Stephen Fulcher

Is it true that customs look for a red marker in diesel engines that is left behind when a car has been run on red diesel, and that is how they prove that the vehicle was being driven illegally. That being the case then a similar line on narrow boats will not work because the engines will have been run on red diesel for many years. The trick will work for new boats, but not for anything that was in the water before the law comes into effect. That being the case, all they can do is dip the fuel tank!

Thanks, I can try and see if my possible journey will work now.

This is all a matter of personal views. People exercise differing degrees of caution when deciding where to moor. For example, as someone who lives in Kidderminster I would never entertain mooring near Falling Sands Viaduct because I know the local area. I do however see lots of boats moored in that area, and I am sure 99.9% never have a problem.

Can someone tell me exactly where the Anglo Welsh hirebase in Oxford is please? I know that it is on the Thames to the north of Oxford, but would like to be more precise to enable me to calculate whether what I was considering is possible.

At a guess, unlikely to be one available, but perhaps worth further research.

It does seem slightly strange that the Police would board a boat then even after an officer has fallen into the water simply disappear. One would have thought that they would at least have explained WHY they boarded the craft in the first place.

Looks like it was calculated by CanalPlan AC, which states times to the nearest minute.

It is a fair way from Norbury to Tyrley for a lock demonstration, so you might just get away without one. I had an Anglo-Welsh boat out of Norbury back in May, and they didnt show me how to operate a lock, although with the nights closing in, you will do well to get anywhere near Market Drayton, although I personally doubt you will get that far. When I was last up the Llangollen in August 2005, there were no real holdups at all to speak of. The only wait of any description was to go through Grindley Brook staircase, in both directions, and going up this was only caused because someone thought they should ignore the instructions of the Lock Keeper who had the cheek to insist they waited their turn! Personally, I found the Lock Keepers along the route at Hursleton, Grindley Brook and Frankton (Montgomery Canal) were very efficient, which helped to keep delays to a minimum for everyone. The one at Hursleton should be congratulated for setting the flight for us to go back up, even though it was hammering down with rain. It must have cut nearly 30 minutes off our journey because a boat had gone up in front and there was nothing coming down so I would have had to set each lock as we got to it. Have a nice week.

I think that the danger is not the practices themselves, it is people who have not got a clue attempting to use them. I would theorise that David is in a position that very very few boaters, even private ones, are in. This is that he was shown by people who clearly knew what they were doing, and also the dangers of it. It is quite often you see people who approach a lock in a smug manner, do something like ram a gate, drop a paddle etc. and end up making a complete pratt of themselves. The trouble is that one day they may lose their windlass or snap a pole, but the next we may have a Caen Hill-type incident. The other worrying thing I have noticed recently, is the ridiculous number of people who leave windlasses on paddle gear unattended. This is clearly dangerous, and to be honest even the most inexperienced boater should know better because common sense dictates that if the paddle were to drop for some reason (like on one occasion when I saw a boater raise a paddle and not apply the catch, so it consequently dropped straight back down again) then the windlass will most likely fly around as a very dangerous projectile. If this is to happen then they might get lucky and it could land harmlessly on the towpath or even in the canal, but there is also a chance that it could hit someone causing a potentially serious injury.

Have you asked the marina in question?

Does the widebeam fit through the locks ok?

I recently paid a visit to the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal at Talybont-on-Usk. It is clear that this canal runs through some very interesting countryside in the Brecon Beacons National Park. What I am interested to know is that if I were to hire a boat on this canal, is there enough to keep us occupied for a week? It would seem that it is possible to navigate the whole length of the canal in each direction in less than that. CanalplanAC thinks 3 days at 10hrs. There is no way that I would travel for 10 hours a day, but am interested to know if there is enough to do for 4 or 5 hours a day, because only about 5 hours navigation would be required for the trip to last a week. On a separate issue, does anyone have any experience of any of the hire fleets on the canal, and if so, what are they like? I did see a couple of hire craft, but did not get close enough up to them to form an opinion. Are they value for money?

Probably not because the 75 has more toys and uses slightly less fuel.

Thats a bit harsh on Rover to be honest. The Rover 75 is a very good car. I would not swap mine for any other vehicle currently on the road. They are easilly one of, if not the, quietest cars on the road from a sound deadening point of view and recycling material that deadens out road noise so effectively in a luxury car is certainly a good idea from a marine point of view. Sorry for going slightly off topic.

To be honest, Marinas are different. For the most part, they are privately owned and almost all marinas offer better security and probably have better facilities than the average visitor mooring.

The main idea with Llangollen was to price people away from using the overnight moorings - of which there were at the time nowhere near enough of. Now they charge, there are always going to be people who object to paying, and would not moor there as a matter of principle. Charging for mooring to overcome the problem of overstaying is not the answer. The answer has to be to do something about that overstaying in the first place. Why should boaters be penalised, which an overnight mooring charge in this context definately is, for the actions of a small minority. As was said earlier in this thread the mooring charges "might" pay for a warden to enforce overstaying rules, but then again, I would guess that it would not. If there is a mooring site a couple of miles away which is not subject to any charge then it is almost certain that the majority of boaters would moor in that place.

This is the same as when people buy a house right next to a railway line, mostly on old railway land, and then complain when engineering works take place outside their doors overnight. There is a simple answer here. These people purchased a house adjacent to a canal towpath. The canal was probably there long before their house, or their house could well be a former canal company property. They knew the canal was there and still bought the house, so they should, in my opinion, accept anything that the navigation authority or boat owners do on that canal, and that includes mooring on the towpath.

Any of these should be alright for lock use http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Browse/catal...ier/8161707.htm

If there is working boat doing genuine work then I would perfectly understand them getting priority use of locks. However, old working boats just cruising between shows, hotel boats, trip boats, and any other commercial craft for that matter should not get any priority. They simply are just like any other pleasure user for my money, and they should be treated as such.

This is a bit like the way hotel boats always loiter in right by a lock gate so that the other boat can use the lock behind the first, which of course completely wastes a lockful of water.

I agree with you. The point I was trying to make was that if you do not have a mooring then the only way to get a licence is to declare yourself a continuous cruiser, whether you obey the relevant rules or not. This is, like you say, not a good situation, but unfortunately British Waterways will not issue you with a licence unless you have a mooring, or are a continuous cruiser. And you cannot get a mooring in most places until you own a boat, which you cannot do without either a mooring (which is therefore impossible), or declaring yourself a continuous cruiser, which is what many are forced to do.

"this sort of person" could be used to define any catagory of individual from any background. It relates entirely to the context of the debate at hand, and has nothing at all to do with superiority.

I did not suggest that people that cannot afford a house and see a boat as an affordable option were lesser people than other boaters. What I will suggest is that these individuals may not have the waterways at heart, at least not at first. Once again, the majority will be ok, but there are always going to be a minority who will make the rest look bad.

It is this sort of person that the estate agent here is looking to attract to the waterways who is most likely to ignore the rules. Most boaters have an interest in the waterways to buy a boat in the first place, these people are looking for cheap living, and a boat is percieved as cheaper than a house, and in terms of initial purchase price, it definately is.

A few boats in a linear mooring is not too bad, but the example I made was a linear mooring that was a mile long. When one considers the drastically reduced speed that you have to cruise past these long moorings then they are a considerable hinderance to navigation. If there was a linear mooring of 20 or so craft then I wouldnt see them as a problem. Sightseeing of old craft as you describe above is alright for a short time, but I quickly bored of it with my engine in tickover for over half an hour whilst seemingly getting nowhere.