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This would be quite safe according to the latest government guidelines.

Words of advice from a CRT employee (Gareth George London mooring ranger). "Having lots of people contact me asking about this virus business. I've been talking with our head office and some of the London and South East teams and this is what I've come up with. What we need to do is focus on the most vulnerable. At most a regular not at risk person will have to isolate for is 2 weeks if there is someone else living with them. Currently we will be dealing with with requests on an individual basis What we'll need to be doing is ensuring that Boaters who are older or have underlying conditions can get access to the support they need. This could mean support of other boaters or access to food shops and car deliveries so family members can get supplies to them easier. If you have a request to make your self isolation easier contact your local licensing support officer. Everyone else just needs to be mindful of what they are doing. Watch out for what you are putting down the elsans and how you are leaving them. Are the maintenance contractors going to be available to clear a dropped cassette cap or improperly disposed of sanitary products or wipes as this thing progresses. Make sure they're clean when you're done with them. Scrub up well after using them. Report any faults straight away so we can get it fixed before it becomes a problem. Don't moor for longer than necessary on service points. Be mindful where you moor in general. Keep the navigation clear. Be very careful of water and locks. I was told yesterday that depending on how this plays out, anyone who can swing a windlass at the trust may be out doing water control. Help us by making sure you shut paddles, close gates and be slow and steady to avoid unnecessary damage to the infrastructure. Spread out. Being triple moored is not conducive to isolating yourself. If you are fortunate to be able to work from home take the opportunity to go to some of those nicer spots we go to in the summer. Introduce yourself to your neighbours. (from a distance) we need to be there for each other during this crisis. The boating community is in a better position to do this than land lovers. We sort of do it already. If you need to overstay for whatever reason. You may need to self isolate or you may have family that need support and you need to stay near them. Drop your local licencing support officer an email. But most importantly follow the advice of Public Health England. All this and more is being discussed and advice I got yesterday will most certainly be out of date today. This is a dynamic situation and everyone (the whole country) needs to work together to get through". Key points are be extra gentle with infrastructure. Fixing a lock gate just got a whole lot more complicated. And don't camp out on the best moorings right by the services or shops as others will need it too! Everyone should be able to carry on moving albeit perhaps not massive countrywide journeys anymore?

Well I just have to say having bought my boat yesterday and worked late loading boxes of cloths etc about I returned to Mercia Marina where she’s moored and can honestly say everyone I came in contact with were/are extremely friendly. The marina office staff were very friendly and helpful but what stuck me most was as I was driving to my mooring everyone walking towards me waved smiled and said hello. Going down the pontoon with the biggest smile on my face a fellow boater popped out his side hatch and shouted “ are you the new boy? Welcome to Mercia “ I think the big daft smile gave me away. Having spent all day unboxing and sorting I decided to make my way back to my business here in Sutton in Ashfield but stopped at the super clean toilet block for a Jimmy before the drive back and within seconds of washing my hands ( several times ) I found myself in conversation with a lovely fella in his 80’s who was happy to share some tips and advice as he too lives on a Widebeam. Now yes it was only my first day at Mercia and I’m sure there is bound to be some grumpy old fart I’ll not get on with but hey it’s a promising start to my brand new adventure. Thank you Mercia for making me feel welcome.

I'm sure this won't surprise any of you, but after discussion with the BCN committee we have decided to hopefully postpone or possibly cancel the challenge for this year,. Depending on what happens in the next few months it might be possible to run the challenge later in the year, with changes in timing to cope with shorter days. If not then I'm sure things will have returned to normal in time for next year. Whatever normal is by then. So Alan, there will be a lot more sleeps before the challenge now. Sorry everybody. I know for those taking part on theri own boats it's no different to being at home, but we couldn't really have a do at the end, and that's a very big part of the event. Sue

I have taught my lurcher to chase carrots. Its paying big dividends now she is older as she is no longer fast enough to catch the bunnies. ..................Dave

I have read both reports (well, 90% of them!) and that spin is at the extreme end of what might be said, consistent with both reports (there are second order differences of opinion in detail between them) In particular, the concerns about the spillway were not described in the latest inspection report as requiring immediate and urgent action, nor was drawn down of the reservoir ordered. Whilst both of these could have been adopted by the Inspecting Engineer they were not and it seems that the culture of dam inspections rarely goes to such lengths. CaRT had plans to comply with the recommended actions well within the timescale given in the inspection report, although one of the above reports did point out that with civil eng projects, starting them later rather than earlier can often lead to over-running the deadline! The principal cause of the failure was in the original design. Without those faults - which none of the preceding inspection reports picked up - the level of maintenance expenditure would have been reasonable. The this level may (and the above reports stress the 'may') have allowed the design faults to appear as they have, even though the design limit for the spillway was much higher than actually occurred, however substantial the flooding this time was. In some ways, an important point in the government ordered report (it may have been in both) was the consequence of BWB (as it was) relying on traditional levels of engineering skill rather than more proactively seeking the latest expertise, in an on-going manner. This must be set against the way in which a number of people react when such expert advice and current regulations lead to much longer projects and use such phrases as, "But in the old days without all this elf and safety nonsense it would have been fixed by now" (vide Figure of Three). In fact, the reports indicate that compliance with the extant dam regulations does not necessarily guarantee a safe operation, given up to date engineering knowledge. We can reasonably expect (if there is anyone left after Covid-19) to have a revised regulatory environment in the near term as a consequence of this incident. This will inevitably increase the level of expenditure that dam owners need to make in the future, with the consequential need to make savings in boater-facing provision! It would seem that the CaRT Board have already anticipated this. I am not an expert on dams (even though my thesis in 1970 was partly about dams - the interest then was because another type of dam had outstripped the then current engineering knowledge with consequent failures) but what I do know is that, however benign they may look (especially earth dams like Toddbrook) they are quite complex engineering artefacts that have long led engineers to operate just beyond the extrapolated knowledge at the time. The driver is usually the demand for either more cost effective designs and operation or to achieve a level of provision not otherwise achievable - eg Aswan Dam) My extremely limited and now very dated exposure to leads me to feel that this is not the time for exaggeration or witch hunting - the best progress in engineering has come from so-called no-blame environments where everyone is encouraged to be as open as possible leading to greater sharing and learning (something the Government is currently learning with Covid-19). Certainly, press and media are not the repositories of best expertise, even if they may be good at asking the right questions - sometimes! I don't think that the debate here and in other canal fora mentioned as possible causes those design faults that these reports highlighted - eg wholly inadequate reinforcing of the concrete, the absence of longitudinal sealing between slabs or the other features now commonplace that prevent ingress of significant amounts of water underneath the spillway structure, mainly because they were not visible and little or no invasive inspection had been carried out for a very long time.

Whilst I agree with your observations about eating less meat, many of your other observations are based more on popular myth, rather than supportable fact. I have spent a substantial proportion of my adult life working in rural areas, and still live in a village. in all that time I have only known one farmer who did not treat his animals as well as he should, in fact almost all the farmers I have ever known care for their animals very well, and would never mistreat them, why would they? it is their livelehood. As far as the rainforest is concerned, whilst some of it is used for livestock, much of it has been destroyed to grow Palm Oil trees which is used to manufacture milk alternative Vegetarian spread.

Yes, Ive thought about it a lot. It would be very sad if there were no cows or sheep in the countryside, but there are loads of horses and nobody eats or milks those. ? There are also a LOT of baby humans about!!!!! But seriously, our desire for burgers is wiping out the rainforest and so our entire climate. We need to eat a LOT less meat and dairy and treat our animals a lot better. When I first went veggie (20 years ago) I said I would still eat a little meat as long it came from a good source and not factory farmed. This did not really work out cus if you stop eating meat it really knocks you about when you do eat a bit, those who say our digestive systems are made to eat meat might not be correct. ................Dave

I don't no a Wayne but I do know a PAIN IN THE ARSE called captain faffer

I was simply responding to your statement "Skype is also down" Which is blatantly untrue because for many of us it isn't 'down' It may be 'down' in a certain area but, as a whole, it is certainly not 'down'. Had you said "Skype is down in Manchester / London" then that may well have been correct.

You guys seem to be struggling to understand how system outages work. The simplest comparison would be with a traffic jam. It could be caused by a big accident, which could happen anywhere and will bring everything to a halt within a defined area. Or it could be caused because there are simply too many cars out on the roads causing generalised congestion and tailbacks all over the place, although these will be concentrated in the most densely populated areas, while sparing less populated areas like north wales.

I am sure we have all had similar experiences, funny as when someone actually points out how it should be done

Sounds like we all need to start practicing our semaphore

Tony & Richard, Thank you for your input on this... I can confirm that I regularly (and have done so within the last few days): Reamed the glow plug holes with the appropriately sized drill, tested the DC resistance of the plugs (3 @ 3.5ohms and one at 2.1ohms, the latter being a replacement with a quicker warm-up and higher current. They glow when placed across a 12V battery, the higher resistance ones drawing about 4A and the lower resistance one about 8A. I am not aware of any fuel leakage into the engine (dip-stick levels have never risen). The drip tray under the engine has no signs of fuel (only black oil drips) and the pump has no damp patches that I can find. I think I would like to speak to Richard about the possibility of a compression test. The only compression test I can perform is to rotate the engine with a large screwdriver across the (starting handle) indents and find it fairly difficult to do. I have nothing to compare this with. Thanks Gents, Colin

I can help with this. I would still check the resistance of the glow plugs first, and take them out. Tony has been kind and left out the fact they are very fragile and break easily, so go careful Richard

Yeah but peeps worry about their money before their lives and some people borrow to buy boats and may not risk it in present conditions??

He’s out spending it now!

I don't think cows get milked anymore, I suspect you have visions of buxom milk maids sitting on three legged stools ?. I think a big machine just sucks the milk right out of them so probly works just as well on nuts. I am getting increasingly unhappy about stealing milk from baby cows and am very much a veggy. I want to be vegan and just as soon as good strong vegan cheddar, and proper vegan Stilton are available then I will become a vegan. ....and a smoked Wensleydale and a few others. I accept that turning nuts into milk is a bit of a waste of nuts, better to put them in little bags and sell them in pubs. ..................Dave

Enjoy

Try the milk stout.

::::speechless::::

While I deplore the run down of the Nhs and the loss of clinical specialities, ( my own included), that is a consequence of the general public preferring to vote for governments that offer them a tax system that encourages spending on flash cars, tvs and consumer goods, rather than social and health. Levelling up might involve ford fiestas and bikes rather than range rovers and big screen tvs, but might return equitable and accessible health care, but greater taxes. Who knows. Socialism doesnt work but neither does rampant malevolent capitalism.