All CBT

Many, many thanks to all for your input! Great forum and a terrific resource

Hi all, naïve-Nottingham-newby here. This is also my first posting so please accept the usual humble apologies if I’ve posted in the wrong place. At the end of 2019 I’ll finally be in a position to cash it all in and get myself a decent 70-ish ft NB for cruising 7 months of the year. I’ll be running a small desk-based business from my new home which, for 90% of the year, I’ll be sharing with m’dawg. The remaining 10% I’ll be joined by family/friends etc. I can agonise all I like over sterns, toilet types and so on but my gut-feeling is that I’ll see a boat that I fall in love with, regardless. No doubt I’ll be bombarding this forum with lots of stupid questions of a boaty nature nearer the time. Currently my focus is on mooring: Plan A: This is my fantasy mooring which I’ve come across whilst on hire-boats over the years, I know they’re out there; it will be inaccessible from the towpath with a little bit of south facing land which will have the obligatory decrepit shed, overgrown weeds partially covering the seemingly abandoned, and equally decrepit, garden table and chairs. Possibly an oil drum or two as well. On this verdant desert island I would bring along a weapons grade strimmer to tidy things up. There will also be a nearby pub and supermarket as well as somewhere I can garage, or park, my car. Ideally and, this is a fantasy remember, it would also have electricity but I’d get a generator if not. Connectivity is a must covering Plans B & C too. I know I will have to make compromises, I’m not that naïve, I just want to keep them to a minimum. Plan B: No mooring found at the time of boat purchase so just cruising and using leisure moorings whilst on the lookout for Plan A. A very acceptable option. Plan ? The same as Plan B but not being able to stumble across Plan A. So come October, Plan C would see me squirrelling myself away in any marina that’ll have me, still looking for Plan A, till the following April when Plan B would, once again, be implemented. And so on… One thing that my desk research has not found is a waterways map that shows canals with lock lengths to accommodate differing lengths of NB. There are colour-coded maps for beam, there are lists of canals displaying boat lengths that locks can accommodate. Anyone point me in the right direction for an idiot-proof colour-coded, or similar, map for length? Any thoughts, opinions or pointers in relation to any of the above would be gratefully received. What could possibly go wrnog…