Richard Fairhurst

Ah yes, I remember that! https://github.com/mapbox/vt2geojson is my go-to for debugging what's actually in a vector tile - use the browser console to copy the URL of a vector tile or two that you'd expect to contain some place names, then run vt2geojson on it, and eyeball the result. Looking at the example you gave above, then if I run vt2geojson https://maps.tty.org.uk/tileserver.php?/europe_great-britain.json?/europe_great-britain/13/4039/2672.pbf I get some GeoJSON output which includes { "type": "Feature", "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -2.491847276687622, 52.90454078537999 ] }, "properties": { "class": "town", "rank": 10, "name": "Market Drayton", "name:latin": "Market Drayton", "vt_layer": "place" } However, the Liberty stylesheet renders placenames like this: { "id": "place_town", "type": "symbol", "source": "openmaptiles", "source-layer": "place", "filter": ["all", ["==", "class", "town"]], "layout": { "icon-image": {"base": 1, "stops": [[0, "dot_9"], [8, ""]]}, "text-anchor": "bottom", "text-field": "{name_en}", "text-font": ["Roboto Regular"], "text-max-width": 8, "text-offset": [0, 0], "text-size": {"base": 1.2, "stops": [[7, 12], [11, 16]]} }, "paint": { "text-color": "#333", "text-halo-color": "rgba(255,255,255,0.8)", "text-halo-width": 1.2 } }, In other words, the vector tile attributes contain name and name:latin, but the stylesheet is trying to render name_en.

I think this is because your stylesheet is looking for a 'name_en' attribute but your vector tiles have 'name' and 'name:latin' in them. The OpenMapTiles spec is an absolute disaster area for this - see https://github.com/openmaptiles/openmaptiles/issues/930. There are some comments at the top of tilemaker's process-openmaptiles.lua that explain it. Best solution is probably to edit the JSON stylesheet and replace any references to "{name_en}" with "{name}".

Image copyright owners - photo galleries like Alamy, PA Media, those sort of people - are now routinely trawling the internet to find places where their images have been used without payment. When they spot one, they send the site owner a bill for £300 and a payment link. No advance warning, no option to take it down and suffer no further action, just a "pay now or the price goes up in 30 days" email. (I do know someone who this has happened to.) Yes, it's extortion. You can dispute it, if you have a good lawyer. Your average lawyer will charge more than £300, and the photo galleries know it.

I suspect Novara Media knows about as much about waterways as Waterways World does about Trotskyism.

The Rock of Gibraltar on the south Oxford. Fenced off and falling into dereliction. I’d be surprised if it reopens, unless someone sees an opportunity to appeal to the nearby Soho Farmhouse crowd.

There's only one canalside Hungry Horse in Burton. In fact, there's only one canalside pub in Burton! (The Bridge is technically Branston rather than Burton…) My recollection of Burton is that it had a fair number of decent boozers - as well as a lot of very average ones - but barely any of them served food. The Coopers Tavern did a nice line in Staffordshire oatcakes for a while which became a favourite for WW lunchtimes, but that didn't last long. The Wetmore Whistle served food at one point, but that got bulldozed. But maybe things have changed.

Absolutely that. The other point is that volunteers (by and large) aren't transferable. The members of the Cotswold Canals Trust don't want to work on the G&S or the Thames, they want to work on the Cotswold Canals. You can't tell them to concentrate on "keeping the existing track open" if that's not how they want to spend their leisure time. Back in the day, one of said not-particularly-clueful BW management answered a question at the BW AGM about volunteers working on BW's own waterways with "We treat them in exactly the same way as our employees." It was an absolute facepalm moment. No, you don't treat them in the same way as your employees, because you give your employees a pay cheque at the end of each month. Employees will put up with a lot of s—t for a pay cheque. But if you tell volunteers "actually, we want you to do this instead", many will respond "sorry, not what I signed up for. I'm off to the local preserved railway, see ya".

The timescale of all the big restorations right now is such that it's not really worth worrying about CRT's ability to take them on. The Wilts & Berks is not going to be restored in 10 years' time. Nor is the Thames & Severn, or the Wey & Arun, or the Grantham, or (with apologies to @Up-Side-Down) the Hereford & Gloucester. The Mont to Welshpool might be but I wouldn't bet my house on it. By the time the question needs to be asked, CRT is likely to be in a very different place one way or another. Waterway funding is cyclical. There won't be massive shortfalls forever. Right now we are experiencing the hangover of austerity and of some not particularly clueful management of BW in its latter years. Derek Cochrane was reputedly working on a plan to "establish" the HNC and the Rochdale before he got shunted sideways out of BW (by aforementioned not-particularly-clueful management). The idea was to do what had happened with the K&A - first you restore it to a minimum standard (1990), then you pitch for funding to finish the job (1996-2003). Much of this essentially comes down to CRT cracking the community engagement issue. They haven't done so yet but the climate is absolutely right for it right now. We live in hope...

Or put another way, Kelsey Media (who publish Canal Boat) have bought Mortons Media (who publish Towpath Talk): https://www.kelsey.co.uk/news/kelsey-media-acquires-mortons-media/

Oxford–Abingdon–Swindon–Cricklade–Lechlade–Oxford would be a cracker of a loop. One week with pretty much everything on it (river, broad canal, narrow canal) and some lovely scenery. I could see it being the next Four Counties in terms of popularity. The W&B/K&A loop is perhaps further down the line. Swindon Borough Council has blown hot and cold on the restoration of the Wilts & Berks through the town, often connected with change of political control, I think.

I would strongly suspect this is being done with DEFRA’s knowledge (or encouragement) and perhaps a hint that legislative time might be available to amend the 95 Act.

Of course, CRT could encourage more people to develop apps for the canals by taking off the stupid "no commercial use" restriction that they apply to their data. Currently, an app that displays CRT stoppage or water level information isn't allowed to include any way of defraying the costs of running that app, e.g. a supporter scheme (like Patreon or Ko-fi) or ads, because that counts as "commercial". The app developer has to soak up the costs of the app themselves, starting with the £99 annual Apple developer account and going on to server costs etc. No other major public data provider includes this restriction, which is why there are approximately eight billion railway apps and approximately two canal apps.

FWIW I don't remember there being significant EU funding in the Pennine restorations. The final push was mostly Lottery (Millennium Commission/Heritage Lottery Fund) and English Partnerships/Regional Development Agencies, following up earlier local authority schemes. But it's possible of course that some of the EP money came from the EU in the first place.

At the time, a handful of semi-derelict buildings and car parks on land beside the canal, I believe, almost entirely in Manchester itself. One of the car parks contained the Portakabin where you had to buy your licence for the trip down the Rochdale Nine in the 90s. Town Centre Securities appear to be still in existence, still running that car park, and have a bunch of properties around the Rochdale in Manchester: https://www.tcs-plc.co.uk/portfolio