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What I’ve seen of cyclists recently on the Towpath it is them that do not respect others.

Short update as thanks. I did as Tony Brooks suggested. I'm not sure how much air is meant to come out when you bleed if there is a problem. It wasn't much. But, the temperature when running the engine doesn't go above ~70C now, both in our previous mooring spot and for the past three hours that we've been cruising. Hopefully that was the issue, thank you everyone

Dav and Pen showed these locks some time ago, a staircase on the Loire side of the Nivernais Canal. I used the second chamber as a drydock(?) once when we bust the propellor on our previous barge Secunda. This was outside navigation hours, working from a Sportyak dinghy, since the sluices leaked so badly. On the plus side Monsieur Cretier, who ran the tripping boat Aster, and who had been born on a barge, lent me his propellor extractor, a family heirloom without which we would be in there still. To work it you get the shaft nut off (remembering, in our case, it has a left-hand thread), then put the disc over the shaft end with the claws gripping whatever is left of the blades. Then, when all is tight, you whack the central thing with a heavy hammer. This, when working from dinghy, can be a life-threatening experience. My pal Edward Bonel, who helped, is pictured when the job was completed, around 4 am. We had passengers arriving that day, a healthy motivation to keeping the job on track.

Most of the boaters on the Great Ouse are extremely strongly against the link. They don't want lots of nasty steel boats on their waters (their newsletter, a few years ago, had some incredibly vitriolic articles on the subject). One of their observations, which I reluctantly had to agree with, was that just one narrowboat with typically 2 people on board, can occupy an entire Great Ouse mooring that could otherwise accommodate at least 6 four-berth GRP cruisers and maybe provide shore access for a couple of family day-boats. Such opposition also seems to make the link's construction unlikely.

We bought the boat because we liked it. We were not fully aware that the guy who sold it to us was a rogue trader and you get to the point of either giving up and saying goodbye to the money spent or finishing it. The boat is a matter of pride and we are not looking for financial gain just to know that what we have is to our specification. There are things we could have done better but we all learn and we wanted to bring a bit of history back to the cut. The boat has seen the bottom of the cut at least twice and been seen by others in " a sorry state" but has now earned the right to join the other boats on the cut fot the purpose it was intended. In essence it is nice to see a bit of history being restored for the sake of it not for its resale value but for the love of doing it. We have an ethos if you do something do it well.

Heat pumps are just one option I've been looking at, still unsure of the best option but if they are going to impose restrictions on gas use where lies the point in forking out £3,000 or so for a new gas boiler for it to be superseded in 10 years. I'd like to fit something a bit like my current boiler, probably installed back in the 1980's and still in use. I'm not entirely sold on the heat pump being a more complex piece of kit, it is essentially a refrigerator working in reverse, how often does your fridge break down? The installation costs can almost be covered by the financial returns that can be got from the RHI (https://www.gov.uk/domestic-renewable-heat-incentive ) since for an Air Source Heat Pump the return on my property over 7 years is £8,400, £16,800 for a Ground Source Heat pump. Added to that we already have solar panels generating about 1,500Kwh per year. As far as the 'risk' of frozen canals/roads goes, that is something of a red herring. If we could reverse the rate at which the planet is heating up by all fitting heat pumps what is not to like? but given the immensity of the task I don't suppose if everyone in the entire country (or even the entire planet) fitted them it would cool the planet by anything measurable. We are both coming from the same place here, but don't forget that whilst solar may assist, it is a bit like solar on the boat, when you need the electric (winter) is the time that you get the least and when you need the least amount of heating/hot water (summer) that is when there will be the most solar generation, shame it's not the other way around.

It was sad to find that the original Black Prince Owners' Club web site is no more and that the wayback archive version is incomplete. I had contributed some photos of the original Black Prince livery (black and red) taken in 1977 which did not make it. As I have been unable to find any other photos of the original livery on the web, I thought it might be of interest to post them here. I was in fact a member of a party of 14 who, in 1976, hired the entire original fleet of two boats (Nelson and Rodney) from the original Cosgrove base. Because my still camera was broken, I only recorded that trip (to Fenny Compton) in 8mm cine. Due to the closure of Blisworth tunnel, the 1977 trip (to north of Leicester) was from a temporary base at Braunston. In 1977 he had expanded to four boats, so that year we only hired half the fleet! I don't recall the name of the second boat, but it wasn't Rodney. For the 1976 trip, the owner suggested that we might like to try lashing both boats together side by side when locking through the 14' locks. We only did so at the Braunston locks (with only one boat under power), and it certainly speeded up lock entry and departure. Conditions of hire prohibit such an activity these days.

The Anglers at Saxilby has excellent measures in place. We have enjoyed a couple of drinks this afternoon. No food as usual but Smith's chippy over the road was open so we had a fish and chips dinner after.

And the blistered pain on the outside also points to possible local overheating (shorting coil ). I think I have asked that twice now but the OP fails to answer. Edited add that I think that we can conclude its energise to run.

Shows your experience. You simply unscrew the whole tube assembly from the housing, then unscrew and remove the complete plunger end so all you have is the tube, put the tube over the hole in the Morris grease tin and push down, the tube will fill with grease. Unscrew the plunger fully out then re screw the Plunger assembly back onto the tube. Then re screw the whole assembly back into the housing. Simple, takes about a minute.

If you are 50 or older I doubt it will open before you die. Much like the Buckingham Arm and possibly the Wendover arm as well.

Some of us don't have the 'luxury' of gas 'on tap'. We have Calor, for which we pay a premium per litre / kg compared to 'mains gas' and we also have to pay £19 +VAT per month for the privilege of having one of their tanks in the garden (next to the sewage treatment plant - as we don't have mains sewerage either).

That in my opinion is a very good question and if the original owner did buy it VAT free I would want professional advice on the situation.

Is this better ? Mae'n rhaid i chi edrych yn agos mewn gwirionedd i weld a yw'n onglog neu'n syth. Mae'r tapwyr ar y sbigotau cast yn tueddu i'w gwneud hi'n anodd gweld ongl y flange o'i gymharu â thwll y ganolfan.

That's a lot of weight hung on Floan's head line ? ⚓ Tam

On this day Safari and Adria left going downstream. The other 2 arrived in the afternoon heading upstream. They were heading for Germany by the Rhône Rhin canal which was closed at Dole by the river section being in flood. Floan was going to Belgium from Sete. They all knew each other and we had a very convivial evening on our back deck.

She can Tim it will slow charge from one of your sockets like you have at home

When you have two symptoms appear concurrently I find that if you chase down the easiest then the reason for the other will usually become apparent during the fault finding process. There's a caveat goes with that, in that the smoke may have been appearing soon after start up for months and you only saw it this time because you looked when the engine stopped!

I suspect overheating if the white smoke is coming from within the engine hole. Fuel bug usually just stops the engine and water in the fuel results in the engine stopping and a small amount of white smoke coming from the exhaust. How do I know this? Many years ago when we had our second shareboat the yard we were based at didn't realise they had to drain condensation from the bottom of their above ground bulk diesel tank periodically. The net result was they filled my shareboat with around 50 litres of water along with the diesel when they filled it up. A few days later the engine died and wouldn't restart, because the engine was trying to run on water! White smoke was wisping out of the exhaust. Draining the water, adding more diesel, changing the fuel filter and bleeding the fuel system got us going again.

Yes I found the same with mine, any failures were from scraping against protruding bolts or towards the end of its life, the epoxy coming off on the stem post where it had caught the cill when locking up. I hsve now repositioned the front fender a bit lower down, but may invest in a second lower front fender to protect against this.

Not quite guaranteed to destroy the eyes of an on oncoming steerer thus making a collision more likely. You will be able to see him or her shielding their eyes as they bounce off the wall.

Good luck and more power to your elbow. I'm stuck overseas and away from my boat so the only buzz I get at the moment is reading others projects.

Guaranteed to destroy your eyes in a tunnel!

I think that there will also be a huge uptake in boaters using road-side garages as the price per litre will be considerably lower than canal side sellers ( buying power, group deals, local competition, supermarkets etc) and the low volumes used by the typical NB means that a jerry-can full will probably last 2 or 3 days so only need to fill up every week or so with 3 jerry cans.

On this day 2014 Lock 32E Huddersfield Narrow and the pub sign of the (now-closed) pub near the Standedge Tunnel entrance

In my opinion many more deaths probably occured than should have done because of the governments two week or so delaying the lockdown and whatnot, they wanted the money to keep rolling in. They thought the virus was just going to go away as did that imbecile Trump in the US. And then our goverment suddenly realized it wasn't going to just go away, suddenly panicked, called for an immediate lockdown, started building Nightingale hospitals and all the rest of it. The governments obviouselly had their scientists and health advisors in their pockets. Murderers.

2002. Vishny Volochek, halfway between Moscow and St Petersburg, where the Englishman Captain Perry built the first successful waterway link between the Volga and the Baltic circa 1710. The photo shows the northern end of the canal where it entered the river Tsna.

Eat some pies to cheer you up over the depressing surroundings. It's what the locals do. ?

No problem at all. Some great memories. I really can't remember the surname at all but if I remember rightly part of their appeal was that as kids, we thought it great that they introduced themselves on first name terms as opposed to Mr & Mrs........... Great to know John is still about. Wonder if Dawn is too. I remember waking one morning in Lichfield ( boys slept on Lichfield, girls on Daisy Ashford , with the floor wet and calling into a boatyard to have a quick repair done to a hole on the port side, just behind the well deck....lol. I also remember getting drunk and being ill after smuggling a few mixed spirits from my parents drinks cabinet in a jam jar for myself and my mate. Dawn had a quiet word, changed my bed and covered for me with the teachers. I had the ultimate respect for her right there in that instant. I was 15 at the time ?. Fantastic times,. Jerry