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Hi all, a friend who's a boat novice has asked for suggestions for a minimum effort narrowboat cruise, for himself and a relative. I think he means a week or two, and he specified that by minimum effort he was meaning as few locks as possible (but some I think, so as to get a feel for it). I thought I'd seen this topic discussed before but I'm struggling to find it. Does anyone have any suggestions? Since they're based on the south coast, further south /might/ be favourite, but not a necessity. cheers.

Are you referring to this one? http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php...i&img=2648[ (Pulled out of Venetian Marina last summer)

Hi all, I'm trying to figure out if my Alde central heating boiler is set up to provide hot water as well as/independently of the central heating. Looking at the calorifier, there's an absolute maze of pipes and T junctions and I'm struggling to figure out what's going on. There appear to be 6 pipe fittings on the calorifier, 4 at one end and 2 at the other. I'm guessing that the two on one end are hot water out and cold water in, and the others are connections to the coil(s) in the tank itself. I'm a little reluctant to start ripping panels down to follow pipes, and of course everything is neatly concealed :-S So far, my /guess/ is that the central heating circuit at some point passes through the calorifier to heat the water, but I could be way out on that one. Anyone know how these things are normally set up? If it helps, Border Boats built my boat (so I can't ask them). The Alde manual is less than helpful on the subject. Any and all suggestions gratefully received. cheers. Update: Thanks to all who responded. Sure enough, the calorifier is plumbed effectively as a radiator (although with the heating on, circulation pump running, no taps running or having run since the previous day the two pipes that got hot were the two alone at one end of the calorifier). Twenty minutes with the heating on full, thermostat way up to trigger the circulation pump (must put some kind of always on/thermostat controlled/off switch on that) and I had enough hot water for washing up, shower and a shave :-) Thanks again.

Tell em to come aboard my boat - I like 'em, they keep the flying insects down and they keep me company ;-) Some of them are particularly good listeners, willing to sit and listen to me ramble for hours....

Venetian should have at least one slot free, since I gave up my mooring there a few days ago. There's no formal residential moorings there, but there are plenty of liveaboards.

Well, I finally got Borderline shifted from the Middlewich branch to the 5 rise. We took 12 days over it, including 2 days idleness at Skipton. Set out from Middlewich on Wednesday 24th lunchtime, moored up at Bramble cutting that evening. Spotted Emily Rose moored up at Anderton on 25th, but it was pouring down, so I think dhutch was probably hiding from the rain inside. Moored up that night at Daresbury, outside the research lab. Dunham on the 26th, nice and quiet by Dunham School bridge, ready for the mad dash through Stretford & Salford the following morning. Underway bright and early on the 27th, no trouble going through the edges of Manchester, apart from a couple of rat boys who wanted me to pull over to the bank and give them a cigarette - 'sorry lads, this is my last one, got to stop somewhere and get some'. Howling gale once I got clear of Waters Meeting, which made the already not ever so pretty run through Trafford Park even less fun. Moored up for a cup of tea and a rest at Worsley, only to discover a little boat fair going on. More howling gale past Worsley, finally got fed up and moored up at Plank lane, along with NB Primrose. Stayed put most of the day on the 28th to write an OU assignment. Got that submitted early afternoon, and decided to put on a few more miles, ready for picking up C in Wigan on monday morning. Past Dover lock and thought "I'll just do a /bit/ more', but never found anywhere I fancied mooring. Got up to Wigan junction, and really didn't like the look of the towpath. Moored up on the Girobank side, on the big 'no mooring' signs, thinking I'd explain to the security guard that I was nervous about mooring on my own on the other side. No such luck! He showed up after I'd been there a couple of hours, launched into a torrent of abuse, and never let me get a word in edgeways. Rudest, most unpleasant person I've encountered in a while. He did point out other boats moored at the top of the locks leading down towards the pier though (the sun had been in my eyes from that direction when I arrived), so I moored up there for the night and shared my living quarters with a wind generator on a ten foot pole! Peaceful night, no marauders around, but the building work on the other side of the wall, about ten feet away, started at 7am. Very very noisy. Met C at the station at 12, and we set off up the flight (didn't fancy 21 locks on my own, so I was glad of the help!). BW and the police came by and told us not to moor anywhere on the flight, but that there was a boat waiting for us 2 locks ahead, and the two parties should get to the top at least before mooring. NB Kingdom turned out to be great fun, and were to be travelling companions to Skipton in the end. Moored up at the top of the flight, where the proprietors of Kirklees Hall very kindly stretched their food serving hours to provide us with fish and chips. Nice gentle run the following day (31st) to Johnsons Hillock, where we stopped for the night, prior to Blackburn. Blackburn at lunchtime of the 1st looked largely rather run down, and there were lots of kids hanging round the locks, but no trouble. Passed up with NB Osiris, Kingdom having got ahead of us. Stopped at Asda at the top of the flight for baccy. And then the fun began. NB Kingdom had forgotten their Nicholsons, so had been relying on mine. We set off from Blackburn locks mid afternoon, expecting to find them moored somewhere short of Burnley. As we got closer to Burnley, we started to wonder where they'd got to. Given that parts of Burnley aren't particularly great to moor in, we thought we'd better catch them up so they wouldn't be moored on their own in 'bandit country'. Reached Gannow tunnel at 9pm. Tried to drive a mooring stake in for ten minutes while I refilled the grease gun (the stern gland was dripping quite a bit), but there was stone just under the surface so we ended up drifting near the tunnel mouth while I sorted things out. Into Gannow tunnel about quarter past, over a large soft obstruction in the beginning of the tunnel (no idea what it was, hopefully not a corpse or anything like that) and off we went on a run through Burnley in the dark. Made it through by dint of careful map reading, going slow, and (after the first mistake) getting C to light my cigarettes so as not to wreck my night vision with the lighter. Only saw 2 people all the way through Burnley - a couple of anglers on the embankment. They accepted my apologies for not having seen them and slowed down with good grace and wished us a good night. The night crossing of the embankment was rather pretty, with the lights of the town all around and the embankment itself in darkness. Finally found NB Kingdom when we reached Barrowford locks at midnight, tired and wet. 32 miles, 6(?) locks that day. The 2nd started at 10am, when I finally dragged myself out of bed and got the engine started. Skipton was the aim for the day, and (after cruising through some truly beautiful countryside, and finally making good my return to gods own county) we arrived between the swing bridges at 10pm. A couple of days of idleness while C returned home for her parents visit, then a gentle cruise down from Skipton to Bingley on sunday with C and her parents, and onto the Craven moorings at the top of the 5 rise. So, some new bits of canal to explore on this side of the Pennines, and no more 3 hour drives to reach the boat :-) Hi to everyone we met along the way, especially NB Osiris if they're forum users.

Straight out of Arthur Ransomes 'The Big Six'!

Sorry, but it occurred to me that the blue stuff wasn't doing its job too well, if it's supposed to be a preservative and deodouriser. Plus I couldn't resist the temptation to be grotesque ;-)

Blimey! I was under the impression that the sluice had to be kept separate so that sewage contaminated with blue could be specially processed! So it just goes straight in the water treatment and gets diluted by the volume going through the plant?! DEFINITELY going to change my treatment approach in that case, thanks for that information. Brewers yeast sounds like the easiest way to go - although it entails new cassettes. As an aside, my new boat had been on the market and unused for a year when I bought her. The cassette toilet had been gaffa taped shut (I guess to stop anyone who was just viewing the boat from using it - some people can be unpleasantly thoughtless), but when I came to change the cassette for the first time, I discovered that the previous owners had forgotten to empty the spare. Gak! I can say from experience that blue does not stop sewage that has been stored for 12 months from smelling very very very bad!

Hi, I've been looking for alternative toilet approaches Having discovered that no composting toilet on the market will fit in the space in my bathroom (and not wanting to do any rebuilding of the bathroom for the time being), I had a look for alternatives to the evil smelling, polluting and not overly healthful blue stuff. I remember seeing a letter in a boat magazine from someone who used brewers yeast instead of blue, and emptied their toilet into the sewage rather than the sluice. I've also found this stuff from googling about: www.kemdirect.com Has anyone tried either of these approaches?

For what it's worth the most effective tip I've heard from anyone on the marina where I moor (where it tends to be windy most of the time) was to wait until just before sunset, as the wind tends to drop then. ;-)

Wups! Could some kind sysop delete this please, I clicked reply instead of edit!

There's a marina at Boroughbridge, which belongs to BW. I warn you now, it isn't cheap! I used to spend a lot of time up there as a former girlfriend lived aboard there, but she moved out when BW took over and the cost went up by 50% (to about 1700 quid for a 45' narrowboat). That would be about 7 or 8 years ago, so the prices have probably gone up since. After that there are no other moorings apart from a few end of gardens at Linton & Poppleton, and a few big river barges with riverside mooring rights in York until you get to Bishopthorpe boat club (I think that's the right name) down Landing Lane in Fulford (outskirts of York). There are river side moorings from there down to Naburn, but I think they're mostly privately owned, or rented from farms. You might want to check with York Marine - they operate some hire boats from Bishopthorpe and might know of other moorings. http://www.yorkmarine.co.uk/ There are some basin moorings on the Selby canal at Selby lock (BW owned), and a few more at the boatyard (run privately by the boatyard). I should warn you that the Ouse is a rather different experience from the Llangollen. It's a large river, with a fairly hefty range, and water levels can go up and down several feet overnight; but don't let that put you off, with care and a willingness to ask there's no problem with it. I was a complete newbie to boating when I started (on the Ouse). Cruising is /slightly/ limited, since if you want to go past Naburn you need to go out on the tideway, which means a) being properly equipped - lifejackets, radio/mobile phone, anchor; and setting off with the tide - so it isn't a casual trip. In case you hadn't gathered from the above, I live locally and know the area, so if I can be of any help, feel free to send me a private message. Oh, a little tip. If you're planning on mooring on the Ouse and living aboard, look for a boat /without/ a pump out toilet. There are times when the river is in flood, when taking a narrowboat to a pump out station is going to be extremely difficult (to the point of being dangerous, or downright impossible - Boroughbridge BW station has been underwater more than once). With a cassette/portaloo, you can put the tank in the back of the car and pop down to the local BW facilities without having to move the boat

Right, so I've been offered a mooring space on the L&L near the five rise, right where I want to be, which is a cause for some celebration. So sometime over the coming weeks Borderline and I will be setting out from Cholmondeston on the trek up the T&M, Bridgewater and L&L. My girlfriend and various relatives have kindly offered assistance for parts of the trip (Wigan for example), but it's likely that I'll be solo for a good chunk of it. I'm not worried about soloing, I'm getting used to it. I'm not worried about wide canals/locks either, I learned boating on the Yorkshire waterways with an ex some years ago. But I've never done the L&L - does anyone have any particular advice, warnings etc? In particular, we were walking up the cut from Saltaire to Keighley the other evening, and I noticed that most of the swing bridges have their control panels on the opposite side from the towpath. How the galloping green hells am I going to get through those? The ones on that stretch will be OK, because I'll have help from Gargrave onwards, but the only way I can think of doing these solo is: 1) stop on the bridge moorings. Don't moor up. Stop engine (to make sure slack rope doesn't foul prop - even in neutral there's creep). 2) Take a /very/ long rope (centreline and warp joined together, 20-odd metres) from the centre ring and tie it to the bridge railing, leaving lots of slack and the boat drifting. 3) Open the bridge, taking care not to foul the rope under the bridge deck 4) Hop onto the bridge deck, untie rope, pull boat through and tie to railing again (with lots of slack and boat drifting again) 5) Close bridge, retrieve rope, retrieve boat. Anyone got any better ideas? Am I missing anything obvious? Assuming (as in at least one case in Keighley) there is no way of stopping on the non towpath side.

Bit more information. Apparently the boat originally got stuck in Kings Lock at Middlewich, and tried to come along the Middlewich Branch to get on the Shroppie and head south that way. It then got stuck entering Choldmondeston lock. That was about 3 weeks ago. Since then the owner has stayed at Venetian marina, and ground down the rubbing strakes with an angle grinder in an attempt to get through the lock. Yesterday the boat got into the chamber OK, then got stuck halfway up. The lock was shut from mid morning/lunchtime (I wasn't paying much attention to the time) through 'til late afternoon, when BW managed to winch the boat back out of the lock. The queue going up was well past the railway bridge - I counted 14 boats, but couldn't see beyond two boats the other side of the bridge and didn't walk round to look (I figured there was a big enough crowd at the lock without me adding to it). AFAIK the boat is back in the marina. Apologies for not posting the stoppage here when it happened - I'd badly flattened my laptop battery talking to my girlfriend on line the night before.

Last time I moored in the basin at Chester it was a pleasant night. I left my boat unattended from mid afternoon until about 1am. It was a bit noisy from the pub across the other side, and there was a group of street drinkers lurking around nearby, but they were a good natured lot and I reckon the boat was probably safer with them nearby than otherwise. Alternatively but a bit further away, you could moor in Nantwich, get the bus or train to Crewe, and then train from Crewe to Liverpool. There's almost always plenty of boats around on the visitors moorings there, so there'd be someone to keep an eye on yours.

Can't say I've seen the canals filling up with 'too many boats'. I've spent the last 3 years mooring on the Shropshire Union, a pretty popular canal for holidays, and only once seen a queue of more than 3 or 4 boats at a lock. OK, some canals run a /little/ short of water towards the end of the year, but generally not so drastically that BW have to close them. The Range Rover analogy would only hold up if people were complaining about the price of /boats/. Land Rover is a commercial company with the avowed intention of putting as much of your money into their pockets as possible - you know they're there to make a profit. BW is not a commercial company. The situation is more analogous to the DVLA saying that they would only issue X number of tax discs this year, and they would auction them off to the highest bidder. Or more accurately if you live in a residential permit parking zone as I do, the council limiting the number of available parking spaces and auctioning them off. (Something I suspect it's only a matter of time before York council decides to try).

Couple of things occur to me about this. First of all BW seem to be basing this on a very simplistic notion of what constitutes 'a market'. There was a valid market for moorings before - money was changing hands for a service, so there was a market. They seem to be going with the 'competition is the be all and end all' ideology that seems to be being followed with a religious fervour by our current government (and many others). It looks like it's being implemented because someone, or some group, has a quasi-religious, unthinking belief in the 'right' way to organise financial transactions (i.e. maximise profit on every transaction). It's very common, and IMHO very destructive to our society. For a body like BW, who are a public monopoly charged with maintaining a public resource, a 'cost plus' market would be far more appropriate, and fairer. From a more practical point of view, how are they going to calculate end of garden moorings, at half the local mooring rate, when the moorings are individually sold by sealed bid? Even just calculating an average will tell us something about the range of bids, thus distorting their 'market'. Ill considered, ideologically based, short term-ist, and unfair. Thanks BW, nice to know we can rely on your careful, long term stewardship for the benefit of /all/ canal users.

If you're the chap I was talking to about Stirling engines at Minshull lock the other day, thanks for your help with the gates and paddles :-) (and anyone else who helped out a rather nervous solo on his new boat last week).

Thanks Gary, I'll try and find a reasonable match from that. It doesn't matter if she looks a little patched up for the time being as long as the metalwork is protected, but I do want to paint the rust patches with something that won't stand out like a sore thumb.