It seems so long ago now but two dates will always be memorable to us. 16 October 2007 and our Hotelboat “Katie” moved down from Gas Street Basin to join the restaurant boat “Moira Rose” at our new temporary home at The Mailbox in Birmingham. 19 October and “Moira Rose “ opened her doors to the public for the first time under the ownership of Away2dine Ltd. This was after a number of successful trial cruises with guinea pigs such as staff from The Mailbox and the team from Alvechurch Marina our local boat yard, who have rebranded themselves as ABC Leisure and are the largest hire boat fleet in the UK. Ashley and Ros Uridge our Head Chef and Restaurant Manager management team, having arrived from the Lake District, had hardly set foot on the boats at the beginning of October and certainly had not settled in to their new home afloat on “Castle” the Support Boat when all this literally kicked off. They must have been wondering what they had let themselves in for!

Christmas with nearly every table taken came and went with New Year reminding us of how well Birmingham can celebrate with a fantastic show of Pyrotechnics from the roofs of the Hyatt Hotel and the old ATV Studios in Bridge Street. The display kept us and our customers enthralled for what seemed an eternity as the crescendo finally brought the evening to a close and we moved from our vantage point at the old stop lock in Gas Street Basin. Heading slowly past the ICC, up to the NIA wishing fellow revelers a Happy New Year before turning around and back to our base before we ran the risk of turning back into a pumpkin!

Interest has grown significantly in 2008, but we are convinced that there a lot of people out there waiting for the sun to shine before giving us a ring and booking a unique dining experience. Modifications to our wonderful temperamental and b****y minded generator have proved to be a terrific investment. Since converting the cooling to an internal arrangement instead of the precarious method of picking up and spurting out canal water like a river launch, touch wood, we have had a trouble free piece of machinery. German manufacture of course with a strange marriage of a Japanese diesel engine it purrs away now producing 12 KVA of power without missing a beat. Ssssshhh, did she hear me say that?? Engines are always she’s aren’t they, I wonder why? Finally we have decided that as the new cooling was working so well we would put a separate cooling tank in the hull, instead of grudgingly sharing with the main engine, which should be connected up soon, after the tank went in at Alvechurch during January.

New paintwork, interior varnishing and refitting has been lavished on the boats with LED lighting adding a new dimension to the restaurant boat. Lots more to do, as the recent bad weather blew our sturdy signs over and smashed them to pieces, but some have endured worse with the floods so we are lucky.

We will do an update to this news page very shortly with some images of recent events and more news of developments. WATCH THIS SPACE.