Ange

Dave fancies the idea of the full English - any ideas what sort of time it'll be? I'm definitely not a morning person! I won't be indulging (I might nick a sausage off Dave's plate, but £6 worth of food the morning after the night before would be wasted on me!) Booking a table for Friday night sounds like a grand idea - count us in if you do

Dave & I will be there Friday

We're staying at the Holiday Inn Garden Court WV6 0PE - it's nearly 7 miles away but the room rate is only £39 per night for 3 adults (sadly only 2 staying there now though!) We figured the savings on accommodation costs would pay our cab fare. Obviously if anyone else stays there we can share a cab

Matt can't come I'm really disappointed cos I really miss him since we left him with his grandparents in Kent, but he now has to work on the Sunday Dave & I will still be there though - the hotel room is booked for Friday and Saturday night -anyone fancy a warm up mini-banter on the Friday night? (we'd anticipated spending Friday night catching up with our son's news)

Yay! !!

Mr Phipps - you made me roar with laughter - thankyou! There's been a few occasions when I've woken with a woolly head thinking "ye gods, what did I post on the forum last night" and approached the laptop with trepidation! Carl - I'm gutted I missed that one - you always seem to be the one to catch me out when I balls it up! (your comment alluded to one of the wonderful interchanges between Winston Churchill and Lady Astor didn't it? One of my all time favourites. The poison in tea one is another)

Ooo - please let us know what it's like! We've hired Weaver's bigger sister ship Gosling for the August Bank Holiday week and are really looking forward to it (though as someone so scared of heights that I had to hide under the duvet when we went over the Ponty aqueduct I may not enjoy the experience!) A bit cheeky to ask here but being opportunistic - do you have to book to go on the wheel? Have fun - pics would be great

We can do the first weekend in July but not the second or third as we'll be in Kent - a tad too far to travel for a beer

Hi and welcome to the forum We may pass you in the summer - we're planning on going up the L&L from Wigan to Leeds, Aire & Calder, Huddersfield Narrow then back on the L&L either to Liverpool or the Lancaster - we're still debating that one! We spent a lot of time on the L&L between Wigan and Skipton last summer so I can recommend a few good mooring spots (I'm assuming you've got Nicholsons or Pearsons so will be able to find them in there) Gargrave - good moorings and a nice little town East Marton - near bridge 161 - there's a restaurant on the other side of the canal that will sell you milk if you run out - watch out for the feisty little dog though! Nice pub nearby as well. Salterforth - there's a landing stage outside the pub there (the Anchor Inn). It's worth asking the landlord for a look at their cellar - it's very interesting Barrowford Top Lock - Barrowford's an interesting little town - worth a visit. You can walk to Asda from there as well Hapton - there's 48 hour moorings opposite the boatyard Riley Green - nice pub and boatyard but not a lot else in the way of amenities Johnsons Hillock Top Lock - 48 hour moorings, very good pub with live music on Thursdays Adlington - very handy little town with co-op and a few nice pubs. Red Rock - 48 hour landing stage. I'm sure I've missed some out, but those are the ones I remember from last year. Have fun

Booked our hotel today so we're definitely there I'm quite chuffed actually, the hotel's about 5 miles away but I managed to get a room for three adults (very difficult - family rooms are only usually availble for adults + child/children - at 21 we can't pass Matt off as a child anymore!) We've booked Friday & Saturday nights at £39 per night which I thought was pretty damn good. We're really looking forward to it - time to start counting the sleeps soon

Yep you're right Paul - apologies. The answer to my question is that some people are ignorant of piling hooks, chains, etc, but there are also boaters who prefer pins. As someone who finds mooring with pins to be the least preferable option I found that hard to understand, but we're still quite new to this and maybe we're just not very good at using pins yet (the only time we've unintentionally left the side was on pins during a particularly rainy period - a party widebeam went past us at about midnight when we were in bed - we sensed something wasn't quite right with our world and looking out of the bedroom porthole found ourselves looking down the canal rather than across it!! We must have been quite a sight in our nightclothes getting the boat back to the bank and mooring her again!) Personally, we'll stick with the piling hooks whenever we can, but will investigate chains

Thanks for all the replies - lots of food for thought there! We seek out pilings if we can't find mooring rings and use the nappy pins - thanks to whoever coined that phrase - love it! We called them piling hooks before but nappy pins is far better. We're admittedly very new to this having moved aboard last summer, but so far the nappy pins have been fine - we haven't noticed any clanking and the pins have come out when we want them to. Saying that, the consensus seems to be chains, so we'll do some research in that area. The answer to my question does seem to be that you'd only use pins when you're on pilings if you were ignorant of better alternatives - I'd like to ask the next boater but it's difficult to approach the subject without appearing critical and getting their backs up (particularly private boaters!)

There's been a few occasions recently where we've been moored on pilings - for us second in security to mooring rings - when another boat has moorerd next to us, followed by the sound of mallets hammering in mooring pins. WTF! Why are you hammering in pins when you have pilings! It's been private boats every time. We are truly intigued - any ideas why?

Shall we have another try at this one?

Oh - I wasn't aware of that - thanks. I'll ask Dave's parents to put it in the post first class as soon as it arrives and fingers crossed we'll get it on time. If it doesn't work out we'll try proxy voting next time.

We started off with the PAYG Vodafone dongle where the topup doesn't expire after a month - found the reception variable. The problem was we were using more than 1GB per month, so it turned out to be an expensive option. We've retired it, but know that we have it if we can't get a signal on our new dongle. The new one is a Three dongle - it's a monthly plan, so although we have a direct debit set up we can cancel any time with a month's notice. It costs us £15 per month for 5GB, which I thought was pretty good and means we can actually download from BBC iplayer now and then. The dongle cost us £25 with 5GB on it. The reception's variable again, I think it's always going to be difficult in remote places and easier in towns.