Cheshire cat

B&Q tape said don't leave in place for more than 24 hours, I can vouch for the fact it becomes difficult to remoce after that

Our paths crossed at lock 26. Have a good trip. Good social distancing in place at the plume of feathers, the holy Inadequate Etruria and the queen's head Congleton.

Just for info there are currently three transits a day in each direction. 0800, 1000 and 1200 heading south. 0900, 1100 and 1300 heading north. On our northern passage we were the only boat and coming back yesterday at 1200 there were four boats, the other three being hire boats going back to Festival Park. Nothing was waiting to head North so not exactly over subscribed

Passed through Harecastle yesterday without drama. Didn't recognise the tunnel keepers and we were last boat of the day despite there being two queueing at the northern portal. And then we found The Blue Bell wasn't open

Someone on here offered an opinion that better decoders were fitted to 240 volt tv so I took them at their word and bought a 240 Volt LG TV. With an omnimax aerial attached to a signal booster it has never failed to find 100+ tv stations.

It will be interesting to see how it works out. Cycles were abandoned in all kinds of strange places in Manchester. It didn't take long for the youff of today to work out where the lock and GPS tracker was. They cut it out of the frame resulting in a free bike. The bikes were trully dreadful so they weren't that popular anyway and the scheme was short lived. If these scooters are going to be dockless how will they be charged up for the next user?

I think that when you do hit the baseplate its only in a localised area and so not much of anything gets scraped off. We had a colony of fresh water mussels in the middle of the baseplate just aft of the bend for the bow . I wonder if Tim has got any photos of the baseplate before the new coat of blacking was applied to Fulbourne?

I've just blacked my boat. The base plate was interesting. Wire brushing produced clouds of orange dust from a strip about six inches wide on both edges of the base plate. It was much worse midships compared with near the anodes. Clearly there is oxygen down there.

You also have to consider that the STARTING price for a Braidbar was £160K 12 months ago with a 3 year waiting list. We paid £45K for our 20 year old boat 5 years ago which was the price it was sold for when new. We haven't regretted it. If you've got the spare cash go for it.

As an adopted Mancunian it's still not our finest hour. Nothing to be afraid of but humming and arring about whether to pass through later this month or just go up the Huddersfield instead.

It is recognised more widely than cuthound is prepared to admit

Sorry should have said. I'm looking at between 100 - 150 watt panel just to charge the batteries over the winter and help them out with the fridge if we stay in the same place for a day or two in the summer. I might add a second if I can think of an excuse but I'm never going to be a liveaboard. Photonic universe and Bimble solar both offer 10amp MPPT controllers so they don't appear to be that uncommon.

Sorry to butt in but I am just about to buy a small solar system purely to keep my batteries topped up in my absence. Are some MPPT controls better than others? Is it a case of you get what you pay for? If the controller falls asleep and requires a wake up call am I wasting my money when I don't expect to be at the boat for weeks during the winter months.

There's just an empty space in Midland Chandlers where the Intertuff should be so you might have to search around

You'll have to keep it for a while Nick. I was curious regarding energy consumption on a 240 Volt fridge. A++ rated fridges use only half the energy of A+ fridges but there's not much to be had. Mostly out of stock. 92Kwh versus 182Kwh Do shoreline give any figures for their 12 volt fridges I wonder. Ours is an antique, coming up to its 21st birthday.