Ange

Wow - new batteries! Watched "A Passionate Woman" on our TV without the engine running - no shrieks or wails from the invertor! It seemed like a little piece of magic waching an hour of TV tonight (Thanks to Vince1969 who supplied the batteries at £25 each)

Humph - have to choose your words so carefully round here!

Alan - you have no idea what North means until you end up for a prolonged period in the land of pies and barms! Forget Watford Gap - where's the pie frontier! (Absolutely loving it BTW - a Southerner abroad!)

Dave's grandmother, born 1900 in Kent, "so who's the white hen's chicken then" when someone boasted that they'd done something particulalry well

Tis a great shame, but if you can't do gang planks you'd best steer clear of the L&L until they put a wee bit more water in their canal

My top two so far - laughed so loud I nearly woke Dave up

I think in this thread it's the hire companies rather than the hirers that have come under fire. Personally I would much rather share a lock with a bunch of incompetent but friendly & eager to learn hirers than Mr & Mrs Shiny boat who know everything and have forgotten how to smile!

I must confess we've not come across this yet - I'm truly shocked that anyone would We use our centre line for pulling the boat to the side, after which it goes back on the roof and stays there - we've never moored with it (we hired quite a few times and I can't remember ever being advised to use it for mooring)

To quote the great Billy Connelly "There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing, so get yourself a sexy raincoat and live a little." Hope you have a great time and tell us all about it

We're 28" draught and we have found getting anywhere near the bank a real struggle on the L&L - the level is particularly low this year. You'd probably be ok at designated mooring sites but there are long stretches between Wigan and Skipton where they are few and far between. PM me if you decide to go for it and I'll let you know where these places are for this stretch of the canal (it's not always obvious in Nicholsons)

Having been raised in Essex and then living in Kent I had no experience of canals growing up. We hired a Clubline Cruiser boat back in 1987 with a group of friends purely because one had been on a boating holiday before and said t would be good fun. We have very fond memories of that holiday and still have the tacky model narrowboat that we bought as a souveneir (and I cringe when I remember the Jolly Roger flown from the tiller - at least we didn't dress up as pirates!) Mortgage and son restricted us to cheap camping holidays for the next 13 years. We started hiring again in either 2001 or 2002 when we used our Tesco Clubcard tokens to hire a Viking Afloat boat on the Llangollen. Various hire holidays followed (thankyou Tesco Clubcard!), the most recent being in 2007 when we hired two 70 foot boats with the extended family aboard (mother & father in law, 2 x brother & sister in law, 4 x nieces). We hired from Whitchurch and went down to the Shropshire Union. Chatting to the lady lock keeper at Hurleston Locks I remarked on what an amazing way of life it was - she said "let your house out and buy a boat - you can do it if you want to". That was my light bulb moment when I thought "yes, we can actually do this" We bought Iona in November 2008, let the house out and moved aboard in June last year. When we go through Hurleston Locks next I'm giving that lady a bottle of wine! (In case anyone knows her she had long blond hair - does she prefer red or white?)

Yay - happy boating Colin - keep us posted on your progress

Hi Stuart I finally caught this thread - read all 11 pages of it this evening! Most of it is fluent Swahili to me but boy am I impressed! You made amazing progress in a really short space of time - you must have worked like a trojan! Glad to see your motivation is back and looking forward to following your progress (and maybe visiting a taking a peek one day!) Best wishes to you & Val

Fingers crossed the weather improves! Let us know how you get on - any mooring / pub / eatery recommendations would be gratefully received One of our long term dreams is to have Iona shipped over to Ireland so we can cruise the Irish canals

:lol: :lol: ;) (To echo Janet) Your post brought me out in goosebumps (of the happy variety!) - Dave & I are chuffed to pieces for the pair of you.

Hi and welcome to the forum You can use the Royal Mail's Poste Restante service - here's a linky (hopefully) http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/jump2?m...;catId=27300662

Thanks Janet - we're particularly looking forward to the Wheel (though being scared of heights I hope I don't disgrace myself like I did going over the Ponty Aquaduct when I had to hide under the duvet!) Thanks Haggis We tend to do slow and leisurely to see lots of a little rather than a little of lots, so will probably just go to Edinburgh and back. I think I can handle someone else doing the locks and bridges for a week

Top marks for opportunism Martin!

Well friends and family are going to think we're completely obsessed - after living on our narrowboat since June we've just booked our 2010 holiday - a week's narrowboat hire out of Falkirk We would dearly love to have Iona lifted out of the water and transported up there so we could spend more time exploring, but can't afford that kind of expense at the moment. We know we want to go on the Falkirk wheel, but apart from that haven't made any firm plans - has anyone got any suggestions? We're booked from Friday 27th August.

We're registered as living at Dave's parents' address in Kent and have applied for a postal vote. Not sure who we'll vote for though

Best of luck from me & Dave

We missed you by only a couple of hours by the sound of it - we went past at about 2pm, then waited for what seemed like an hour but was probably less for another boat to fill up with water. We're currently moored on the towpath at Adlington just past the marina opposite the playing fields

Well we had a great weekend - thanks mostly to the suggestions on this thread. Friday we walked up Rivington Pike - it turned out that there's a tradition of the locals walking up there on Good Friday every year so there were loads of people and a cup of coffee at the top! The downside was the coffee was crap and it pee'd down - I haven't been so wet through since the last time we biked in the rain! Saturday was Ellesmere Port. We took the train from Chorley to Liverpool, then (after wandering around the station looking for a train, finally asking at the information centre) discovered that Liverpool has an underground network. Took said underground train to Ellesmere Port (passing through Port Sunlight on our way - somewhere else to investigate on a future date). Loved the museum (though we left if £7 lighter after spending £2 on an IWA raffle and buying a wheelbarrow full of stones from the Montgomery Restoration people). Met up with CWDF friends, some old and some now new acquaintances and stopped off in Liverpool for a superb Chinese buffet on our way home. Sunday was boaty stuff - our diesel and water tanks are full, and our pump out is empty - plus we had a nice little cruise as the weather turned out good (we passed Kate and James' new boat and waved hello to it). Today we visited the Queens Mill in Blackburn, taking a short detour on the way to meet Pluto at Greenberfield locks who was kind enough to let us have a look aboard Kennet. We were really lucky at the mill, they fired up the steam engine about 5 minutes after we arrived, so we got to see the whole process. The volunteers there are amazing, we had a good chat with the chap running the boilers, and the chap running the engine - both incredibly knowledgeable and more than happy to share their knowledge. Back to work tomorrow - still it's a four day week this week