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People should vote with their feet,privatise the network,those that have worked all their lives and have been rewarded for working hard by getting some money should be able to use the network and pay into it, why allow the canal to become a council estate, there should be someone on cart to have the bollocks to ban freeloaders,it has been reinvested as a tourism attraction, not a trailer park

You've made me think now. What 'rules' would I recommend? Take your time in everything you do Be considerate to other people Watch and think about what you are doing Remember to look outside the boat from time to time - it's a beautiful world Don't forget you are doing this for your enjoyment Richard

Hi Guys, We have a (potty) dog and collect his poo in biodegradable bags which are placed in walkside bins. the very idea of non biodegradable bags is insane n my opinion. Last Christmas I ate a dead chicken, resulting in my contracting campolybactor enteritis. This was a Very Bad Thing. It is also available on offer if one injests dog poo. HMMM. I am not very old, but after one week my kidneys faailed and th liver was not far behind. It has taken from January 1st until now to feel on te road to recovery. Not a Joking Matter. Have nothing to do with animal faeces. Regards, Mike.

If you ever work out a reliable, repeatable method of combining the last two, can you let me know Richard

We try to get down the western end of the K&A every year. Here is my almost impartial report on the evils of this place! Travelling from Devizes down to Bradford on Avon loads of space on ALL visitor moorings we passed. Arrived Bradford on Avon day before yesterday. Visitor Moorings EMPTY except for one abandoned liveaboard boat that has been there for months (why has owner or CaRT not pulled it down to the 14 day moorings to be out of the way?). Lots of space on the 14 day moorings. Quite a few "crusty" boats (and quite a few posh ones) between Bradford and Bath but well spaced out. EVERY liveaboard boater that was out smiled and said hello!. Lots of space above Bath on the 14 day stretch, one space on Darlingtom wharf. Sydney wharf is the main visitor hot spot with space for about seven boats. Two spaces taken up by local hire company storing/mooring hireboats on the visitor moorings, third hireboat stored in Bridge 'ole. Had to wait ages whilst this boat was moved to let a widebeam through. Hireboat returned to bridge 'ole even though we were waiting to pass, had to squash past. Moored on Sydney wharf. Approached by team of CaRT "Chuggers" . I refused to give money and pointed out that CaRT are vandalising the canal...lovely historic cast iron standpipe at Bath replaced with ultra-modern stainless steel monstrosity, Today...... About 10 hireboats came down. Half were all male groups here for the Rugby, already well lubricated by 11am. One moored on waterpoint, we suggested they move..they reversed back to empty space (and very nicely too). Another lads boat moored partly on lock landing: they had just left space for another boat but other boats did not realise this and had lots of navigational adventures. Another boat came down with loud music and lots of girls dancing on roof, well lubricated (lager that is). One girl exposed chest to lads on rugby boat, Sadly her back was towards me. Walked into Bath. Bath had won rugby by skin of teeth, all pubs packed. Walked to Widcombe pub. Lovely pub (as always) drank too much beer. Down to Bristol tomorrow. Lots of diesel in canal near hirebase but no sh*t. ...........Dave .

Be nice when he starts producing goats cheese though. Common land is for poor people to graze their livestock, not for living on. Why can he not just tie up off the end of the visitor moorings. That would come under the default 2 week rule but surely if he's not bothering anyone, what does it matter? Long live those who choose to live their own lives the way they want to. He would get more sympathy however if he used a bit of brain and considered others. So why is it alright for a commercial company to abuse the visitor mooring facility to make money just because your group has said they can and the rest of us will be potentially threatened with action if we did the same thing, but without your permission. Surely you have a duty to supply visitors with an alternative to the site you have taken from us? By the way a "service" is just what it says it is - a facility for public use - having to pay for a trip boat is therefore NOT using a service. Incidentally, I welcome the trip boat and think it's a good idea. I just don't see why you should take "public" moorings. This mooring WE have paid for already through our license.

Hire boaters are really not given enough training on the etiquette expected on the waterways and probably do not bother to do much research before they go on a week or two's holiday. Mooring on lock waiting areas is an obvious no-no to us but maybe for non-boaters this is not so obvious. I find if we explain these sorts of things, politely, to people, the information is generally well received. You get exactly the same thing with travellers in Asia where people do not bother to learn local customs and give offence to the indigenous population with their behaviour. Sadly this is a reflection of our modern self-centered culture where people are increasingly uninterested and unconcerned about anyone else except themselves. This myopic world-view looks set to deepen. The irony is that the last two generations have been able to see the world, even the remotest parts, like never before and yet people seem to learn less and less about local cultures. This same ignorance prevails on our inland waterways. Has anyone noticed, in London especially, how there are two sets of prices for 2nd hand narrowboats : the proper price which boaters pay and double that for those who see a boat as cheap housing and make no effort to learn about boats! The say ignorance is bliss? Not so, it can be very expensive and culturally divisive.

I do wish folks wouldn't advertise how nice the K&A is, it's spoiling a well kept secret, instead paint it as a dreadful waterway, then boaters will keep away and leave it in peace.

Sue Another 'standard' post from you. You may have answered this before but how do you charge your batteries so that you can use your silent inverter?

Not an urban myth but was put out by I think the publicc health cannot be bothered to look it up, mainly to try and teach people to be more responsible with waste disposal, but like i said I worked on a farm where rats are for ever present no matter what you do. Off post quite a bit so I apologise, but I stand by my we should be careful what we put in the cut, bad enough in the weed hatch trying to remove someones disgarded item without it being covered in dog poo, never mind the enviroment.

Postscript. I looked the "mooring land". Probably the same plot as Keith. Chatted with nearby boat owners, and berth holders in the nearby marina. All negative. Disputes of every shape and form abound. It was a nice sunny day, amazingly. So we had a lovely pub lunch....and went home. If somthing is too good to be true - it probably is. Thanks for contributions everyone ;-)

Really? Doesn't matter how much noise you make?

8am to 8pm is the "minimum standard" rule, but surely consideration of others (and one's self) applies even within those times? Trying to obtain a quiet generator is a "good thing" and not to be dismissed as irrelevant

we have the Honda EU26i and its not that quiet really but it won't matter about db if you run it within the specified time frame of 8am - 8pm

Once upon a time when we all as kids played in the street the pavements were literally littered with dog poo, especially along the front garden hedges and fences, but will all took the poo ''not home'' but for granted and thought nothing of it. We'd play all the usual street games like Hop Scotch, Marbles ''though I lost mine ages ago'' five stones and many other games most of which involved groveling about on the pavement or gutter. We were also always knocking up different soapbox carts or ''Trolleys'' we called em. Anyway all these games ect were played in close contact with the ground and therefore needless to say we were forever treading in dog poo, tumbling off our trolleys and rolling in dog poo, everything we did had to be worked around the dog poo. The poo was always at its worst and stickiest when fresh on a hot day so we always kept a keen eye on all the little Mongrel dogs that seemed to be always trotting about and to make mental notes of where they did it. During a heatwave the dog poo problem didn't seem quite so bad as it quickly dried up and the hot sun leached out the brown colour and left it a sort of bleached crumbly white colour that resembled quite a tasty looking Merangue cake. Yes we were quite fond of it, it was part of the scene although a bit of a hazard but we would have genuinely missed it if it hadn't been there. I honestly can't remember a single day going by when we didn't go in without having made contact somehow or other with the dog poo. What with my memories of folk all smelling of stew and kids stinking of dog poo it was quite a smellious childhood really. I don't remember any kids catching any terrible diseases because of it though.

So you cannot see the problem of landfilling tons of waste in non-compostable bags? I give up too. One example of a wild animal that we have turned into a disease ridden pest is the European Rock Dove (admittedly an omnivore), probably better known as the Street Pigeon or Flying Rat to those who blame it for its reputation rather than the humans who feed it filth. You could also include rats, foxes and any other species that, as we deprive it of habitat, moves in with us and eats our rubbish, so we can then call it vermin. I would be far more concerned about concentrating all that dog waste in one place than distributing it evenly to biodegrade relatively harmlessly in low concentrations.

A couple of days ago, on my way to Chester, I watched a bloke walking along the towpath with one of those litter pickers, systematically searching for and then picking up and flicking into the canal every piece of dog shit he could find and he was finding a lot! I half opened my mouth to remonstrate then thought better of it as it occurred to me that it was possibly better off in the cut than on the bottom of my shoes or in my boat. It occurred to me (too late) that I could have applauded his devotion to public services and suggested bagging it instead of putting it into the canal but to be honest I would need to know that what he was doing was actually that harmful. Does anyone know or have a compelling argument about the harmfulness or otherwise, I mean does the dog shit harm the aquatic life. I know some canal water like that on the Gloucester & Sharpness is directly extracted to supply drinking water (in that case for Bristol) and that would no doubt make anyone dumping think twice but what about canals in general? What are the facts? Is it at least an illegal offence? I have seen many dog walkers flicking dog shit into the canal, I once asked a dog walker who was obviously unaware that I was a boater, where the nearest dog bin was (I have a dog) and he calmly suggested I just put a stone in the bottom of my doggy bag and throw it in the canal, adding that he did it all the time, I did have a go at him (the plastic pollution made it unquestionably wrong) and he was suitably embarrassed. On a more general note, I think if we want a cleaner environment to boat in and lets face it there are some pretty ‘shity’ area’s of the canal network, we have to be more pro-active. On a visit to Stoke at the beginning of the year, I noticed huge amounts of rubbish in the canal on the southern approach to the city (I have untangled more from my prop in this area than anywhere else) and a lot of it seemed to be coming from a couple of small business parks. Last week when I passed through the same area I noticed it was unchanged so I took the details of the businesses and the area and e-mailed them to CRT, the City environment dept. and the local paper. CRT responded brilliantly and sent someone to the area to investigate within 24 hours, Stoke city council environment protection initially replied that it was nothing to do with them until I asked why they chose a picture of narrow boats as a header on their web site, then said they would investigate. I am very interested to see if anything has or will actually get cleaned up. I know that Maffi on here is a long standing campaigner against people who rubbish the canals and towpath and like him I do pick up and properly dispose of a lot of rubbish on my travels, I wonder if enough boaters did this, the problem could be solved?

Come come, you shouldn't upset her, I'm sure that your wife is a pretty sight.

I always considered my license to be the equivalent of a local tax in that it pays for my rubbish being taken away - as long as I take it to a bin of course - upkeep of the waterways, mooring rings, etc. Yes I use libraries occasionally but there are a lot of services I do not use. Should I therefore pay for only the ones I do use and not subsidise those I don't? I was born in a socialist country which believed that the wealth created by all should be shared by all. As I got older the system changed to one where you are supposed to pay for what you get and not get what you don't pay for. A selfish bland materialistic world that only thinks that money has any worth. In fact money is utterly worthless. I know which system I prefer but we seem to be getting further and further away from that. Not a very civilised way to go is it, especially when many of the libraries were built by the generous gift of a man called Carnegie who thought that being poor should not be a bar against reading and educating yourself and consequently they were free. The real issue is that we should be all uniting together on the things that really matter and not knit picking about who pays what in a silly childish squabble about one person getting more sweeties than another. We need to get radical before it's too late and there is nothing left of the brave new world we started to create after the last world war. If we don't boating will only be for the rich.

Maybe Carlt is a half breed canal boat user. Maybe thats why he wasnt offended by that comment. Personally I would be very offended is someone called me a canal boat user

Yes as of 12.30 today. We are now in Northampton and its raining