Richard Fairhurst

Absolutely that. The other point is that volunteers (by and large) aren't transferable. The members of the Cotswold Canals Trust don't want to work on the G&S or the Thames, they want to work on the Cotswold Canals. You can't tell them to concentrate on "keeping the existing track open" if that's not how they want to spend their leisure time. Back in the day, one of said not-particularly-clueful BW management answered a question at the BW AGM about volunteers working on BW's own waterways with "We treat them in exactly the same way as our employees." It was an absolute facepalm moment. No, you don't treat them in the same way as your employees, because you give your employees a pay cheque at the end of each month. Employees will put up with a lot of s—t for a pay cheque. But if you tell volunteers "actually, we want you to do this instead", many will respond "sorry, not what I signed up for. I'm off to the local preserved railway, see ya".

The timescale of all the big restorations right now is such that it's not really worth worrying about CRT's ability to take them on. The Wilts & Berks is not going to be restored in 10 years' time. Nor is the Thames & Severn, or the Wey & Arun, or the Grantham, or (with apologies to @Up-Side-Down) the Hereford & Gloucester. The Mont to Welshpool might be but I wouldn't bet my house on it. By the time the question needs to be asked, CRT is likely to be in a very different place one way or another. Waterway funding is cyclical. There won't be massive shortfalls forever. Right now we are experiencing the hangover of austerity and of some not particularly clueful management of BW in its latter years. Derek Cochrane was reputedly working on a plan to "establish" the HNC and the Rochdale before he got shunted sideways out of BW (by aforementioned not-particularly-clueful management). The idea was to do what had happened with the K&A - first you restore it to a minimum standard (1990), then you pitch for funding to finish the job (1996-2003). Much of this essentially comes down to CRT cracking the community engagement issue. They haven't done so yet but the climate is absolutely right for it right now. We live in hope...

Or put another way, Kelsey Media (who publish Canal Boat) have bought Mortons Media (who publish Towpath Talk): https://www.kelsey.co.uk/news/kelsey-media-acquires-mortons-media/

Oxford–Abingdon–Swindon–Cricklade–Lechlade–Oxford would be a cracker of a loop. One week with pretty much everything on it (river, broad canal, narrow canal) and some lovely scenery. I could see it being the next Four Counties in terms of popularity. The W&B/K&A loop is perhaps further down the line. Swindon Borough Council has blown hot and cold on the restoration of the Wilts & Berks through the town, often connected with change of political control, I think.

I would strongly suspect this is being done with DEFRA’s knowledge (or encouragement) and perhaps a hint that legislative time might be available to amend the 95 Act.

Of course, CRT could encourage more people to develop apps for the canals by taking off the stupid "no commercial use" restriction that they apply to their data. Currently, an app that displays CRT stoppage or water level information isn't allowed to include any way of defraying the costs of running that app, e.g. a supporter scheme (like Patreon or Ko-fi) or ads, because that counts as "commercial". The app developer has to soak up the costs of the app themselves, starting with the £99 annual Apple developer account and going on to server costs etc. No other major public data provider includes this restriction, which is why there are approximately eight billion railway apps and approximately two canal apps.

FWIW I don't remember there being significant EU funding in the Pennine restorations. The final push was mostly Lottery (Millennium Commission/Heritage Lottery Fund) and English Partnerships/Regional Development Agencies, following up earlier local authority schemes. But it's possible of course that some of the EP money came from the EU in the first place.

At the time, a handful of semi-derelict buildings and car parks on land beside the canal, I believe, almost entirely in Manchester itself. One of the car parks contained the Portakabin where you had to buy your licence for the trip down the Rochdale Nine in the 90s. Town Centre Securities appear to be still in existence, still running that car park, and have a bunch of properties around the Rochdale in Manchester: https://www.tcs-plc.co.uk/portfolio

Over and above those already mentioned, parts of the Cromford; upper Pocklington; most of the Lancaster Northern Reaches.

They do - you'll almost always see them looking down to take your number (or using a mirror). We usually shout ours up to save them the hassle. Genuinely surprised if they didn't on your visit!

There's a shoal across the river by the Bewdley bypass bridge.

The Camp moorings are fine - we moored there the other week. The lower level (i.e. on the downstream side) have mooring rings. With the higher level (i.e. up a couple of steps) you need to find some way of threading your ropes round the wooden structure but that's no great imposition. On a sunny weekend day mooring four abreast is absolutely expected! An alternative to Tewkesbury is of course the Lower Lode pub.

Moorings are evolving on the Barge Canal. When it first opened it was African Queen territory but you now fairly often see people tying up bankside like any other canal. It's not quite there yet - but then it's probably easier to moor than the Shroppie. We were genuinely surprised last week how empty Netherwich Basin was. A bunch of boats were moored bankside in Vines Park, though. I think the fact the 48H signs in Netherwich are basically faded to illegibility doesn't help - first-time visitors will assume it's all a private marina. The swing-bridge padlocks are an acquired art. Basically you just need to pull the bridge onto the catch with sufficient force that the hole is easy to slot the padlock through - just not so much force that it bounces back off again. First time we ever did it we cursed every single one. Last week we breezed through them. The Barge Canal paddles are not great right now, I'll definitely give you that. They're not normally this bad. The main problem with the Barge Canal locks IMO is that the lock landings are so short. We were following a couple of hire-boats down for a while and there was a lot of hovering in mid-channel involved.

Latest CRT update: "Further to the notice below Bevere Lock, Lock 7, will reopen temporarily at 11am tomorrow morning but unfortunately must then close again for one week, from Monday 21st May for permanent repairs."

And now sold for over £1m to Crafted Boats (aka Pinders): https://www.banburyguardian.co.uk/news/people/large-canal-marina-on-six-acre-site-near-banbury-sells-early-for-more-than-ps1million-4512364

CRT/BW have always struggled with dimension information. In the early 00s (or late 90s?) Paul Wagstaffe at BW worked with HNBOC on a document which is still the definitive ground-truthed list of what can fit where. Unfortunately it’s been reworked and replaced numerous times since. I think there’s traditionally a confusion between “what fits though the structures”, “what are we prepared to support operationally this week”, and (most exasperatingly) “what is some half-remembered figure we saw somewhere once or copied down from an old Nicholsons”. The early 00s document was unusual in that it was very rigorously “what fits” and explained each individual pinch point.

Not coined, but popularised. You can find "narrowboat" in various pre-WW publications of the 60s and 70s.

Both aqueducts (or rather, all 1.5 aqueducts…) are accessible, but the Teme aqueduct was of course half blown up in WW2 and the Rea aqueduct is slowly collapsing. Putnall Fields Tunnel still exists but is on private land. Several very obvious earthworks along the route - you can find them with an OS map and satellite imagery, though they’re not necessarily the most videogenic!

Not aware of any. It’s an interesting question because the canals are nominally under the Waterways Infrastructure Trust AIUI, and CRT just (“just”!) manages them. So in theory one model would be for the WIT to retain ownership of a canal but give it to another organisation to manage. (Is the Kensington Canal another waterway that was transferred out of the management of BW? That one’s always intrigued me.)

That's certainly true of the Rochdale. @magpie patrick has posted previously that the "certain length of time" was in the region of 80 years: The Rochdale is the single canal I'd be most worried about, to be honest. It only takes the Calder Valley to flood one more time and the navigation will be closed. With only one holiday hirebase (currently up for sale) and very low boat traffic, it's not going to be top of the list to fix. I don't know, but I would guess the Millennium Commission grant agreement included a force majeure clause that CRT could try and invoke in case of major flooding - "sorry, we'd love to fix it, but our Government grant has been slashed and we have no money...".

My recollection of the Rochdale issue is that the Horse Boating Society was primarily objecting to resurfacing with tarmac in the urban areas around Rochdale itself, as part of Sustrans' Connect2 programme c. 2012. And sure, there's a heritage issue there. The Rochdale towpath wasn't originally tarmac. But nor did it have brick-faced concrete bridges, the M60 crossing over it, chain pubs alongside, and so on. The canals aren't frozen in aspic from 1800 or 1850 or 1900 or 1950 or any other arbitrary cut-off date; they are ever changing. I've not done the maths to work out how many people live within a few miles of the Rochdale in urban Manchester. The Manchester conurbation has a population of approaching 3 million so "well into six figures" seems like a safe guess. The Rochdale through Manchester pre-restoration was grim. Not grimy in the sense that Farmers Bridge, say, used to be; not interesting industrial traces in the way that parts of the MB&B still are. Just grim. Cascaded locks, a broken-down towpath and a shallowed channel. The £24m Millennium-funded restoration was (like the original K&A project) a bare-bones "let's get this canal open" operation, but left much to be done, not least towpath works. If it's a choice between resurfacing the towpath so that many more of the six-figure number who live nearby can make better use of it, or keeping it as it is for the benefit of a single horse-boater who might use it once every five years, I don't have any hesitation to say which side I fall. That isn't to say that all such works should be automatically welcomed. I don't really see the point of tarmacing both sides of the New Main Line towpath either. But the Rochdale towpath is about as cut-and-dried a case as it gets IMO.

Absolutely. We did Hatton through to Napton last week and you can basically work them like narrow locks. Easier, in fact, as you don't have to cross to the other side to open/close the mitred gate – you can just stay on the towpath side. The Ham-Baker gear could be easier to wind (as everyone says it was once), and the locks with wooden balance beams rather than metal ones feel heavy and unbalanced. Hatton paddles will drop slowly down without a windlass as designed, but some of the others now just spin out of control unless you wind them down. But maintenance aside, the design is brilliant. Sorry to see that Ham-Baker finally went under last year, though it looks like parts of the company have been bought out: https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/westmidlands/news/2069594-fifty-jobs-preserved-through-sale-of-ham-baker-businesses

I really need to finish off my iOS canal map app (and do an Android port)! A live tracking feature wouldn't be too hard to implement and would be a lot of fun for events like the Challenge. Remind me.

I remember being at similar meetings, about improvements to the Rochdale towpath in urban Manchester in particular, and the Horse Boating Society kicking off about how their needs were being ignored. Someone then asked exactly how many horse boaters there were and how often they boated the Rochdale…

Hopped off Song of the Waterways at Ryders Green to get the train for a holiday on my own boat. Rest of the crew heading to Tipton via Brades probably. The Rushall closure and our enforced rerouting to W&E there and back makes that the least locky Challenge I’ve ever done! Delighted to have ticked off a few stretches I’ve never boated (Cannock Extension and Anglesey). On balance we decided not to pick up the chest freezer from the W&E which would have been a very creditable entrant for the Trolley Trophy.