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Arthur Marshall

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Everything posted by Arthur Marshall

  1. Were they actually in convoy, or just the usual thing of a very slow boat at the front and everyone piling up behind them? Double or wide locks can cause a bit of bunching too. It's partly why I tend to cruise from 6am - by the time everyone else has had their bacon and eggs and got going I'm about ready to moor up and read a book for the rest of the day.
  2. Not sure where South Cheshire starts or stops, but there's an excellent welder at Bollington Wharf on the Macc.
  3. How did they know they were from the Travellers site if they didn't ever go in there? Sounds more like they knew they'd never find the culprits and fobbed you off with a story. These days we'd probably get a camera shot and a better chance of ID. Not that anything would get done, though.
  4. That sort of what happened to mine. There was a hole in the original bottom plate in the engine bilge, so when it was replated any water in the bilge seeped down through the hole and then reappeared. Cured by blocking the hole, at least till another one happens. Can't see how I can stop it - cruiser stern, there's always water in the bilge.
  5. Actually, the answer is that the NBTA set up their own schools - home schooling is perfectly legal and the Government is in favour of free schools anyway. But, of course, that would mean them doing something rather than expecting it to be done for them...
  6. Can't they just take the boat back to within a couple of miles of the school, then back to their mooring? And back to collect them? No different timewise to walking (probably quicker with smallies) , though of course it would mean actually moving the boat....
  7. I do think the point about change of use is valid. If government funding ceases in a few years, either the system falls to bits completely as a navigation or, possibly, CRT recognises the housing aspect, opens up a stack of residential moorings with basic facilities, charges a commercial but affordable rent for them and gets a bit of money in. The pretence that leisure moorings (which often have no facilities at all) aren't often treated as de facto residential should just go - if a boat has a mooring, what's the difference if someone lives on it? Mooring fees should be set by the facilities available and demand.
  8. The use of the thread title worries me a little. It implies the OP is starting from a position of expecting to be a victim of some sort of coercion from an authority, rather than looking at the rules and practicalities and seeing how a life can be made from it. CRT doesn't have any agenda apart from trying to maintain a system for a variety of users, most of whom are somewhere on the anarchic spectrum (I include cyclists & fishermen as well as us) when it comes to the rules/traditions, with not enough money to do the job. The villagey nature of those who live on has changed a bit over the last thirty years as more people do it, but in general we all help each other out as far as possible, possibly due to a shared history of needing help. But do bear in mind the crucial, and expensive, need for occasional sudden large amounts of money - my boat needed 9 grand's worth of work overnight a year or so back, or all I would have owned would have been a pile of underwater rust. If that had been my only home... renting might not be secure, but at least houses don't often sink. The other thing you lose as a cruiser is all your local network, friends, acquaintances, regular and known habitats. That may be more important than you think as you're used to it so don't really notice it any more, but constantly moving mucks it up. PS those who post endlessly on various forums about hidden agendas or social cleansing by CRT are usually (though not always) those who have deliberately, for one reason or another, picked a fight with CRT and lost. Most of us just get on with our lives with no problems, putting up with the occasional glitch that is bound to occur in an inefficient management system.
  9. I like the old Nicholsons, find the maps easier to follow. The new shiny paper ones seem half the time to read backwards. Anyway, the old ones have got all my favourite mooring places marked. For shops I use the e-canal maps or maps.me on the tablet.
  10. What about scruffy boats with poverty stricken retirees? I have said before and repeat, in thirty years of boating I've never heard anyone complain about continuous cruisers.
  11. I remember when they invented mooring fees BW sent bills to all the house sroound Chester with canal access, whether or not they had boats. Soon got dropped.
  12. But it isn't. As I said, it depends where you are. You can assume that, probably, if you travel a fair bit more than the guidance 20 miles crt can't be bothered to argue a case, less than that they probably will. Round about that figure, it depends on where you are as that affects how much a nuisance you are to everyone else and so how much the enforcement team get pissed off with you. It also no doubt depends on whether you spend your time on a honey spot or lurking quietly out of the way under a tree. It is, of course, a pointless discussion as always. And I can't say I care too much, as I've always had a pleasant mooring whether I was living on or just using it for holidays. And in a sensible part of the country it doesn't cost too much, either.
  13. I'm not in a marina, so CRT get all 500 quid of mine.
  14. A lot, I suspect, depends on where you are. A pattern like that on the Macc would take you from Stoke to Congleton, to Macclesfied, Bollington and up to Marple. You've not covered a huge mileage but it's certainly a cruise between several distinct places and you're not going to be annoying anyone by appearing to hog the best spots. The same sort of thing around London or Brum wouldn't even get you out of the city limits. Personally, I couldn't be bothered, but then I escaped from the South as soon as I could and loathe big towns. I never understood why anyone insists they can only live and work in London. Unadventurous, I call it. And they don't seem to be happy, them that hop round London (& elsewhere) avoiding CRT, judging by the amount of complaining about harassment that goes on and the whinging about the recording system "not being fit for the purpose".
  15. It does all seem to add a lot of stress to what is basically a low stress situation. I'd have thought not having to live in a constant state of worry that you might not have outwitted the authorities would be worth a couple of grand a year.
  16. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  17. I think it's the difference between "continuous" and "continual". If you had to be continually cruising you wouldn't be able to stop, and only the Flying Dutchman has managed that, though Tom Holt maintains he calls into port every now and then anyway. Probably the main disadvantage to being a CCer without a home mooring who needs to pivot round a point is just the strain on the nerves of wondering whether you've done enough to satisfy CRT or whether the dread letter is going to drop into your mailbox. The way the rest of the system's going, anyway, it's all going to be moot in a few years - you won't be able to get out of London even if you wanted to what with lock collapses, embankments crumbling, bridges falling down, global warming flooding the rivers and a new breach every couple of miles...
  18. If the term "continuous cruising" actually means someone going on a continuous cruise, then wanting to get rid of boaters who want to stay in a restricted area without having a home mooring has nothing to do with "social cleansing", it's getting rid of continuous cruisers who don't want to be on a continuous cruise. That comes down to how you define each term, which is how lawyers get rich and CRT, and therefore us who at least partly fund it, all get a bit poorer.
  19. The one from Congleton is worse. Nearly finished me off today!
  20. Not all of them - some are doing a cruise, they just can't get away much. But I suspect they're in a minority. It's only annoying, as I said, if they pick the best or only spots to leave the boat. Otherwise, no, it isn't that prevalent and, like most of the stuff that people get hot under the collar about, it really isn't very important. I don't understand how anyone could abandon the tub and only check it fortnightly either. I'd at last leave a number in the window where I could be contacted if someone spotted a problem - unless of course one wouldn't want to be contacted by someone, such as CRT. And the only reason I now live in a house rather than the boat still is because I play (and have earned money for most of my life from) thirteen different instruments and own twenty thousand books, and I can't fit them all on a forty foot tub. And my wife won;t live on it because she can't work out how to play the double bass on it either.
  21. That's reducing the argument to the absurd. Obviously if you park for a bit and go off it's fine and no-one has any cause to complain. But on my last cruise (six weeks) there were certainly boats moored up on my outward trip which were still there on my return, all padlocked securely, no sign of any recent life and with weed growing round them. Most of the time it really doesn't matter very much, though if I was the CRT towpath walker I might be a bit suspicious, but where it is irritating is when they've got the only bit of piling for ten miles, or the most scenic spot (for those of us who care about such things). I've never understood how anyone can do this - park 13 days, nip out at the weekend and move it round the system a bit, leave it another fortnight - without being a bit anxious. You invest all this money and just leave it for the vandals? It never surprises me when I see them either sunk or with broken windows or busted doors. I can understand why the few people who genuinely do this as part of a long cruise do it, but I think more often than not it's people who have bitten off more than they can chew, like those who buy a sailaway and expect to fit it out at weekends over a couple of months, and whose boats you see every time you go past a mooring, looking sadder and sadder.
  22. Thereea Co-op in Macc just downhill from the pontoon by the Puss in Boots. If you don't fancy the trek down to Congleton (down is fine, up's a killer) , there's a shop just uphill from the wharf or a small shopping precinct up the steps from the cutting by the station.
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