DandV

Lovely to see the intricacies of such craftsmanship. She really is going to be such a beautiful boat.

I am not disagreeing. Just interested. Making byelaws, and amending byelaws, seems to be a way of giving the waterways authorities more flexibility in changing in line with changing circumstances. I think the biggest changes have been a dramatic change in the ratio of boats whose primary purpose is recreational touring, to that of boats whose primary purpose is now residential. With this has been a trend away from the more mobile narrowboats, towards fatties. Narrowboat construction seems to have slowed, so these extra boats on the canals must be largely new build fatties, and imports from coastal waters. And now, the reducing Government funding, has made increasing revenue collection a necessary priority. Expecting donation income to cover the shortfall was at best only wishful thinking. Optimistic delusion more likely.

Bit like roads really. The non problem areas are not a problem. Perhaps providing legitimate paid for path for long term occupancy here at least reduces the problem here. But the problem areas are growing, and the problems within them are growing. It is here that the disconnect between the problems that the current legislation was designed to address, and the actual problems, now occurring, is enlarging. I don't think the changes required are that large, being mainly centred around clarifying boaters obligations around movement in and giving the waterways authorities more licence type options, with differing fees. And making enforcement more straightforward and less resource intensive. An idea not without merit.

I think there are two distinct problems with the only common ground, being actually water. Firstly CART do not already have enough income to offset the degradation of the network, caused by natural ageing, wear and tear, and an increasingly stormy weather. Regardless of how efficient, or not, they are. This is going to become even more pronounced as the Government further reduces it's funding. Secondly, the growth of the number of boats on the network, moving and parked up, just like cars on our roads, is causing environmental degradation, and a decline service delivery. Providing more roads, and even more carparking, is easy compared to enlarging the waterways and waterways facilities, to cope. And for how many more? The debate, now for the waterways, exactly parallels that for the roading network. Ever enlarging the facilities is just kicking the can down the road. So how is future supply going to be rationed? before roading and waterways systems become constipated and service levels decline to near useless? Pricing is the obvious tool, but the consequence would be that the UK's CART waterways would become far far less egalitarian, and therefore loose a lot of their diversity, colour if you like, and for me, a huge amount of their charm. They would become much more like the masses of salt water marinas, in temperate, and tropical climates, inhabited very largely by a monoculture of smug well healed, and very largely boring. More like the Thames if you like.

Changes in use patterns have rendered the current governing legislation increasingly deficient. It needs a complete rewrite, or at least substantial amendment. CART are hamstrung both by the legal deficiencies in their prime governing legislation, and by the growing deficit between government funding and the required spending to maintain the stability of their assets, especially in an environment of climate change. This deficit is now much larger then any further gains in efficiency could offset. The debate needs to be, What now for your inland waterways? What are the current priorities, and what are growing, or declining priorities? More maintenance? or protecting affordability? Britain is far from alone in having increasingly unaffordable housing. Reversing this, should undoubtedly even a much bigger priority for your government, and ours, then stabilising the navigation ability on your inland waterways. But using the inland waterways as a resource to solve fundamentally a housing problem is both an acceptance of housing degradation, and an acceptance of the consequential degradation of the canal network as a recreational resource and landscape amenity. Really the only viable answer, is political. And that will only follow political activism. A political solution will only come about with grass roots activists leading grass roots movements. At this stage the grass roots activists protecting the affordability of the more recent mass canal living are more organised, than any activists promoting maintaining the navigability of your canals.

I was intrigued to see this cottage had a vigorously flowering New Zealand kohwai tree lockside when we passed through at this time of year, the only one we ever saw in England. And intrigued also when we passed through in September that it did not have a single pod, as here every flower nearly produces a pod. Either they had been plucked off, or perhaps there were none of the pollen gathering birds to pollinate the flowers. Is that the kowhai with its golden yellow flowers to the right of the bottom picture?

Over coating the zinc with a high integrity coating system reduces the exposed sacrificial zinc surface, thus prolonging it's life. For inland waterway use magnesium is the preferred anode material because of its even greater reactivity. So adding easily replaceable magnesium anodes, even further reduces the work that the zinc surface has to do in suppressing corrosion of the, all important steel. The corrosion preference becomes: Magnesium first Zinz second. Steel last. The offshore oil industry added a huge amount of knowledge marine protective coatings practice, as the coating life very largely determined the safe life of these very considerable structures with massive contingent liabilities.

4 days up and 4 days back is very compressed for a delightful waterway.