Mike Todd
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Posts posted by Mike Todd
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On 14/07/2025 at 11:19, Heartland said:
Ma Pardoes is the only place were a group of us carried a chap into a pub, usually it was the other way around. It was railway booking clerk Fred Gaskell!
And now for something completely different
Where and when might this be?
There is no witch or wardrobe, but there is a boat called Tardis. Now the Doctor had a Tardis that was a police box but other time lord Tardis's could change shape and it would seem that this one has become a narrow boat. May be the Master has come back to Earth to wreak havoc again and has enlisted the usual nasty aliens to help him, this time the "Polit Itions"
Sadly I remember those cobbles all too well: earlier this year Christine and I were staying a couple of days in a self catering unit close to here but alongside the river. We were walking to the cathedral when, just a few metres from the pic, she tripped and fell heavily on her arm. She just felt a bit sore the rest of the day but by morning it was obvious that something was amiss. We went straight to the nearby A&E and had amazingly swift attention but only to confirm that she had fractured her upper arm. Overall she has had good treatment from NHS, but here and in Swindon as well as physio and she is now all but recovered, if still not back to opening paddles!
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21 hours ago, Lily Rose said:
This seems to imply total closure for navigation, not just locks.
The latest update for Napton to Cropredy seems to suggest the same.
Does this mean boats with home moorings on the Oxford and Leicester line summits will not be permitted to move from their moorings I wonder. If not then it's ambiguous / misleading.
A number of the notices in the recent past have actually said that boaters a free to navigate between locked flights - I certainly recall this on the L&L. and also I think re the long pound between Claydon and Napton.
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4 minutes ago, Steve Bassplayer said:
Volunteers certainly could replace gates and paddles if they were trained by volunteers who have the skills and knowledge. Same goes with H&S.
There is no reason why management duties can't be carried out by volunteers either. The main problem is that we live in a world where litigation drives everything.
Everyone is too scared to take on risks and responsibilities due to litigation.
Volunteers are not as readily available as is sometimes suggested. All charities and voluntary organisations have had to face this. A significant driver has been social change in the second part of the 20C. Immediately post-war, many women were displaced back out of the workplace that they had willingly filled in times of necessity and then looked to fill their time. This was perhaps the golden age for volunteering but by the 70s, with the growth of two income households, the number of people of a physically fit age who are available to volunteer has markedly reduced.
A similar challenge faces the military - 70 years ago many front line infantry could be adequately, perhaps fully, trained in a very short time as they were little more than cannon fodder. Nowadays, much of warfare involved very sophisticated equipment and operating procedures and skills that take time to acquire. As a result the role of the Reserve Army has had to be re-thought as well as the expectations on volunteers. (actually, reservists are usually paid, just not full time)
It might be worth studying that experience to see if it could be applied to canal maintenance and operation. I suspect there are a good number of people who would join and undertake extensive training for that role rather than unpaid, untrained and unskilled volunteering. (I am not criticising existing volunteers, LTRU, but the suggestions for replacing much of the paid work force by unpaid people)
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It would be interesting to hear viable suggestions on how to do things better, within current income streams.
In my observations, CaRT engineering teams are trying quite hard to make the best use of the tight budgets. This means doing some things differently - eg the newer procedures at the gate makers, and also re-evaluating what they need to do eg gradual phasing out of laundry facilities when a substantial proportion of boaters responded that they had on board facilities. In addition, there are many examples of changing how things are done that reflect the change in the relative cost of labour. It may have been OK, in the past, to have people on hand just in case but not now. There are more opportunities to use specialist skills in roles that in the past were done by general purpose personnel, allowing better investment in time saving equipment.
It is also best to be sure that you know how locks work before claiming evidence of incompetence. For example, some locks were designed to re-fill after emptying - various means were tried including what looks like unmaintained leakage. You also have to remember that a canal needs a constant flow downhill so that intermediate pounds do not run dry and also that operating so that both sets of gates contribute to retention of water, hence asking boaters always to close all gates and paddles (alas too often ignored by those who know better with sometimes significant consequences)
I would encourage everyone to take any opportunity to chat with CaRT staff on the ground - it is rare that I never learn something new and/or interesting when I do so.
Remember also that a failure to try to introduce new ways of doing things, as some advocate avoiding, is itself a sign of incompetence.
Of course not everyone makes the best choices every time but it is also good to check the reasons before criticising.
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1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:
The surveyor I use recommends dropping the bilge pump in a bucket of water occasionally to see if it works.
Many of them don't get any use at all and can seize up over time, some of them have blockages from stuff in the bilges, some are simply not wired up correctly.
Testing them occasionally lets you know all is well if they ever need using urgently.
Or tip the bucket of water into the bilge! (It is a better test in situ and usually is in a confined space anyway. It is not going to flood the cabin!
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3 hours ago, Alway Swilby said:
That is the reason we don't use Three on the boat. The Three network slowdown at around school chucking out time was very noticeable in pretty much every location we visited, no doubt because the network was overloaded with cheap unlimited contracts. This was admittedly a few years ago now. EE doesn't seem to suffer so much from this.
Trouble is, that kind of effect is likely to vary quite quickly as different providers seek to out compete in a tough marketplace. Most of us need to make decisions based on a much longer timescale.
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2 hours ago, IanD said:
However adding the extra weight also makes the boat sink as a whole.
I looked into this when we were trying to get the ballasting correct; adding 400kg (400l of water) to the bow pulled the bow down by 2" and raised the stern by 1".
So long as the uxter plate stays underwater and the boat is not nose-down, stopping and steering shouldn't be degraded-- in fact if the boat is ballasted level instead of nose-up you should find it swims better, especially when water levels are low.
We have the Greeks to thank for that! (Archimedes in particular)
16 minutes ago, IanD said:Or even 1" -- any amount is enough... 😉
(but remember the stern lifts a bit and the water around it drops as you go astern, so 2" when static is probably about right)
and also the boat will go up and down, are rotate fore and aft, all the time so a reasonable margin is needed if you want to assure submersion.
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Not sure if all marina wifis use wired (cabled?) broadband to drive them. They could, today, just as well use a mobile option (after all, BT, now EE, offer a mobile backup option for a few which supposedly will keep you going if someone cuts the cable.
I have tried quite a few marina wifis and generally concluded that the installation is a tick box item, just so they can say that they offer the connection whilst only a few moorers rely on it. I have yet to find one that I would want to depend on for a good streaming service.
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2 hours ago, Tacet said:
It seems to make it harder to read, for me at least.
Anyway title case (or is it Title Case?) must surely be a manufactured expression. The print setter will have the upper and lower cases at his disposal - but not a title case.
Whilst the term case derives historically from the separate trays (cases) that held the different type characters, it is quite widely used now to indicate the style of mixing fonts eg this text is all in lower case whilst THIS IS UPPER CASE. I had not come across the specific term Title Case before or Sentence Case, but they are sometimes options used in DTP software to enforce one or other set of rules. Like spell checker, it may or may not do what you want.
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At certain tunnels, such as Standedge, this is routinely advised by the staff to ensure that boats make it under the height check. But they are not so concerned if you drop down in the water a bit as that is less of an issue (usually)
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14 hours ago, brianthesnail96 said:
I must admit, I'm intrigued how you can tell from the pictogram which position is "off" and which is "automatic". Perhaps I'm just being particularly dim, it has been one of those days...
I think that usually the manual on needs to be held to operate whilst the other two stay where you put them.
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4 minutes ago, Alway Swilby said:EE's coverage map says they have excellent 4G coverage at Cropredy
Both Three and Vodafone same the same but they do not state anything about bandwidth - ie ratio of demand to supply. You may get a very good signal but if too many users also want a share at the same time, service will inevitably take a hit which will be more noticeable when streaming or other high traffic tasks.
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14 hours ago, NoBother said:
Thanks All - yes I know about the stoppages. This won't be for another couple of months.
Daytime worker yes, Thanks Mike. Do you know if people use wifi antennae's at all and get better signal that way? I've been told that EE is the best provider as there is a mast in Copredy itself.
Thank you!
Emily
Best read the stoppage notices carefully before you commit to a medium term (eg next 4 months) plan - it seems quite possible that, even with rain now, the stoppage will last at least a month or two to replenish reservoirs. Before much gets to them the ground needs to soak up quite a bit. I would not surprised, albeit very, very disappointed, if we do not get significant cruising availability (including access to Cropredy) until well into the autumn, But who knows, weather prediction is not at its most reliable right now!
On the limited occasions we actually stay aboard in the marina, we now generally rely on our mobiles for streaming etc and have not yet invested in any special antenna. (We keep each phone on a different network although neither is EE) I am not sure I would want to put myself in a position where my employment/income depended on a 24/7 good signal, but that is an issue right across the canal network. Just have to factor into the daily schedule time to relocate as needed. As I am sure you already know, the ability to get adequate service is not just a matter of signal strength but also bandwidth relative to the number of logged in users (whether marina wifi or mobile) Hence, the responsiveness varies considerably with the time of day. This would be the case even if you sat right under the mast!
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58 minutes ago, David Mack said:
The club would be a Third Party under the owners insurance, so should be able to claim costs reasonably incurred in removing the wreck.
But only if the boat is covered by insurance that is valid in the circumstances.
I would suggest that the boat club need to review, with their insurers, what risks they need to cover that may not be recoverable from anyone else. If any is a serious concern then the option for the club is to protect themselves against the risk.
That's called insurance!
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1 hour ago, matty40s said:
I'm not sure they affect the wifi....
If you are a daytime worker, you might find the wifi OK, as most high use(marina liveaboards) boats tend to hammer it in the evenings.
Cropredy generally struggles with mobile signal...although nowhere near as much as Lower Heyford!
agree with both of those, although we do get a generally usable mobile signal on either vodafone of three (we have the choice)
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Do we know how, if at all, the criteria for closing a canal for lack of water may have changed over that time?
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6 hours ago, LadyG said:
I dont mind people using the Services if they are donating to the CRT, but I dont think it occurs to them that these facilities cost money and they are not public facilities.
Especially when the loos empty into a cesspit with the whole facility being closed when it overflows from more usage than anticipated.
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20 hours ago, Wafi said:
Not at all unusual to see people walking away from their boat with a trowel in one hand. I've always assumed they're digging for truffles; the fact that some discreetly hold the trowel behind their back when they see me coming supports this hypothesis, because they'd obviously want to keep their truffle plantation secret...
Back when we started boating (late Sixties) a spade was standard equipment. even from hire companies.
With people these days wanting to be picky about evidence based decisions, I am not sure that there was much evidence that hedgrows suffered as a consequence but we are all much more prone to hiding basic facts of being human!
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18 hours ago, Jim Riley said:
Probably a typo😉
As for the latter pair, one is weasily distinguished, t'other stoatally different .
Fount was used long ago to mean a typeface, now generally a font. Yes, most ecclesiastical bodies will use font to refer to the facility for christening babies (not much use for full immersion!) but most widely fount is used to refer to a source or basin, such as x being the fount of all knowledge about narrowboats.
BTW, don't get picky about the difference between font and typeface!
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20 hours ago, Steve Manc said:
A couple of weeks ago we were travelling through Napton Lock flight and came to the bottom lock. A hire boat came along. They had just set off from the hire boat company nearby. Their very 1st lock. Didn't have a clue of what to do !
There were helpful people helping them. There should be some responsibility on the hire boat companies to ensure they sit through a video at the very least.
In 2014 before our 1st hire boat my wife and I watched the CRT Boaters Handbook.
The nearest hire company on its web site says
Full Training given
Never been boating before? You needn't worry, our experienced staff will take you through our First Class training procedure, showing you how everything works on board.They will also show you how to steer the boat, moor up, work the locks, even coming with you for some hands-on training depending on your needs. We'll make sure you're happy with the handling of the boat before sending you off on your holiday.
In addition each boat has an instruction manual with lots of useful information and tips.
My own observations suggest that, in general, they are quite good at doing what they can, given that they do not have an adjacent lock for a demo. On the other hand, back when we started (at Canal Cruising, Stone) we were taken very carefully through two locks but I can still recall our nervousness when we reached our first 'solo' lock. I guess it is common experience that all the training flies out of the head for almost everyone at this point - the excitement of a first adds to the pressure. Never underestimate the challenge for newbies - helping b y sharing your own experience is ever a joy, at least for us.
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10 minutes ago, Wafi said:
CRT have a mandate to provide a reliable supply of water, but they also have mandates to maintain the infrastructure, provide various services and so on; all of these cost money, we know that Government funding has been reduced, and no-one wants to see increased licence fees. These mandates and restrictions all compete against each other, and trade-offs have to be made. If the reservoirs were full and available exclusively for our use, pumps across the system were fully serviceable, but we couldn't go anywhere because locks had become unusable, we'd complain. If the price of having (fairly) well maintained infrastructure is the risk of water shortages in exceptional years because some of that maintenance was funded by subletting reservoirs, that might be a reasonable compromise.
The canals and reservoirs were built as part of an industrial transport system that is now obsolete. If we want to use parts of that infrastructure (the canals) for leisure purposes, why should we expect priority over people using other parts of that infrastructure (reservoirs) for leisure purposes? Indeed, our impact is far greater because sailors and anglers can use the water as much as they like without affecting water levels.
As with NAAs and charges for water (in and out) where the new contracts were made much more realistic, it often takes a serious issue to precipitate a review. I strongly suspect lawyers are already at work changing standard texts for all new agreements to abstract.
The problem with contracts is that more conditions you anticipate the longer the text and the more opaque it becomes. Whilst we have had plenty of warning about climate change, the present situation seems to have caught a lot of people on the hop - my concern is that the media have yet to catch on the the extent of the present water shortage as it has not yet led to issues for the general water customer. The impact on boaters does not justify front (even any) page news.
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5 hours ago, Wafi said:
You'll get back. It'll rain eventually, and if we're lucky the South Oxford might be navigable for a reasonable period before it has to close again because there's too much water.
!
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19 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:
Nigel Moore rip had the opposite view of the same clause :
As I construe the various Acts, they DO have the force of law behind them.
It cannot properly be said that the 1995 Act “exactly . . .says” that “if you have a home mooring you can stay anywhere on the towpath for as long as you want then and never need to move.” It is true that “ ‘move every 14 days’ is explicitly only detailed in the act for those with no home mooring”, but that does not imply absence of restriction for those with home moorings.
From the very first enabling Acts, the towpath was not to be obstructed; it had to be available to all for the use it was designed for – accordingly, overnight stays would have been the only (perhaps) tolerated use for mooring. In one of the major canal company’s Acts, in fact, pleasure boats were even banned from ANY use of the towpath (and that clause has never, to my knowledge, been explicitly rescinded).
Over the latter part of the 20th century, longer temporary use of the towpath for mooring became tolerated on a pragmatic basis, with 14 days fixed upon as a rough guideline for reasons lost in obscurity (for all that BW came up with postulated origins during the Select Committee hearings on the 1990 Bill).
Obstruction remains on the statute books as an offence, updated even in the 1995 Act, and overstaying stated times on selected sections has been used with County Court approval to qualify the boat – being thereby regarded as an obstruction - for being moved under s.8(5) of the 1983 Act. Anything longer than an overnight stay, as I see it, is simply permissive – with the exception of boats without home moorings, for whom only, the right to 14 days (or more if circumstances dictate) is enshrined in law.
For boats with home moorings when cruising away from those, the 14 day limit would apply only as a permissive one based on a fair-play comparison with the ‘continuous cruisers’. It is simply, in other words, that CaRT would find difficulty in justifying the application of differing standards based only on the nature of the boat licence application.
To suggest that any boat was legally free from constraint over use of the towpath is unjustifiable.
AIUI, in the days of working boats, overnight mooring was rare. Initially, boaters did not live aboard and worked day schedules. As trade fell in competition with the railways, boaters with limited resources to find housing moved, as today, onto the boats and necessarily took their families with them. As was typical in working class society at the time (esp in the early parts of the industrial revolution) whole families were a working unity. (It was said that a wife was chosen not on good looks or even for love, but for the strength of her arm!)
As result the profile of many canals did not provide for mooring close to the towpath - something that K&A users repeatedly forget about today!) I think that even the Idle Women spent more, or at least as many, nights moored at a turn around base than on a wild mooring.
If my understanding is correct then it is small wonder that the legislation did not really provide for today's common usages.
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18 hours ago, MtB said:
Isn't the term "abstraction"?
There is/was a notice at the bottom of the flight re an illegal abstraction that had been going on for a while and causing considerable problems. Is it still there? I forgot to check when we left Cropredy (never top return?)
Width of bed in cabin
in History & Heritage
Posted
Plenty of still functioning churches have their old pews but the capacity calculations are a bit more generous on space, if not comfort.