Monday 25 August 2008

Strange Ethos

A good day yesterday at the IWA Fetival at Wolverhampton, but more about that when I'm back home from work and can post photos.

We left the festival soon after lunch, and headed to Stratford-upon-Avon, as we're due to be taking Debdale down there in three weeks time. We then called in at a few places on the South Stratford Canal, as we made our way back to our hotel in Warwick. We saw several hire boats from ethos narrowboats, which we'd never heard of before, so I looked up their website. They appear to be a management company that also runs apartments and mobile homes.

But they have some very strange rules for their boats, including that each must have three adults on board. Three? Thank goodness other hire firms don't have the same rules, or we and plenty of other people would probably never have taken to the water. But then most hire companies don't put on their websites that narrowboats can be lethal weapons, either.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi There,

Ethos are a timeshare company that were based in Evesham Marina for a years using Amber Boats. I think there was a fall out or liquidation and they ended up in Stratford. The head office is in North Wales and the yards is manned by a receptionist and the boat workers.

We first used Ethos via ebay 3 yers ago and found them really friendly and great equiped boats.

Last used in May this year (we buy a week when we need it direct, not a timeshare) and again all was good.

They are only insured for boats with 3 adults, which really stuffs us up as it me and her and two small children. We got round this by using our own insurance(Directline £24) and were allowed on.

Canaltime are the same (3 adults) so I guess maybe you could use the insurance thing again.

Enjoyed the blog.

Regards

Neil Dudman

Simon said...

I spoke to one guy on an Ethos boat - he said they'd only got their timeshare on a boat as it could it was a heap way of getting weeks which could be swapped for villas abroad instead... charming!

Anonymous said...

The way I heard it, Ethos boats are out of licence for canals and as no-one will deliver diesel to Western Marina they have to be sent to Wooton Wawen to fill up... maybe thats just a rumour...