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A snotty shiny boater just gave me and my boat the right stink eye, then came over with a look on his face like someone was holding a turd under his nose and asked if I was staying long. I told him I'll stay as long as I like. If you're one of these types, I hope your area gets invaded by a horde of real hardcore water gyppos from London who are A LOT less polite and quiet than I am! Thanks for reading. Isobel.

I don't think I have - I don't even know where she lives.

After years of hearing about all these unlicensed boats.....on our trip North along the Leicester Line and River Soar, taking in the Market Harborough Arm as well, we just enjoyed our boating, laughed at lots, said hello to lots, and had a jolly good time. CRT have licence checkers, License Support Officers, Waterways Chaplains...and probably Free Licence Giver-Outer Managers to deal with the 4% nationally that dont have one for whatever reason.

Years ago I was riding my old 650 Triumph Thunderbird along a country lane, a lane I knew well, summer, shirt sleaves, no helmet, breezing along, approaching at high speed a very sharp left hand bend which I'd forgotten about. No chance of braking for it in time. luckily there was only a ditch between the road and a cabbage field, so I braced myself, kept straight on, jumped the ditch and crashed in amongst the cabbages, a cabbage amongst the cabbages. No injury, bike had a bent clutch lever, rode it home taking a nice cabbage for mum.

I guess it depends on where you are moored. It would be interesting what he has to say about you and your attitude.

Its to stop the captive electrons running out, because then they will be non conducting and useless. If you take only one end off they will be semiconductors.

Or pootle down river from Hawford a short distance and moor overnight on the lock mooring above Bevere Lock. From there it is a short walk to the Camp House Inn below the lock.

How arrogant that you think you can dictate how other people should use the canals. May I remind you that canals were built for rapid transport of goods and that not everyone wants to waste their life away doing everything as slowly as possible. There is no virtue in sluggishness. How arrogant to presume that no-one may be on a deadline, especially when the majority of canal users, except perhaps those using the canals for cheap housing, are probably on some sort of deadline. End of hire period, end of holiday, booked public transport, meeting up with other people, getting to a shop or business before closing. In fact the only people not on some sort of deadline are people with absolutely nothing of interest in their lives except waiting for death. All that rant said, yes it is normal practice to slow down for fishermen, for the reasons explained.

imagine all the fun you could have had with that time you wasted pointlessly checking licenses? if we guesstimate at 5mins per boat, to note number, fire up the webpage & check details = 1490 minutes thats just shy of 25 hours. you wasted an entire day of your trip

I hung around Gas St in the 60s, helping out with the newly formed Birmingham & Midland carrying Co. One evening I was in the cabin of Ash with Eddie Hambridge and Dave Hogg. Things were not always going well for the company and consequently their boatmen. We put the following together, a parody of “ Bloody Orkney “ a song composed by a disgruntled soldier from WW2. I’ve just discovered it in an old notebook... The bloody pay is bloody bad The bloody boss is bloody mad It makes the brightest bloody sad In bloody Gas Street. The bloody folks are bloody poor They throw their crap out on the shore We’ll slide about for evermore In bloody Gas Street. The bloody water’s full of muck And Waterways don’t give a fuck There ain’t enough to float a duck In bloody Gas Street. The bloody gaffer’s on the drink Goes down him like a bloody sink Bank statements they are all dark pink In bloody Gas Street No bloody cash, they’ve stopped the dole We’ll starve to death in this dark hole We’ve burnt up all our bloody coal In bloody Gas Street. No bloody sun, no bloody sky The stench is getting somewhat high We’ll rot here till we bloody die In bloody Gas Street.

After many years of seeing an increasing number of unlicenced boats we decided to do a survey on our trip in September up the Macclesfield, Upper Peak Forest & Caldon canals. These are the findings :- No. of boats checked not showing a valid licence was 298, running these through Cart's licence checker 90 were unlicenced. A lot were showing licences that were 3 to 5 years out of date. 90 unlicenced boats in 50 miles of canal seems an awful lot to me. As CaRT is short of funds they need to get out and about more and catch these licence evaders or all the legitimate licence holders will soon be paying a lot more in the future.

No.. Merely interested in the facts!! Think we often can judge people/situations from first appearances.. I would not automatically assume anything about another boater from how shiny or not their boat is.. Very sad if you fall into that trap!

I'd like to know a bit more before conclusion jumping. Where this happened, and why some bloke thought they had the right to ask how long someone was staying somewhere - assuming that person A is on an ordinary mooring and within the usual time limits. If you're on a water point, or a service station, then it's a valid question, though there are ways of asking... same on a short shopping mooring. I've asked a few at full visitor moorings who looked as if they might be moving on, in case it was worth waiting. I've also been asked to move a ring or two to make space, though I usually notice and offer first. I've certainly been sneered at a few times by shiny boats and one or two have refused to share locks (my boats about 60 years old and a bit bruised). Can't say it bothers me, but ivnever been spoken to particularly unpleasantly. The original post looks like someone whose been pissed off by someone's attitude and is venting, and most of us have done that one time or another and a fair few of the comments are imo uncalled for. ETA I also do wonder if some of the responses would have been quite so extreme if the OP had been male....

Snotty. Judgmental opinion. Shiny boater. Judgmental opinion ”right stink eye”. Judgemental opinion ”Look on his face (etc)”. Judgemental opinion ”I told him I’ll stay as long as I like”. Rude and obnoxious ”hope your area gets invaded (etc etc). Plain nasty.

I was logged four times in an hour one day. A harassed spotter fighting his way through Skipton towpath carnage on a sunny summer day. He logged me where I was moored, then the other side of the junction as he'd been up the branch while I was moving, then again on the water point and finally after I'd winded and was coming back the other way. I asked him if he wanted to go for five sightings and he laughed.

Perhaps Higgs should get a mooring like this one, probably no need for a licence then.

I was clocked on the move Just the once as far as I’m aware Probably going so slow I looked static

I've sunk, been burgled, been shouted at... didn't spend tons originally but made up for it later. Thirty years later, still love the old tub, the sound of rain on the roof and those odd days sitting on the back in the sun with a good book...

Love the idea that in a crisis someone doesnt help but just waves a phone filming the crisis rather than being useful.

Whilst I have a bit of sympathy with this, there are many good anglers who love fish and take great care with them. Sadly, there are also plenty of muppets - that comes with it being the biggest participation sport in the country, I suppose. However, again to maintain a balanced view, it is worth bearing I'm mind that, if it wasn't for the angling lobby raising the issue, there'd have been no fish left in our ever more polluted rivers and canals a few years ago. The environmental lobby is a much more recent force for fishy goodness.

Good luck with it, very difficult to see what is happening as it happens so quickly, I would suggest putting the carboard under the 2nd contact trick first to see what happens, then try without, you really need a slow motion video to see when it starts turning 'vigorously'

Thankfully I cannot see anything when I click on the pix.

That's what we do as well although would add that we never move to left or right when requested but stay in mid canal. On the Trent a couple of years ago the anglers were out in force. Many of them have really long lines stretching far into the river. OK when they stay by their rods but when they sit in their cars up on the bank and suddenly see you appear round the corner, boy can they run!

And some want you to pass close to them, others further away. They have to take "misery pills" to get them in the mood for fishing. Best to pass at a slowish speed, bang in the centre of the cut , say "hello" to them and enjoy being ignored.

When working a swim to catch fish most anglers will bait 2 or 3 areas with either ground bait (fine ground bread) bits of the hook bait or a combination of both, this has the effect of keeping the fish feeding in a localised area and encouraging competition amongst the fish, which makes them less skittish of the hook. All of this can take time and careful attention to build the swim to enable a good catch, boats moving through can/will disturbe these baited areas and can bugger up some hours work, so the request for slow and steady. Obviously fishing on the canal brings boats as part of the challenge and this should be taken into account by the fishermen, it's just courtesy on the behalf of boaters. Saying all that some people are just shouty arses and are best ignored when encounterd

I'm going absolutely nowhere and certainly not rushing - covering miles is not vital or even an aim. We only ever do a few miles and a few hours a day (I'd wager much fewer than most). We did four miles in four hours today - in effect a mile and an hour are about the same thing, considering locks and passing moored boats. I'd consider 1mph a rather leisurely pace on a motorway. Less than that and you start blurring the lines between cruising and mooring!

From the CaRT boaters handbook :- "If you’re passing an angler, keep to the centre of the channel unless they ask otherwise. Reduce your wash, but keep a steady pace".

You seem a very judgmental person. And not very nice.

Strong stuff water. If I had been in charge of one of the boats I might not have tied up very much better if it was just for a brief stop but that little drama was played out in daylight with people around. Had that been an overnight or longer stop then hopefully I would have put the anchor down and/or used the chain to secure the thing to something big. As far as anchors go they need watching. I left our boat on the Thames for a week or so and left the anchor down when it was running quite hard. When I returned the anchor chain had collected a tarpaulin and lots of rubbish and rather than securing the boat was trying to drag it away. luckily the boat was secured to the seldom used 4` re bar that is a sod to get out of the bank but unless some prat cuts it loose will secure a shire horse.

The OP could have engaged in a conversation instead of playing the instant bitter victim.

Whilst the “no mooring” signs have gone, they have not been replaced by the “24 hour mooring” signs that were there before. I was told by a lock keeper about 10 days ago that it was a boater that had removed the signs, and not Beale Park. So we don’t know if they are waiting for new no mooring signs, or are just going to let it ride as it is. There are signs at the lock downstream at least saying that there is no mooring there. At this time of year at least, plenty of space at Pangbourne.

Neither. You are buying a license in order to comply with your contractual obligations with the marina. By happy coincidence that license will also permit you to use CRT's waters. Of course, you're under no obligation to do so but you can if you wish.

Sorry its in a tank in my daughters back garden at the bottom of Northmptonshire.

If it is mostly hirers, which I'm not sure of, then it comes down again to the wilfull ignorance of those who do something potentially dangerous without any research. People buy chainsaws in the same way. But something like this can happen to the most careful of us. It only takes one small lapse of attention at the wrong time and glug... A friend of mine hung up and sank at Wardle, and I left the boat in reverse and nearly did the same, both of us with over twenty years experience. It's just that 99% of the time you get away with it, same as car driving errors.

It wasn't the ignoring I was thinking of, it was the rabbit-in-the-headlights reaction. Have you never seen a numpty driver reacting to blues & twos by coming to an abrupt stop in a stupid (or dangerous) place, instead of engaging their brain?

I always chuckle at the "keep forward of the cill" signs. Just how do you do that when going up? Its an irrelevance.

Assuming the Severn is back open: I also think you're under estimating how long lock flights can take. Especially if you're new to it. Kinver to Merry Hill is over thirty locks with a fair cruising distance added in. That's gonna be a long day. You then have two short days with 1 lock on the first and no locks on the second, and those canals are nice and deep for the most part with few moored boats. You could potentially do both of them in 1 day. I would look at overnight mooring at the bottom of the Delph on day 4 and then going from there to Birmingham on day 5. If the Severn remains closed, I'd recommend a there-and-back trip on the Stratford canal. Mid point would be somewhere around Lowsonford/Wooton Wawen. It would be a lot less stressful for a beginner too. Lots of locks but no stressing about sticking to a tight schedule and worrying about river levels, lock timings etc. A nice itinerary would be: Saturday: To The Queens Head at the bottom of Tardebigge. Sunday: To Hopwood. Monday to Lapworth top lock Tuesday to Lowsonford or a bit further, and turn. Wednesday back up and to Hockley Heath Thursday to Alvechurch Friday to Stoke Prior Saturday into the boatyard. A different mooring every night and near enough to a pub every night, if that's your thing.

Some marinas were originally pit/works (mills etc) wharfs or arms and were privately owned by the colliery/business.The private status of the water passed to the new owners when sold. Most of the off side of the Oxford is the same,it was a condition of building the canal that the off-side landowners had mooring/development rights...Thats why its covered in moored boats!

I also slow as I would for passing moored boat and keep to the centre of the canal. The anglers that know what they're doing will appreciate that, as they'll mostly be fishing the margins either on the near side or the far side, whilst in the centre the water deeper and less affected anyway. I rarely experience anything other than a pleasant or no interaction, with the rare exception being an odd grumpy numpty who knows no better. I suspect the majority of thinking anglers have a similar experience with passing boaters.

a badger with an aqualung perhaps? Brocques Cousteau?