doratheexplorer

At least I'm not one of your blocked list! ?

What happens if one of them quotes you? Do you see it? Get an alert?

I had a sausage and egg sandwich for breakfast this morning. Very nice it was too. What are we talking about?

That's 53 locks and canal planner estimates at about 14.5 hours. Rather you than me! I like my boating to be relaxing. Possible with a long day in June though. Canal planner has this Birmingham route as taking longer, the days are now shorter and you say you only 3/4 of a day. In my view it's a no go. Why not enjoy the sights of Birmingham in the morning and head for Alvechurch at about lunch time?

At least one pool is out of action at the moment. Big dredging stuff going on. https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/news/gbp31-million-investment-secured-to-improve-titford-pools

never heard of Hallmark Boats boat they don't half look like Calcutt Clippers. Same shell fabricator?

I would imagine a proper wet room might be fairly unusual on a narrowboat. Thing is the boats expand and contract with heat so doors often have gaps above and below to allow for this. That makes a wet room tricky to do. These days, walk through bathrooms are pretty common. You get more space for cat swinging but use of the bathroom blocks passage through the boat. Swings and roundabouts.

Not you - Philip

With a fair wind behind you, you could probably single hand all the locks in about 8 hours. Then it's about 3.5 hours to Alvechurch. All this could easily take more. Have you done the three loops? That would be gentler. That's 50+ locks! Well done. Have you considered entering the BCN Challenge?

Ah, but you don't know what I keep in the backpack do you? Would make your head spin!

Thanks for all the straw-men. Read into my post what you like. I was simply saying that having "moderator" next to your posts, gives an air of creedence and officialdom to those posts and that should be considered by moderators when they post. As spiderman once said "with great power comes great responsibilty". In this case a moderator gave stupid (yes stupid) advice and then doubled down on it when challenged.

High walls don't protect from hackers. My quick search on him, out of curiosity, revealed his full name and address, his nick-name, other then Athy, presumable related to his time living in France. His wife's name. His DOB and place of birth. When he got married. And even a nice mug-shot. An identity thief's wet-dream (as Max Romeo might say).

He's not a random bod. He's a moderator. Rightly or wrongly, that makes people more likely to trust his advice.

But a technophobe who wrote this "I have found that one way of finding out whether such e-mails are genuine is to reply to their e-address." And there's the problem. An uninformed man, in a position of authority, (and therefore to be listened to) giving out very dangerous advice and then defending his view and belittling other views when challenged. I don't have a problem with technophobes but don't then wade into debates like this with awful advice.

Good point, I forgot Athy is supposed to be a moderator!

Athy's attitude is typical of an older generation who have been lucky enough to have never been hacked and then lost big! I'm no computer expert but it was shockingly easy to find out pretty much all his personal details including home address. Having said that, I'd always though it was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who lived at River Cottage... My advice - never reply to sketchy looking emails and stop putting your personal details in the public domain!