Tuscan

I agree with your comments re Julie Sharman , at last an engineer in charge, and Vicky Martin the latter I found , despite not having any previous knowledge of canals, was proactive in boaters favour once she understood the point being made. In the few meetings I had with Ian Rogers he expressed little interest in boating and as soon as he could hide behind one of the many heads of Boating I imagine his interest ceased,.i suspect the customer service/enforcement teams must be worried about outsourcing given his departure without replacement.

I think you will find that the ‘little people’ report to ‘people champions’ who report to the ‘people director’ this sums up everything that I dislike about the management bubble organisations create for themselves.

Just planning a Christmas cruise south to Marsworth to discover we are stymied as central Milton Keynes will be closed from the 2nd January which is a couple of days to early for us. Plan B glad this thread prompted me to double check stoppage dates as I thought most post Christmas ones started in 8th.

Well I’m 6’2” and had plenty of headroom in our “Star” Class conversion. It would be much better described IMO as in the style of a converted working boat rather than a replica of any particular class. To be a good replica it needs less rivets and more dents ! Looks better than some working boat conversions to be fair.

Astron seems well fitted out. Don’t think head height will be a problem.

What seems to be true is revenue is up generally and specifically from boaters (licensing and mooring) and spend on dredging and vegetation maintenance specifically was £1M down from last year. It could be CRT are working more efficiently/effectively or it could be that the capacity of staff/contractor’s has been reached so they could not spend more even if they wanted to. There certainly seems to be need for additional dredging and maintenance as Matty stated

If your at Kilworth you could also try sister marina Debdale at the bottom of Foxton - Andycraft are based there and I have seen them overplating can’t comment on quality. They cut out and replaced a base plate for us years ago and fabricated our cabin top when we started converting no problem. think new marina is being connected to system in November

Don’t forget unlike a property boats tend to devalue fairly quickly especially at the top end, so if it’s not for you it could be an expensive mistake.

This I believe very much sums up CRTs current thinking and focus .Boaters need to wake up and realise they risk being marginalised

We have a beta marina generator in a cocoon and hospital silencer cooled with skin tank.

No I did contact them previously will try again

Yes we got a good copy this some years ago from the museum in Gloucester, if you have one I would be very pleased to have a copy of it if this was feasable.

Surprised to see the photo of Aber on the screen , it’s the only one we have been able to find.

It’s worth pointing out that as far as I’m aware there was concensus that congestion in stage 1 and stage 2 and the navigation advisory group meeting was that managing congestion was not a function of license pricing but of enforcement. Also that at the workshops and the NAG (need to read stage 1 again) license meeting the view was there should just be one license price regardless of whether home mooring or not. So the fact that it’s still in the latest consultation probably says more about the views of CRT than those it has consulted to date.

Suggest you walk the towpath around central Oxford , mooring for anything more than a couple of days is very very difficult and unless you have a permanent mooring you may find yourself further out than you want.

If money and resale value is a consideration then I would definitely not go down this route. Unless you have had a boat a few years you will not have a clear idea of what is a must have and what you can do without which if you are fitting a boat out from scratch i believe is essential. We had our boat fitted out to our design but with our eyes open and in the full knowledge we had no chance of recovering the substantial cost in any subsequent sale. It would have made more commercial sense to buy a holiday cottage but boating gets under your skin. Having said this with the recent lack of maintenance and dredging together with the longer term stoppages this autumn we might have thought twice if we were about to do the same now.

So that's the Oxford, Peak Forest and GU Leicester line all now closed. This is before any planned winter stoppages. Not a good advert.

Just found this on Q & A - "I don’t have a winter mooring. Will I be able to moor at a winter mooring site if there is space? If there is available space at a winter mooring site, visitors may use the mooring. While our winter mooring signage reads that sites are ‘permit holder priority’, we are taking a flexible approach and will allow visitors to moor there for the standard time period if there are spaces on the sites. If a permit holder arrives at the site, they will have priority, and those not in possession of a winter mooring permit must be prepared to move off the site right away. "

This doesn't make a lot of sense, I'm sure in previous years on visitor moorings if the winter moorings were not taken they could be used as a 14 day mooring.

Saw these on Facebook today. Hillmorton

I've left a boat on the wharf by the Globe inn before

Think there are 5 separate stoppages in place September and October to work on the locks in the area before this blanket stoppage just announced.

More likely to be due to the constant leakage of the locks down to Leicester, causing CRT to constantly be running down water

I assume boaters can expect the same hassle with facilities as the new service block at Marsworth adjacent to the newly built luxury houses on the former CRT offices.