Many thanks to Baalzamon for my new Thorn Raven Nomad!
And to those in this thread posting so much about it (special mention to il padrone of course) - really helped decide that it was the bike for me. With three young kids needing a lot of attention it will be some time before I can put it to its designed touring use though. The main attraction for me right now was the low levels of maintenance required. I have had enough of mucking around with derailleurs, charging / losing batteries for lights, truing rims, fixing broken spokes, cleaning cassettes, etc etc etc. Basically baby sitting fragile equipment in order to stay on the road. We only have one car and I need reliable two wheeled transport at any time of the day or night and I don't have time to faff around in the shed fixing stuff when I could be playing with the kids. Or riding for that matter!
I just want a bike to ride, get to places I need to go and carry a decent amount of stuff when I need to in the process. I need to do that day in and day out, rain, hail or shine. Doesn't have to be the fastest on the commuting circuit - just has to get there reliably without a puncture (might be putting on my Marathon Plus tyres...). Service intervals similar to a motorbike should help! And a good gear range.
So I reckon I've finally got my ideal bike although I will admit this is still quite a bit OTT in terms of over engineering, even for my intended purpose. But given what lots of people pay for the latest and greatest carbon fibre unobtainium featherweight things, I'm pretty happy!
Thanks again Baalzamon! Time to start riding now...