boat or the route options?

Two school buddies (ex Brits) trying to plan our 2nd river trip in September, around the 12th. Cliff lives in the States, I'm in Canada (Georgian Bay), both now retired. We will have up to a week for the trip, want to rent a Narrow boat. We previously did a trip on the Wey in 2011, from Guildford, loved it. Our previous boat rental place is now apparently out of business (Guildford Boat House). We're having trouble finding a boat to rent and a good route, from afar. Tried calling places but not easy to get through .. seems everyone is very busy. Were thinking about south England in hopes of warmer weather .. don't know if this really matters or makes much difference though. We were looking at the Stratford on Avon canal .. love the idea of the aquaduct. We also looked at the Llangollen Canal. At this point we're thinking that we should concentrate on finding a boat that would suit us as they seem mostly booked up, then HOPE there will be a good trip to go with it. Prefer a relatively small boat, - last one was great at 44ft. If anyone knows of an available boat and a good route, be great to hear about it! Open to any suggestions. We're good reliable customers. Thanks for any help! Jonn and Cliff