Ange

you need to share your cuisine with us more Dan! Not sure how many favours that's do for our pump out tho!

definitely the pump out - you only get time to do a crossword when you're having a good dump! Edited to add - I quite often take a good book to the toilet with me - only when I'm planning on sitting on the pump out though :-)

We've lived aboard full time for over a year with pump out loo being used for poo and portapotti for wee. Absolutely no problems with either - but then have never found the need to put baby wipes in the pump out. Methinks the problem isn't the pump out but what has been put in it! PS someone told me when we first moved aboard that you can't just use your pump out for poo cos the consistency is wrong - sorry you are so wrong - we've done it for 15 months with no problem!

Mother & father-in-law adopted a retired greyhound - he was a compulsive food thief as well. Wonderful temperament, great with kids, only needed one manic run round the garden per day but you had to be so careful with your food around him. One time we were dogsitting he was (apparently) fast asleep in his basket and I was preparing the evening meal. I decided it was safe to nip outside and put a couple of empty milk bottles on the doorstep - big mistake. When I got back to the kitchen, so more than a few seconds later, the dog had his paws on the food counter and his muzzle hoovering up the contents of my labour! He was also very clever at opening cupboards, fridges & pulling food containers down from high places and opening them. Lovely dog though, we still miss him.

We've got a WinTV dongle that we bought from PC World. It gives us the Freeview channels for just the cost of buying the dongle - about £40 we think. We've also got a gizmo we bought from Maplin's to take 12v up to 19v for the laptop - I can have it running all evening with no problem, and our batteries aren't plentiful or brilliant!

Hya Moll Scotland was brilliant thanks - I'll get around to posting some pics on the forum one day!

I hope you enjoy the trip John and it's not too exciting! Looking forward to seeing some piccies

The beams! A narrowboat with beams - how barking is that! But .. but .. but - we've grown quite fond of them and wouldn't dream of ripping them out now. Not to everyone's taste but definitely an integral part of Iona's character. After living aboard for just over a year she's definitely a lot more cluttered nowadays! Interestingly we thought that the folding table in the foreground with cleverly stored stacking chairs under would be a permanent fixture. Until we discovered that it was hopelessly impractical - it was impossible to walk through the boat once the table was deployed so it bit the dust very soon after we moved aboard. (and yes - that's peeling artex you can see dropping from the ceiling!)

We bought a TV dongle recently. By law the seller has to take your address and pass it on to the TV licensing people. There was a brief impasse at the checkout when we told them we couldn't give them the address the dongle would be used at as we lived on a boat. I offered them our correspondence address in Kent and they happily accepted this.

Our cruising plans this year involved going up the L&L and then onto the HNC - we were really looking forward to it. Unfortunately the closure of the L&L put an end to those plans and we crossed the Ribble Link to the Lancaster instead. We definitely plan to do it one year - the tunnel being an attraction rather than a deterrent.

Well we're here! After handing over our boat/home to our son, our niece and her boyfriend we headed up to Scotland. We arrived at 2pm for the 3pm handover - they actually seemed really pleased so I'm guessing the boat was ready early so us arriving early meant early doors for them. We had the handover spiel (after finding out we've lived on a narrowboat for over a year and my parents own one as well they were quite apologetic but said they had to go through everything for insurance purposes). Handover and loading possessions on boat was done by 3pm, no lunch having been had hungry tummies headed for the cafe attached to the Wheel visitor centre. Nearly £12 for two coffees, one toasted sandwich and a panini! At 4pm we were back on the boat and advised the BW staff that we were ready to do the wheel. Unfortunately they had a technical difficulty - apparently they have numerous sensors on the wheel and one on the part that comes up to separate the gondola from the rest of the canal had some debris in it. We sat for an hour and a half watching the BW guys scratch their heads, wield various rake like implements and squawk at each other over the radio until the magic "yep we're good to go" was heard. We shared our trip up the wheel with a trip boat. Dave earned mega brownie points with the trip boat's skipper when he faultlessly performed the rather tricky manoeuvre from the landing stage into the gondola. Unfortunately he lost all those brownie points when we arrived at the tunnel after the locks that follow and Dave stopped, baffled by the fact that there were traffic lights there that were flashing from red to green - he hadn't had time to read the notice that said that it meant proceed with caution! By the time I'd ran from the front to the back of the boat the skipper on the trip boat had honked his horn very loudly and his first mate had informed Dave (very politely) of the meaning of the signal. The upshot of the delay is that we're now moored at Polmont, when we'd have liked to have made it to Linlithgow this evening. On the positive side we are next to a 24 hour Tesco so have been able to provision up (I swear we have enough food to last 10 people two weeks - there's four of us on here for one week ) On the other side of the canal however, with a very high wall and lots of floodlights is a young offendors' institution. I'll post some photos of the wheel tomorrow - tis a bit late now. Amazing internet connection btw - cyan light all the way Edit - I forgot to say what an amazing experience it is to hire a boat after living aboard a 1990 build which we're updating as and when our shallow pockets allow. Six, yes SIX, leisure batteries (we've just upgraded from two to three). Which means we have a microwave (swoon) and a coffee maker (double swoon). We have two toilets and showers, the toilets have macerators where ours is a dump through. And ... and ... and ... wait for it ... we have three pin plugs that support 240 volt plugs (swoon and faint at the same time!)

Thank you both - I knew they'd be fine but it's part of a mum's job description to worry and you've put my mind at rest

Mum & dad are on the hire boat with us in Scotland so I hope Longford is still there! Definitely will post pics - I did start a thread when we first booked the holiday so I'll probably resurrect it. We're waiting to go on the Falkirk Wheel at the moment - exciting stuff!

We have had lots of troubled moments since we offered our boat to the young folks! However - our reasoning is that our son Matt is the same age as we were when we were set loose on our first hire boat holiday in 1987 with about 10 minutes training. We've spent a day with them mooring, reversing, winding and going up and down a lock. Matt has been very active on our hire holidays and is very proficient. These are sensible youngsters and we trust them absolutely Mum & dad's boat's name is Longford BTW

We've just left Iona in the care of our son, our niece and her boyfriend while we go off to Scotland for a week on a hire boat. Just thought I'd post this as we've met a few people on the Lancaster who've been following this thread and recognise us - don't worry - the group of youngsters currently crewing Iona have our full permission - give them a cheery wave

I think the triplicate post was probably a combination of the forum chugging and my dongle only showing a measly green at the moment - despite assuring me it has an excellent signal! Thanks Dan for all the hard work

I've just checked my e-mails and the only CWDF related one I had was letting me know I had a new PM. I seem to remember editing my settings so I only get PM related notifications but can't for the life of me remember how I did it! I'm sure someone else will know. Edit - damn - crossed posts with Dan! How on earth did I post that in triplicate!!!!

Edited to remove double post which is then duplicated after Dan's post!

There seems to be a before and after thing happening with the "go to first unread" facility. It works for me with threads that I've visited after the upgrade, but not for those I last read before. I'm liking it by the way. I've just been into my PM box and there's a new facility for archiving your PMs to your e-mail account which is rather handy. Time for a tidy up - my message box has been hovering in the 90-95% full range for ages! My only, very minor, gripe is the loss of the "top" button on each post.

The Falkirk Wheel then off towards Edinburgh on a hire boat

I think you may be right Dave tried it with a brand new aerial lead and it still didn't work, so we're planning to do what you've suggested and try it on another aerial to see if it's the dongle at fault or one of the aerial connections. We hadn't thought about water travelling down the aerial into the dongle! Hey ho - lesson learned.