john6767

CRT no longer paint new lock gates. It is one of the anecdotes that they tell you on the Bradley workshops tour, it saves 2 days in lock gate manufacture and there was no proof that painting did any good.

Could be either I guess. Last week there were 2 widebeams moored on the towpath between Napton and Braunston, plus the one that has been dumped for months in the no mooring area at the bottom of the North Oxford by the A45 bridge.

Good point about phone signal. At Calcutt I don’t get any signal in the boat on Three, but the router also onThree works well even without putting the external antenna up. Ou side the boat I do get a phone signal. Calcutt has free wifi, but agin we don’t get a usable signal for that in the boat.

We are at Calcutt, it works well, has a well stocked chandlery and all maintenance facilities if you want them. It is very tranquil, particularly in meadow marina. The cons would be if you spend a lot of time on the boat in the marina, you will need to use a car to get to a pub or shops, but you are not far by car to shops a Southam including a decent sized Tesco and a brand new Aldi for food and a Screwfix for hardware.

As I said the two widebeam trip boats were there on their moorings. The ice cream boat that is usually between the two trip boats was not there last weekend. Those are all presumably paying CRT for their mooring on the opposite side of the basin. This was the first time I had seen a widebeam using the visitor mooring pontoons.

I was in Stratford last weekend, not in the boat, and I noticed that of the 3 boats moored in Bancroft basin one was a large narrowboat style widebeam. Other than the two trip boats on their own moorings in the basin, I have not seen a widebeam from the river using the basin before. With so few boats there it obviously makes no practical difference, but it was taking up 2 of the limited spaces. I did also wonder about licensing, would you need a CRT canal and river licence to moor in the basin? The boat in question did not have any visible licence or index number, but if it was licenced for CRT you would have thought it would just be rivers, for the Severn? Obviously if could have been ANT licenced and a visitor licence for CRT, assuming that is possible?

I think there is a sign a couple of hundred yards up the Cannock Extension canal, but perhaps that is a different smoke controlled area as I would not have thought that was Birmingham.

I saw the email as well and wonderer what it means in the big picture, is it just the services or moorings and trip boats as well. I guess as well as pump out that means there is no diesel in the centre of Birmingham.

Above Oxford the river is quiet, partly due to all the big cruisers not being able to get under Osney bridge. There is plenty of casual mooring on fields, basically as long as there is not a no mooring sign you can stop, but the mooring locations that others have used will be obvious from the bank. Really the only place above Oxford that you will need to pay is at Lechlade, last time I was there it was £5 a night on the field on the left before the bridge. In theory the locks are manned during the day but in practice lately it has been less than 50% above Oxford that are manned, higher percentage the further down the river you go. You just buy the visitor licence at the first manned lock you come to, probably Eynsham in your case assuming you use Dukes Cut to get onto the Thames. You fill out a form, possibly the hire company will provide you with the info you need to the form, eg, the manufacturer of the boat and year of manufacture, unless there is a exception for the details for hire boats, I don’t know. The locks all take credit cards for payment.