oboat

"costing £8.5m to build, and will serve as a 'ladder' or 'elevator' to allow fish to hop up and downstream. The direct environmental benefits of the fish pass will be £18.6m, the Environment Agency says." I would be interested to see the Business Case for the £18,6m? Perhaps adding a fish pass to each of the EAs unnavigable locks could make the lock repairs fit into a Business Case?

Yes it is. That will probably be the end of cheep soft fruit from Spain for the UK then. Probably funded by the EU. Morocco will love that and we may even get the Morocco - Poole sea link after all.

Been their done that! The Australian State of Victoria was short of water a few years back, 2007, so a desalination plant was constructed by 2012. However the plant was immediately put into standby mode. It was not used until 2017! However it costs over £3 million a year even if no water is ordered. The supply Contract runs for 27 years and will cost over £10 billion to maintain. It is generally considered a total White Elephant by residents who have to pay for it.

As a CRT Boating Volunteer, one should take the initiative and re paint the non-applicable part of the sign or collect the mooring fee and forward it to CRT!

Now, Notting Hill Carnival, GU, Paddington Arm. No sleep tonight LoL.

Agreed, comes back to my comment on profile.

A few very good reasons. I can understand the High Bridge which gets all the comments and it is somewhat menacing and the Brayford Br looks very low and SOLID. However after mooring just below High Br for a few days my personal feeling was that the pipe bridge was the lower of the four. I just need to get out with a tape measure and check. Minor Detail, Simon

I can not think of any low bridges on the Witham which one are you thinking of?

Yes boat profile. Thinking of Box Boats, (Not applicable in the following but for some reason a large number of new build Broad & Wide Beam Boats have vertical cabins, and then wonder why they tree surf.) the most obvious one not mentioned is Stanage Tunnel (going west to east at least) Froghall is 6'-8"headroom, not a problem for most boats, but roof needs to be no more than 5'-0" wide. This allows for a slight kink which affects boats over say 35ft. Bunkers Hill (below) tunnel is circular. Should be a few others I can't think of right now?

With all the talk of water shortages. Can anybody tell me if Cromwell Weir has stopped running this year? Or if the Trent abstraction pumps, Torksey to Fossdyke have had to stop due to low water in the Trent?

When did you transit back into Brentford?

Went through last week no prob's, I grant you lots of activity but mostly day boats, Sups and kids. We have now been out 3 weeks and I have been amazed at the number of vacant 24 hr moorings. Lechlade, Oxford x2, Reading x2, Herley, Shepperton , Sunbery, Kingston x3. Maidenhead x2. Even Marlow both above and below the lock, people in the High St but not a boat problem. Didn't look at Abingdon. No problems at locks as in other years. Never even had a full lock. Now the only boat on an EA mooring below Kingston.

I would suspect this is just another Straw Man, set up to kick Boris and by the look of some of the comments its working well. This Ofwat water transfer project is not new and is in mid process, parts have passed or are about to pass through Gate Two in the South. In terms of big projects related to navigation, in the South East the area of greatest concern, two are worth looking out for. The revival of the 1960's Wash Tidal Barrier on environmental grounds, something of an about turn. It is also something we have global warming to thank for. The Wash Environmental Barrier would run from Hunstanton to Gibraltar Point with a potential extension past Skegness. This would be larger than the Cardiff Day Barrier but smaller than the French & Dutch estuarine barriers. It would also re-perpose the Great Ouse Washlands The other is the proposed Spalding Paternoster. The Spalding Paternoster is a multifunction lift project transferring Trent and Witham water down to the Great Ouse via the Glen, Welland and Nene (it could also involve the remains of the Stamford canal in a very minor way).

This makes no sense DPI have just created a total new nature reserve in the Thames from dredging. I (and probably most of the population) am under the impression that recycling waste was one national if not international importance !!!!!!! I would also imagine some department within DEFRA is probably funding recycling posters at great cost to you & I.

Having seen the Non development/re linking of the old Graingemouth Docks (upper infilled end) in association with the Kelpies project and the relocation/new line of the canal extension I would not hold my breath. Such a lost opportunity for urban regeneration.

Thats great, no idea where you intend to put them, however if they are to be used on the outside, on the Tideway I would suggest you may have more success if the aggregate was made up into Staybits or similar. I would be interested to know more on what is proposed. Bowling Basin is a tremendous development opportunity for the area, the river and the canal.

I agree, On the less popular locks this represents more movements than normal on a weekday and on the more popular locks impossible to achieve as you say. We took to evening and first light boating at the weekends due to the number of mad day-boat drivers, swimmers, (never seen so many) very big hire boats (first day out), Sup's and kids on bits of plastic. The result was very very pleasant boating, the pick of great am moorings and on Sundays great pm moorings. With good knowledge of the river (which we don't have) it should be no problem at all. An unexpected by-product of this was that we only had to pay for mooring at Lechlade (2 days) and Hurley both only £5. (give the Old Bell a miss, non-english speaking staff, poor menu, poor cocktails. But great curry just a few yards up the road with great local staff.

Interesting. We are now back at Shepperton & just had two massive but very local thunderstorms. The first we were in the open out on the river at Staines, 2nd we were in the Sainsburys at Shepperton when it flooded & we were kicked out. When we went through the Upper Thames last week all the locks were manned, (not so below Oxford) & as I said before, St Johns was over full (water was only about 6" below the lock walkway. Headroom below Osney bridge was also down on the 7'-6" it should be, and we almost lost our garden. We were told the reason numbers were down was due to the cost of diesel which on the Thames only comes as 60/40 and two weeks back was between £2:20 & £2:30. Refilled today at Shepperton Marina at £1.75 for 60/40 split. Out last fill was on the Paddington Arm at £1:25 but it was very cold then so we had to have the heating on.

Just another journalist who knows nothing about the subject they are writing about. The real problem is people believe it.

If one were mooring on the Regents or GU, each Monday (& some other days) one would see the wast from Camden Market (at Camden Lock) being shipped by barge to the Powerday wharf. No idea where it gos after that?