Arthur Marshall

So over the past few years there's been a major breach on the T&M that flooded Northwich, another on the Middlewich link that took a year or two to repair, Marple locks out of action for a year or so and now Whaley Bridge, New Mills and Stockport are in danger of flooding because the dam is collapsing, the reservoir being emptied and presumably the Peak Forest and the Upper Macc running out of water. I think those of us who have grumbled for years about lack of maintenance and inspections are entitled to the odd "I told you so" moment. Not that it's anything but bloody depressing. Or does any good. The trouble with "management", in almost every industry these days, is that those supposed to be managing neither know how to manage, now much about what they are supposed to be managing (apart from their expenses, pension funds and ability to move on to another job about which they know nothing). ETA PS, it doesn't matter anyway. it's not happening in London.

Before this year, I've been unable to understand those who give up. But I didn't really enjoy last year's trips much, and while the Leicester ring was good to revisit, I had company on that cruise and I enjoyed that more than the actual boating. My wife wants us to keep the boat, so we will. Probably - as long as the engine repair isn't prohibitive. But the next person who tells me Listers are wonderful because they last forever is going into the canal... although it's probably a sequence of crap engineers as much as anything, not one of whom has seemed to manage to finish a job without me having to call yet another in to put right the bits he didn't bother to attach properly. That's another thing I found depressing .

Deception is debatable if part of the storyis true. If a boat is burnt out, but the hull is sound, someone buys the hull and builds a new superstructure on it, is it the same boat or a different one?

Age is a factor for me too, 70 this year with a dodgy back and angina. Most of my boating is solo as my wife can't get away much, and while I manage OK so far, it don't get easier. I gave up a trip up Wigan this year as wide locks are a bit of an effort - even the few on the run to Chester tired me more than I expected. It all, slowly but surely, detracts from the joy of it until, maybe, I should just muck about in the garden, annoy people with strange songs (finally, maybe, finish the CD of canal ones) and entertain the neighbours with the trombone. But not this year... quite.

Given up the banjo, to everyone's relief. I used to worry that people would get upset if I just upped sticks and moved to the other end of a mooring to get away frlm their exhaust fumes. It always seemed a bit rude. Then I realised that if they were bothered what anyone else thought of them they wouldn't actually be trying to kill me, so, yes, now I just shift . But it is annoying to have to keep doing it (twice, one evening last week) when you really just want to settle down and enjoy the day. Although the upside is, it means I don't have to worry about waking the inconsiderate buggers up when I kick off at six in the morning...

Now, that's a GOOD point.

I'll feel better when I've got this off my chest. For the first time since I bought the boat thirty years ago, I am seriously considering giving it up and leaving the canals. I've lived on it as well as having spent a fair proportion of every year wandering round the system, though never qualifying as a CC. Maybe this has just been a bad trip, brought short by engine problems, but I no longer think it's just looking at past years with rose tinted spectacles and a bit of decline in an old system, but something more serious. It's not that boaters aren't as good people as they ever were, it's mostly the boats they drive. It is now virtually impossible to moor up and enjoy a bit of peace, listening to birdsong and the noise of the wind and water. There's always another boat within earshot with a genny or an engine, cooking their tea, running a computer for every person on board, watching a vast TV, doing their washing or just charging up their massive battery bank. And there's always one of them who thinks it's fine to run it all until 10pm, because, after all, it's a very quiet engine... and it only needs the one. The one moored next to you doesn't consider that their diesel fumes are drifting into your boat, that they're happily poisoning your dog. And if you do manage to find a spot of piling in the middle of nowhere, there's been a theoretically cruising boat dumped on it for weeks, padlocked up and ignored*. Then there's the decline in the system, which it has been apparent over the last couple of years is accelerating massively. Half the paired locks on the T&M must be taped off by now, with no apparent plan to repair any of them, half the others are leaking so badly the banks to the side are nothing but mud, and there are broken paddles all over the shop. As you go through you mentally calculate the odds that it will still be functioning on your way back. Pounds drain overnight for no apparent reason. Bridges are festooned with cracks and lock landings taped off and toppling into the canal. Water points vanish, as do general services. Bins aren't emptied. Yet money can be found to spend on more and signage - glaring blue things thanking cyclists for slowing down, or warning them that the bridge roof actually curves downwards. Stir in climate change and more extreme weather - unbearably hot one day and floods the next and living or holidaying on boats won't be much fun, nor will an ancient, poorly maintained infrastructure survive it for many more years. Ah well. I'll get the engine fixed and keep the beast another year. But I suspect that may be the last. Thanks for letting me blow of steam (not that you had any option, really). Any arguments to the contrary will be gratefully received - I'd probably grab any available straw to keep the old tub going. *How do I know? Because they were there in April when I went past, they were there in June when I came back, and they're still there in July. The weeds growing out of the flower pots and the fenders are longer though. Can't be sure I spotted them all, but I'm damn sure about at least five in the small area I've covered, and I remember them because they were all in places I like to moor.

I did wonder about that too, but there doesn't seem to be any sign of oil from it. I'll replace it anyway ASAP and an isolator is a good idea too. Chas didn't have time to look, so im heading home... Two days later, the stick still shows full, which is odd. Damn boat makes me nervous when it mucks me about.

There's nothing obvious that I can see round the sides of the beast,no oily bits that shouldn't be oily. I'll see what Chas can come up with tomorrow.

I'm wondering if might be as simple as the pipe from the drain plug to the pump used to get the oil out for a change having sprung a leak. Its been there for 20 years. Going to call in at the yard tomorrow for them to have a look as I can't physically get down there any more!

My Lister SR2 has lost a litre of oil in about 15 hours running. It seems to have wound up in the drip tray in the bilge and I can see no obvious place it's coming from. Prior to this, I found at the last oil change 3 days ago it was down by a litre and a half but couldn't remember when I last checked. Any ideas? Everything seems to be tight. Gearbox has been off and on recently, engine rebuilt five years ago. I'm not far from Chas Hardin on the Shroppieso could stop there if nec or try to make it home to Macclesfield. ETA can't see it's relelvant, but I've a blown gasket on the exhaust too.

I've got an ammeter, small block of circuit breakers, a headlight switch and the manual switch for the bilge pump. That's it. Quite enough.

I don't bother with comprehensive insurance, just 3rd party, so they won't be bothered! I'm on a fairly secure farm mooring on the offside and if anyone was going to nick a boat of the mooring line, it almost certainly wouldn't be mine!

Don't think my hooks have ever come loose and they're more or less all I've ever ever used while cruising. Home mooring's on scaffold poles.

People outside London work full time and have to claim benefits too, you know. It's not compulsory to live there . There seems to be an attitude problem that says one should be able to live wherever one wants, whether or not one can afford it and whether on not it involves breaking the law or the "rules". As well as a terrible fear of life north of Watford Gap. Anyway, this really is a pointless thread now, going the way of all previous ones in the subject. Ultimately, people will do whatever they want or think they have to do, justify whatever means they employ to themselves, and then whinge like hell when they find authority disagrees. Personally , I feel anyone who lives in London is welcome to it - I can't imagine being stacked up two or three deep is particularly pleasant and the constant threat of enforcement won't make it much fun either. As someone has said, if all these lowpaid people left, the city would collapse. It's an inverted pyramid, a mass of the poor, complaining endlessly about poverty wages, crap housing and lousy benefits, servicing a rich few. It can't last. Yet they all seem so keen to perpetuate it.

Maybe it's just London. Too many people all squashed together, bound to cause conflict. At least it keeps all these apparently unpleasant types away from the rest of us. Even when I lived on board, I only experienced people wishing they could, too. And all being aware of how those who cruised all year helped to keep the system open. Like a sensible person, as soon as I could I moved north where there's space and Yorkshire. And room for tolerance, even of hippies...

I'm afraid the real point us that you're talking bollocks. PMers etc do not have any sort of attitude to CCers, in thirty years of boating I have never heard anyone express such a thing as "distaste". In 10 months you do seem to have built up a hell of a shoulder chip and I suspect this reflects your attitude rather than anyone else's - you seem to have an irrational dislike of anyone whose boating pattern is different from yours. Try to get it into your head - 99% of boaters (whether we live on them, cruise on them, hire them or just go on holiday on them) don't give a toss about what anyone else is doing - we just like boats. PS you can't call it undirected , either, if it's directed at "rat boats and bridge hoppers". That's directed, rightly or wrongly. PPS I also suspect that your attitude reflects the fact that if you are tending to CMing, which in the past you seem to have denied but now say you do, the constant worry of whether you're going to be chucked off the cut is feeding this rather neurotic attitude that everyone hates you. We don't. We really aren't bothered. CRT may be, we aint.

Hippies belong everywhere. Just thought I'd mention it.

I can see why hooks might be a problem if leaving a boat for long periods, they can slip out of the piling, especially if passed at great speed...ordinary pins the same.

Be interesting to know which Macc mooring, too.

As with most things , it's not the reality anyway, it's the perception . I, and most people I know up here wouldn't be interested in travelling to London because of its rep. So CRT might as well accept reality, take the money and turn it into a housing estate. They don't even need to define them as residential moorings - let the local authorities sort that one out.

Or simply do what was done before the advent of mooring fees. Boat registers a "home area". Licence rises to include what CRT would charge for mooring. Moorers are no worse off. Rebate at year end for CCers if CRT's records show distance travel satisfies them .

Sometimes it's just "housing", cheap doesn't really enter into it. There's got to be an answer, preferably one that increases CRT's income. I suspect a big increase in CRT's online moorings, heavily policed, in the popular areas, with some visitor moorings also being charged for, as at llangollen. It'll make London virtually unvisitable without prior booking, but it probably is already as far as I can tell. And most leisure boaters don't want to go there anyway, being more interested in country than city.

I didn't find that when I lived on maybe 25 years ago. Maybe because most boaters I knew lived on, I suppose, with or without a mooring. Bit like I find now, no one cares very much. The debate, rather like on here, seems to be between just a few people with axes to grind or chips on shoulders. Most boaters just like boats, and boating whenever they can,whether they are owners in marinas, CCers, hire boaters or whatever.

I did run the engine for a while in gear before trying. I'm always a bit wary of overusing reverse.