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Surely it would be better if everybody lived in Carlisle but the supermarket was built on the top of Shap. We could all go out shopping (uphill), safe in the knowledge that even with flat batteries we could coast home? George

There probably is quite a future for this electric car charging approach, but I foresee the various technical problems taking a while to solve, and actual implementation taking longer than the estimates coming from its proponents, mostly because it takes time to plan and build all the stuff that's needed. Providing the charging points isn't just going to be a problem in remote areas, although those will of course present great difficulty. In my crowded street, as in much of London, there are no designated parking spaces and car owners have to just park wherever there's a space at the time, often 50 yards away on the other side of the road. Running a cable from a car to the nearest lamppost would be quite a safety hazard, so there would need to be kerbside charging posts at frequent intervals, each capable of being used by whichever car is there at the time and billing accordingly. Possible but costly I'd imagine. Existing domestic power circuits might sometimes be adequate to cope with higher use, sometimes not and money would need spending to upgrade. The same would apply to the mains supply down each street, the local substation and the grid supplying it, so the electricity companies would be kept busy for years dealing with the bottlenecks. Finally that leads us to what I think might be the biggest problem, generating the extra power. The UK already has a deficit of electricity, and the National Grid imports some through cables from France and the Netherlands and is building another line from Ramsgate to Belgium, according to a documentary about the Channel I saw recently. Even with that and the new power stations in the pipeline such as Hinckley Point, I wonder will there be enough? If they start charging up electric cars all over Europe, will they still have surplus electricity they want to sell to us? This may not end well.

What you have forgotten is the land drainage provided by our canals, The money DEFRA pays should really be seen as a contribution towards trying to stop people's homes and businesses from being flooded. Government is not providing enough, as seen by the Rochdale and C&HN floods recently, so I feel uncertain about what will happen should government try to walk away from its responsibilities. Boat licence fees go towards keeping the system navigable, but the canals themselves cannot be done away with because of the drainage they provide.

if the average house uses approx 8kwh and the average car will need 12kwh to charge giving a total of 20kwh required that is already an extra 150% electricity requirements, then when you allow for the fact that the average household (and presumably average house) has 1.3 cars you are up to the average house needing 23.6kwh (almost an extra 200% electricity demand) I suspect that off-peak will cease to exist as we know it. edited to add.... lamp post charging is a nice idea until you imagine a road with terraced houses, maybe a lamp post every 100 feet with 6 cars trying to charge from each post. sadly I don't think the infrastructure for electricity supply in the uk will handle the massive increase in demand for power that a rapid change from internal combustion to electric would require

I have an 11 year old Liverpool boat, mine since it was 6 months old. It spends about 10 months a year in a marina hooked up to mains electricity, albeit with a standard Galvanic Isolator in the Earth connection. Every time I have it blacked (every three years) I have a full hull survey done. Every time the hull has come back perfect, no measurable thinning anywhere. Overall my experience with this boat has been excellent. I have given it some serious thumps and bashes, travelled hundreds, thousands of miles, on all sorts of waterways in all weathers with no problems. The Isuzu engine has been rock-solid reliable, though I do have it professionally serviced once a year. This means that once a year a professional boat engineer gives it a proper looking over. This winter the engineer observed that the engine mounts had shifted and were slightly loose. Left for any time, this would have caused big problems with misaligned transmission. Quickly and easily fixed. My only negative observation is; Liverpool put less effort into preparing the steel compared to other builders. So often there was a certain amount of 'mill scale' left on the steel. The process of regular blacking means this is not a problem with the hull. But the top of the boat may suffer. After 11 years my boat is looking decidedly rough, peeling paint and superficial rust. So I have decided to have it stripped back and repainted. Not a cheap job but on the big scale 'total cost of ownership' I am still entirely satisfied with my Liverpool. A boat from a more thorough builder would have cost a lot more - more than the cost of this repaint. One final minor Liverpool observation - their hinges tend to be a bit flimsy. Anywhere that you have hinges, doors, hatches, lids, keep them well oiled. But it is not a big deal, they are easily replaced. When I bought this boat, my first, I was told it was 'the cheap end' of narrowboats. I fully intended to 'upgrade' to something more reputable when I had learned the ropes. I never did upgrade, I never felt the need. Entirely happy.

Although the Russians who would have been monitoring very closely have never disputed the fact. And who can dispute all those perfect photos taken on the moons surface by a man in a thick suit with a cumbersome glass domed helmet and using a camera without a viewfinder, truly top draw photography in extreme conditions.

A man in a cinema notices what looks like a mouse sitting next to him. "Are you a mouse?" asked the man, surprised. "Yes." "What are you doing at the cinema?" The mouse replied, "Well, I liked the book."

Someone's not sticking to their low rat diet!

http://rugbyboats.co.uk/listings/greenlaw-1937-traditional/ I think it has been for sale for a while now. Perhaps the washers sorry, "Originally with 7,000 rivets, she was built by Harland & Wolff." are putting people off.

I may appear negative I suppose but I would say I was being a realist. The problems yet to be overcome are way bigger than many seem to realise. I would love to run an electric car if they were viable but at present they are not even close to serving my pattern of use, not even remotely and I don't even need to travel for work like millions do.

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/102208/uk-facing-up-to-ev-charging-challenge?_mout=1&utm_campaign=autoexpress_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter This article from AutoExpress states that the UK added just one new public charging point for every 6 new plug-in cars sold in 2017.

Them dam mice get everywhere

You really don't get it do you? People can't just "install a charge point". I cannot guarantee parking outside my house. The Council will not allow me to have a dropped kerb fitted, due to where my house is, so I cannot have a drive. The electricity company refuse to bring power to our rented garages, and the Council refuse to sell them to us. Outside my garage is the ONLY place I can guarantee to park. It is too far from the house to run an extension cable. The electricity company have also stated that the supply to our road is inadequate for a charging point and it is us that would have to pay for an up-gradeat the moment. Whilst modifications MAY happen within the next decade in urban areas it will not happen that quickly in rural areas, simply because there is not the money to pay for it. And for your information I drive a 2 year old Euro 6 diesel because there is not a small petrol car that will tow my caravan, and a 30 year old petrol car on the weekend!

I read the article and wondered why people make such comments, Has there been a time shift to another dimension perhaps? Our society has created the NIMBY culture where an inherent selfishness has become part of our everyday lives, in fact it is worse certain life styles have made the USP (Utterly Selfish Person) a reality! It is also a reversion to the past, of the times of the haves and have not's. With canal heritage we try to reflect on, and some times relive, the past, yet there were many dark eddies in the navigable waterways of this period. They were a fertile source of characters and situation in the works of Charles Dickens and other authors. Today such belief seem to have floated back to the surface from the bottom mud where they have lain for generations. Personally I find the smell of wood smoke, quite in keeping with the the modern boating scene particularly on a winter walk along the towpath. There is something "earthy" about the smell. Those on the Cam should be grateful of the boaters that use that navigation and the money they spend in the local shops. Another smell is that found, from the past, is when a steam locomotive passes by. That odour of smoke and steam is a pleasant reminder of an age when steam engines were the prevalent source of power. Fortunately the numbers in those days are no more, but their replacement the internal combustion engine has become a serious pollutant in the modern world. I wonder how many of those who walk along the Cam enjoy the smell and noise of the modern motorway?

Beat ya, i,ve had four ! So much for inflation, doc says its quicker to fly a camera drone up there next session. I think thats stretching things a bit far, dont you ?

Ok so I've done it myself 1 litre of diesel contains approx 11kWhrs 1kG smokeless fuel contains approx 9kWhrs So in a single day when I burn 8kg of coal and two lites of diesel, I am consuming a staggering 40 kWhrs of energy. So much for boating being 'low impact'! I knew it wasn't really but there are some figures to prove it.

As I have pointed out before: when the towpaths were maintained solely for navigation purposes they became all but impassable in many places - horses no longer pulled boats and so the towpath was a low priority. My memory starts over 50 years ago when it was a lottery whether you could walk along the towpath to find a phone call box to summon assistance when broken down! Even as recently as 10 years ago I recall stretches that could not be walked along. What changed was when local authorities discovered that towpaths were a relatively low cost way of extending their provision for access and recreational exercise, along with other bodies such as Sustrans. The result is that impassable towpaths are very rare and I struggle to think of one that I have encountered in the past 5 years - OK some are a bit muddy underfoot but still a world away from how they once became. There is an issue in that the financial input is, I think, predominantly capital and, as is so often when capital is given, little is done about funding the on-going maintenance. What will happen when the nice new tarmac cycle motorway becomes full of potholes - will CaRT have to divert its funds to repair them? Would they be allowed to de-prioritise towpaths in the way that BWB once did?

What a lot of folk don’t appreciate today is how crappy visual special effects were back in the late sixties. We were still in the era of Ray Harryhausen’s Argonauts back then. Capricorn One actually proves how it couldn’t have been faked if you watch it closely.

Judging by some peoples attitudes it would seem that it has been diluted by too much in breeding

About half past two.

I think the replies you've had to this question so far don't properly answer it, and it needs some clarification. The short answer is that other than boaters the only people using the canals who do pay directly are groups of anglers who I think pay some fees for fishing rights. Making walkers, cyclists etc. pay to use towpaths would probably be unenforceable anyway. Canal towpaths are mostly owned and maintained by CRT, i.e. where the canal is run by CRT which means most but not all canals in England and Wales. CRT get a good chunk of their income from an annual grant from DEFRA (i.e. part of central government), but little or nothing from local authorities who are the people you pay your council tax to. The funding from DEFRA is officially due to run out in about 2026 but it's quite plausible that whoever's in government then might decide to continue it. Or not. Arguably you could view that government funding as a way for all the other canal users to contribute to their upkeep, preserve an important part of the national heritage etc. Incidentally CRT get another decent chunk of their income from utilities paying for such things as communications cables running under towpaths. Towpaths beside other canals will generally be maintained by the local navigation authority, and the same may apply alongside the rivers, but there will be lots of exceptions where paths are owned by private landowners or local authorities, so some council tax may be contributing there. Where you are in Peterborough, the river Nene is run by the EA, but not necessarily the land along its banks.

If you thought I had a hobby horse with my dodgy Smartgauges, or Nick Norman with his complaints about modding, these are as NOTHING compared to Higgs' ranting and ravings over his imagined iniquities of the NAA!

Wikipedia tells me that "Lutine" is the feminine form of "Lutin" which translates as "the tease" or "tormentress". I think she has rather lived up to that!

I serve on the NE Partnership and I think we do a good job. A very respected boater friend of mine with a huge and long experience of waterways serves on another partnership and she says likewise. But the best way is to judge for yourself by attending a partnership annual meeting or get hold of copies of the annual reports. Each partnership has a slightly different approach depending on make up and character of the waterways. Much of the work is unseen and consists of both practical work such as strategy planning, and input to the local waterway plan and annual bid for funds etc and the very important 'networking' with local bodies and organisations, movers and shakers etc. Very often where outside funding is obtained it goes straight to a project rather than via CRT books. Best wishes David L

You say "if only some nb steerers were as competent...." but then say 'most are'??? If most are, then that is more than some??? Are you trying to say that proportionately, wide beam owners are more competent? I would strongly disagree as there are many many newbies who buy widebeams and park them up - never to move out of the marina again......and this thread was about another person new to the canals will similarly will not be competent when he sets out. The problem of meeting a wide beam coming the other way is very short lived. At a bridge hole on a bend - a rapid switch to reverse, a couple of minutes waiting in the wind for the wide beam to traverse the bridge hole and then on the way. Not a great drama. The frustration is the 10 boats in a queue behind having to wait that 2 or 3 minutes every bridge hole when said widebeam doesnt let them pass or more likely cant let them pass 'cause it is not wide enough. Its the people the widebeam holds up - who the helm cant see - that are getting frustrated.

Unfortunately I think that eventually you will be forced to use an alternative heat source when solid fuel stoves are banned. It's just a matter of time I think, and that time is not too far away.

Keep a bottle of this on the roof, if they don’t get the idea after a bit then bon appetite