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Went up the newly 'open' two miles of the Pocklington Canal this morning. Andy, a chap on a boat in Melbourne Basin, had sold me a Head of Navigation plaque - I'm not a plaque person, but having got it I thought I should go, despite him informing me that the pub in Bielby had closed. Two locks, a swing bridge and lots of reeds. Walbut lock and the swing bridge have no landing stages. Best moor under the bridge when going up the lock (not like I did - see pic) - there's a bench to tie to. The swing bridge is difficult singlehanded, but possible (obviously). Rather bleak at the end, and no easy access to the village, as the Bielby Arm is not yet navigable (last pic), so I didn't stay (no pub). Two hours each way for the two miles.

I sell kindling....

Arrived at Stoke Bruerne top lock this afternoon, going up. These are our local locks, and we do them many times a year. We know that with a single boat going up, the calmest way is to open the ground paddle on the same side as the boat, and the gate paddle on the opposite side. That keeps the boat into the side of the lock. There was a volunteer lock keeper at the lock. As soon as the gate was shut, he lifted the paddle. He didn’t ask if we wanted help, and he didn’t check with me at the helm if I was ready. My crew went to the other side of the lock and lifted the gate paddle. He ordered him to close the paddle, pointing at the little sign which warns of turbulence. My crew said we knew what we were doing, and this would be fine. The volunteer became somewhat apoplectic, and eventually called my crew a stupid a***hole. My crew asked him to step away from the lock and leave us to it. He said he was in charge and it was his responsibility to make sure we used the locks properly, as he worked there. My crew pointed out that as it was our boat, it was our responsibility to work the lock, and he didn’t work there, he volunteered there. Eventually he did step away, but only to tell gongoozlers everything we were doing wrong. And he couldn’t resist repeatedly coming back to pick holes in each action. Apparently the paddles were even wound down incorrectly. He’s going to report us to CRT for using the lock incorrectly. An email of complaint has been sent to CRT, pointing out that he didn’t follow volunteer procedure, and that he was a really bad representative of the Trust. This was by far the worst example of a volunteer lock keeper we’ve ever encountered. He was in great contrast to the very nice volunteer who was helping a novice down the locks, that we’d met just an hour earlier.

I don't know if this is a mini tractor or a ride on mower but what it's pulling seems like barrels of fun

Not much time in the car these days. Rarely walk through a wood - never been my cup of tea, to be honest. Dont have a daily commute any more, and none of the routes I take are through woods, never mind pine woods. No kids, never mind grandkids. If I had any, and asked them to collect enough to fill a green net bag, i'd feel obliged to give them more than 3 quid for their efforts Like I say..... I'm happy to hand over my 3 quid. You're happy to collect it yourself. Neither of us is wrong.

I'm glad you can laugh. Have you ever tried the Napton to Braunston stretch on a sunny weekend following a fat bote? When you're 20th in the queue behind it, it is not funny. A one hour trip can take three hours. Zenataoman is quite right. If he isn't why has this thread gone on so long? Many peeps see this as a serious problem. You laugh it off. We can't.

In the case of a tractor it's the turny bit at the back - the engine diverts power to the turny bit at the back which then powers the implements attached to it. But you get smaller ones too.

With appropriate guarding I hope, wouldn't want rustys important bits caught up, I imagine it would smart a tad. Any way this is a dead end, voles will be the answer

Frog in your throat? ?

Deere me, its a lawn mower.

So you too could earn £240 an hour. Sell them for £3 a bag! ? With the massive added bonus that your stove smells of BACON...!!!! YAY!!!!

Cooking oil works really well as a fire lighter. Catches easily, burns for a long time, but no explodey tendencies. Wipe the frying pan round after cooking with a paper towel and put in the stove ready for lighting. Saves the sink drain getting blocked with mini fatbergs and keeps the cholesterol levels in the canal fish down! Jen

The sooner CRT start putting some width restrictions in the better....and im not joking about this. This fat boat thing is getting out of hand rapidly.

I always appreciated help from professionals. These volies should stick to opening and shutting gates and getting the next lock ready. Not working MY paddles.

It's been doing its genius thing for a long time now but what they find for it to do just keeps growing and improving, for such a standard thing it can do some pretty amazing stuff.

Drain the canals. C&RT at Todbrook has shown they know how to do this sort of thing Fill the canals with a lucrative contract to take council landfill waste. Purchase a jamjar to house the displaced precious wildlife. Tamp down the waste & make firm. Obtain cheap rails from cancelled HS2 projects. Install 3rd rail electric system. Add 2 steel-wheel motorised bogies under every boat with 600V DC third-rail traction. And get an EU grant for the project before 31st October.

How about a Shetland Pony they are hardy little buggers, I'm not sure quite how much they can tow but I've seen one drag a full grown man out of a horse box, tug him over onto his belly and proceed to drag him at full speed round the lorry park of an agricultural show, thankfully flat out Shetland isn't very fast (amusingly it's not very slow either). I also think a Shetland could survive a whole summer in well deck of your average narrowboat, even when kept in a field Shetlands have to be fenced off into bare earth postage stamp sized areas to stop them gorging themselves into Goodyear blimps. They have all the power of a full sized horse shrunk in the wash.

I didn't!

Can all lockie,s swim ???

You could use it to mow the tow path whilst towing the boats, now If you could add an hedge trimmer CRT would no longer need Fountains. ?

Alternatively, I've had a springy branch trapped against the rudder and the swim do this. It was out of the way of the prop and gave the symptoms you describe. Could be hard to spot through the weed hatch if the water is murky. Most likely it has been lifted out of the cup as others have described, but this is also a possibility. Jen

or a good 240V A+++ rated fridge powered by an efficient inverter with a low 'standby' load. A good 240V fridge is considerably less than £600

And their own brand Gin (Oliver Cromwell) is excellent.

Cheap fire lighters. Keep thin sticks soaking in a jam jar half full of old white spirit, diesel or paraffin. One lit will set your kindling alight a treat.

Lovely Scottish word!

Make sure you use DC voles and not AC, otherwise the voles will be changing direction a hundred times a second and your boat will go nowhere.

There was a fuller description of Bournemouth on an earlier Apolloduck advertisement when four £12K shares were being offered. Historic Ex Grand Union Canal Carrying boat, 71'6" big Woolwich town class built 1937 by Harland & Wolfe, bought in 1965 from British Waterways by current family. Full length metal cabin conversion comfortably fitted out and ready to go. Double cabin with basin, bathroom with shower (new last year), and portapotti toilet. Open plan galley, living room with pull out double bed, gas cooker, gas water and central heating via Optimus boiler, has 240v circuit, outdoor sitting area in bows. Traditional boatman’s cabin, original layout with range cooker. Original National diesel engine with Brumpton gear box, full working order. In current ownership the following work has also been completed:, metal end cabin and gunwales, new counter with weed hatch has been lowered to decrease draft, engine re-built, bottom over-plated, dry docked every 4 years, last 2010, with report available by Malcolm Braine. Good condition throughout.

If they are the same physical size with the same terminal layout then as long as you are on top of your charging regime (which you are if you got 7 years out of the lasts set) I can't see that you will notice much difference at all. 7 years life tells me you keep them well charged and never deeply discharge them so you probably had more capacity than you needed.

Looks identical to ours which was definitely a Sainsburys purchase - I picked up two when they had 'em on promotion at a fiver instead of £20! Although ours don't have cake smeared on them.

Building smaller width boats might just have had something to do with the width of narrow locks ? haggis

When you break down in the pouring rain you'll wish you had a trad. When your engine goes bang because of a leak that hasn't been spotted for weeks you'll wish you had a trad. When your wet clothes are drying around the engine you'll wish you had a trad. When your working on the engine in a cruiser stern and you end up cracking a rib trying to get the last bolt undone you'll wish you had a trad

It's easy to blame CART for everything as usual, but let's look at what actually happened. An excess of water flowing down the spillway -- a normal event, but maybe never before in such quantities -- managed to penetrate under one of the concrete slabs (which are only thin and there to protect the soil) and lift it up, then it all escalated from there. How would people suggest that CART could have predicted and avoided this? I guess there was no obvious fault on the slabs and this has never happened before so there was no reason to suspect it would happen this time, but maybe that amount of water has never been down the spillway before -- so blame global warming, not CART. Maybe the fault is with the original dam builders who only put thin slabs down instead of much thicker heavier ones which wouldn't have lifted, but then they did last over a hundred years without this happening so that's hardly fair. Hindsight is wonderful, but anticipating a problem which has never happened (with that dam) before isn't easy -- except for the armchair critics who will blame CART for anything...

Goddam experts...coming here and stealing all our conspiracy theories.