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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!

Battery power is similar to clockwork power, strong at first and slowly but surely getting weaker and weaker until you fail to proceed at all. For this reason your route needs to be planned very carefully beforehand, with any steep inclines at the beginning of the run whilst the battery still has plenty of oomph in it, or the spring is still well wound to charge up the hills, with an easy run down to your destination, dodging any upgrades towards the end of the run or you might not make it. More and more folk will need to live on mountain tops and big hills to take advantage of the powerless downhill head start of the run. For example, Shap summit where you could coast with power off all the way down north to Carlisle or south to Lancaster for shopping and afternoon tea and things, which should then leave plenty of battery power or spring tension in reserve to climb back up and return home without having to get out and push it, but all things generally being equal you will end up pushing it, from about halfway up. Ideally special escalators should be installed up and down steep hills to convey these vehicles up to save battery charge and spring tension which should increase the vehicles mileage endurance.

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.

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.

Thank you Kedian.I have just looked at your website and found that most of my questions about overplating have been answered. I only wish that I had been aware of Canal net and your website BEFORE I bought my boat. Many thanks,

We could of course start burning more coal for electricity. As good old Donald said "... nice clean coal"

Install a charging point and charge much quicker or have a charge point installed roadside, it will prob be a standard procedure in a decade's time. It's coming. ETA: You could instead join mrsmelly and keep an old diesel car on the road and top it up from a ch tank, would cost you though.

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?

Great if you live in an urban area, but as usual people seem to forget that a lot of people still live outside those urban areas. A 50 mile round trip to a supermarket or to the nearest railway station isn't unusual around here, and you can forget any other public transport.

I keep hearing that there is no infrastructure but when IC cars were introduced there was no infrastructure to support them then but it soon materialised.

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 most people only do short trips most of the time, then one solution is you have a little electric run about and you hire a car with a bigger battery for those longer trips. Not very popular, but maybe no choice. I even see the days of the personal car coming to an end, and for short journeys you use a driverless Uber. For long journeys you could even swap rental cars during the journey if you don't want to wait a couple of hours for a recharge.

So 8kwh for house + (2 x 13) kwh for two cars = 34kwh per day so over 4 times what the wiring from the grid to the housing area is designed to carry. Most street lights are on a single 16 amp circuit for the street, big main roads sometimes have a 16 amp 3 phase circuit, so only 1 or 2 cars can cahrge at once not quite the nose to tail parking outside terraced houses. We have had days this year with less than 5% of the installed 10 gigawatts available as there is no wind. Now if cars had exchangeable battery packs then many of these problems could be addressed, as would long journeys away from your charger. You could have two batteries per car one slowly charging when the grid can supply the power the other in use, you can swap at service points on your journey, rather than spend hours waiting for the charge. Of course unless government force it every manufacturer would have their own standard, think Apple and older phone chargers, and not AA batteries the equivalent of which is required.

Extra charge points could be added between lamposts, the cables are ducted I believe so could easily replaced with heftier ones. Shell has already acknowledged the inevitability of a move away from IC powered cars by installing charge points at their petrol stations (another oil producer is following suit, can't recall which one) Installing bankside charge points for boats is a relatively minor operation once the decision is made. Things are coming along at a rapid pace

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

About half past two.

not sure, what is your beef? no one is forced to buy a boat, or to put it in a marina, whether public{?} or private. or you could just park it in your driveway at home.... I have seen a narrowboat in a field, could that be your boat?

Electricity on a boat is not necessary. I have gas lamps for lighting and they work beautifully. There is even a gas fired laptop computer in development apparently, for people like us.

We need to be realistic on this one. We are not going to be allowed to carry on polluting in residential areas. Either by running dirty diesel engines or burning wood and coal. One of three things will probably happen: 1. A complete ban on burning any fuel but smokeless, anywhere. 2. A ban on burning fuel and running engines in residential areas. 3. A ban on burning fuel and running engines in areas where metered power is available I think we need to be working towards 3.

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.