booke23

Funnily I just have gone through the same dilemma for an upcoming trip on the Llangollen canal! I have done this trip a few times and have a Waterways World Guide to the Llangollen from 2005. It is very good but sadly not produced any more and getting quite out of date so thought I should replace it. I read all the reviews on both Pearsons and Nicholsons and thought the Nicholsons sounded best, so I bought it. It appeared very good on first glance, however there were a few things that bothered me. Firstly they use OS 1:25000 maps.......great you might think. But they use a custom zoom so that the scale is actually 1:30000 in the guide. This makes the maps a touch on the small side and slightly hard to read compared to my old Waterways world guide. It is harder to spot Water points/winding holes/visitor moorings. So I bought the Pearsons guide as well! It maps are much clearer. Very easy to spot canal facilities and navigational hazards. Each map also has a cruising time at the top of the page, so you know how long it will take to travel that particular map.....very helpful. It's maps are always horozontal, i.e. the canal runs from left to right on the page no matter where North is. Some people don't like this and I can see why, however I don't mind as it does make the map very clear and easy to read. However it is dominated by long paragraphs of sometimes rambling text describing the history of the canal etc, which is nice to read, but I would rather a canal map be a bit more concise. It is also not ring bound so will be more of a pain to use on the move. So in summary I don't think either guide is perfect. If Pearsons ring bound their guides and cut out some of the text they would be much better and if Nicholsons made their map scale bigger and more easily readable they would be much better. On my next trip I will take all of them and see what works. I wish Waterways World still produced their guides as I still slightly prefer it!

Cornwall......maybe you could also consider mooring on the Gloucester and Sharpness (near Gloucester), or on the River Severn north of Gloucester.

Sounds like the OP doesn't want to live aboard, so should get away with a leisure mooring......are these very hard to find on the K & A too?

I have just discovered Joe's Youtube videos, and can't stop watching! I don't even own a Gardner! He's very good at explaining things and really knows his stuff.

It's probably sunk up to the top of the crown by now, so will be hard to spot! Did it have a chin strap?

I think the catch is you can't run a diesel engine on heating oil without adding some lubricant to it, as the fuel lubricates the fuel pump and upper cylinder in a diesel engine. So by the time you pay for oil to add to the heating oil you might as well buy Red Diesel.

No it absolutely doesn't. I was musing about a large tank so that you could store the minimum delivery quantity of home heating oil to run the diesel stove. At 28p/litre it would make a big difference to your heating bill. However it is absolutely illegal to use heating oil for propulsion, so it would need a separate tank.

All very interesting. Definitely something to bear in mind if you were building a boat from scratch with a view to having a Diesel stove. Retrofitting a very large gravity feed day tank would be problematic on most narrowboats.

That would be a problem. Unless you had a large enough tank to order minimum delivery (200 litres?) from an oil company. I was kind of thinking they could run on either Diesel or Kero with no modification, in which case you could just use whatever you could get hold of. I thought I read somewhere that Refleks stoves can run on either Diesel or Kero with no modification. With heating oil currently at 28p/litre the savings would be considerable, but you wouldn't want to modify your stove so you'd have to rely on a heating oil supply.

If you have a separate tank for the diesel stove, is it possible to run them on home heating oil?

Twice now, I've done the trip down from Chas Hardern on the SU then up the LLangollen and back. The first time was in the second week of September and the second time was the last week of August. The September trip was busier than the August trip........took a couple of hours to get up Grindley brook in September but got straight up with no wait in August. Finding a mooring was tricky at Ellesmere in September, but easy in August. The Lock keeper at Grindley brook was of the opinion that September is noticeably busier because everyone hits the canal to avoid the 'summer crowds' but they actually make it busier! Also Chas Hardern (who has been hiring out boats for over 40 years), mentioned that over the years he has seen a big decline in families with kids hiring boats......it's mostly couples or adult groups these days which would kind of support the busy September theory. Of course the term 'busy' on the canal is relative. Even my 'busy' September trip was very enjoyable and memorable.

The central heating will in all likelihood keep the boat warm enough. However you will probably need to leave it on all night (albeit with the thermostat turned down a bit) to avoid waking up with frostbite on your nose! Personally I find the high pitch whine and roar of the diesel fired central heating units to be quite intrusive in the dead of night, and certainly loud enough to wake me up. A banked up stove is silent and keeps the boat at a nice temperature. So I would play it safe and hire a boat with both central heating and a stove to keep my options open.

It's arguable that someone shooting 2 holes in the boat would be stretching credulity even more than someone drilling the holes! Besides no handgun is powerful enough to penetrate 6mm steel. It would have to be a rifle.

Meanwhile Steve Haywood has now made it to Tilbury docks on the Thames, and was very displeased to find a cruiser moored in his spot! ?

I believe he still has a few with stoves, and he operates all year round. No widebeams, but a couple of semi trads which might help in poor weather.