Richard Fairhurst

I don't know how well you know Worcester, but as a moorer there, I can assure you that powered boaters (i.e. those who pay something to CRT as navigation authority) are decidedly in the minority as river users. If the narrowboat hit the railway bridge, that is automatically a several-hour closure of the mainline from London to Hereford while the safety of the pillars is assessed. If the narrowboat hit Worcester Bridge itself, that's damage to a 250-year old historic structure and potentially another closure of the only road route across the river in the city. Good luck sending the entire city traffic round the southern bypass. If the narrowboat hit a vessel from any of the rowing clubs based around the racecourse - including several school ones - that's a very serious, potentially fatal, accident. (Fortunately, the rowers are unlikely to have been out with the river at today's levels.) If the narrowboat collided with something, went under and leaked oil or diesel, that's not going to be too great for the three-figure number of swans by South Quay and the Cathedral. An out-of-control narrowboat on the river in Worcester is a public danger and as such it's entirely appropriate that the public Fire & Rescue Service is involved. SARA, of course, is another organisation which undertakes rescue missions on the river, and those of us who use the river are very grateful to them. It may not be what you're used to on the Trent and the more artificially managed channel through Newark, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

The mobile bike repair business that visits our little town every couple of months seems to be thriving. A bit of advance publicity and people are queueing to take their bikes there - so much so that it regularly has to take bikes away to be fixed later.

The Bridgewater's closed until March: http://www.bridgewatercanal.co.uk/news/navigationclosure

Personally I would say you're nuts if you try to cycle from Chester to London by towpath! There are lots of lovely country lanes, NCN routes, and the like which will give a more enjoyable cycling experience. If you choose to plough your way through Grub Street Cutting or along the muddy bits of the Grand Union in preference to quiet, smooth back-roads, that's your choice but it's not how I'd spend my leisure time. Yes, by all means use the towpaths when they're suitable - sections around Chester and Nantwich, Bilbrook through Wolverhampton to Birmingham, the bit round Leighton Buzzard - but don't be hoodwinked by those into thinking that all towpaths are suitable for cycling, because they're not. Use a proper bike route-planner, not a canal one, and it should give you a decent route weighing up all the variables. Here's one option, but there are many more.

For those not familiar with bike forums, this is pretty much the cycling equivalent of pumpout vs cassette. (Whereas h*lm*t arguments are the cycling equivalent of CCing debates.)

They're on there - https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-the-waterways/canal-and-river-network Though you won't find any on the map between Leigh and Preston Brook/Manchester, because the Bridgewater Canal isn't run by CRT.

Not so much. Newsagent/supermarket distribution is the killer: that's why magazines always try to get you to subscribe. The cost of postage is much, much less than going through the three tier chain of wholesalers, distributors and newsagents.

If I remember rightly, last year CB also increased their cover price by a pound for one issue. There was a reason for it - maybe the bundled wall-planner or some such. It was back to usual the next month.

One of many reasons to have a 40-footer! Though in my experience people are often happy to budge up a bit if you ask them (but, of course, we're English, so we'd never ask...). I did enjoy getting our boat into a 41-foot space at Audlem this summer despite the "helpful" advice of those on the opposite bank that "you'll never fit in there".

Yes, absolutely. (If I were to get really pedantic about names and addresses I'd go into sui generis database rights at this point, but no-one deserves that...)

Generally I'd go for b, of course. But there are several canals - notably the Shroppie - where I'd think "hallelujah, that guy has found somewhere where you can actually moor up to the bank. I've been looking out for that for the last hour..."

Not quite. "Public domain" in the American English sense means "free of copyright". This usage has gained widespread worldwide popularity through the open source software movement. "In the public domain" is a British English phrase used to mean that something is not a secret. Information published on this forum can therefore be said to be in the public domain, though each posting is the copyright of its author. For what it's worth, England & Wales copyright law does not have an explicit concept of "public domain", hence the existence of legal tools such as CC0 and PDDL to allow people to effectively renounce the copyright in their works. Collections of names and addresses can actually be copyrightable in the UK, but that's another question and an exceptionally complex one.

I don't usually rush to the defence of NBW and it genuinely pains me to have to agree with Chris Pink "Alenafour", but I think Allan is in the right here. CWDF is no less the public domain than NBW. Both are free-to-view websites covering canal news inter alia. If I were editing the news pages at one of the news-stand magazines, as I did for several years, I would personally feel negligent not covering this story. It's not just 'soap opera' stuff that you read about for interest: it's genuinely relevant to anyone who takes their boat through a volunteer-controlled lock on CRT waterways. If a similar incident happened next month, potentially with loss of life, and I had passed up the chance to write about Alan's near miss, I would find it hard to justify my decision. (That said, I wouldn't personally have written the story in the way that Allan wrote it - I'd probably have left the names out, been a bit more concise, dropped the editorialising, and requested a quote from CRT - but I'm sure that Allan would say the same about plenty that I've written!)

Absolutely. And this is largely because, in Oxford, cycling is normalised - a higher percentage of people cycle in the city (17%) than anywhere else except Cambridge (29%). It's also a nightmare of a city to drive in (this is a good thing, by the way ), but with excellent bus services, so people are also more likely to be pedestrians than elsewhere. The result is that there isn't a them-and-us atmosphere. Most probably either you're a cyclist, or your spouse is, or your neighbour - people you get along with. You don't demonise cyclists, because you know some, and they're just like you. There aren't really any "tribes"; people on the towpath relate to each other as people, whether they're cycling or walking or being towed along by a dog or whatever. Contrast that with the attitudes occasionally displayed here where, to quote from earlier in this thread, "i always find a pole through the spokes stops them nicely". Yes, well done. That must really help.

Um, that's Vaughan Welch's list with "Seek network expansion and adoption of EA Waterways" removed, isn't it?

[citation needed]

...and, later this month, Oxford Parkway station; and in a few years' time, the Northern Gateway development. Prices in previously unfashionable areas of northern Oxford (as opposed to "North Oxford") have been heading skywards for a couple of years now. Though access from this bit of the canal to Oxford Parkway will be a bit circuitous, I suppose.

Blackstone Rock just before the Bewdley bypass bridge, I believe.

For the first time in 15 years, I wouldn't bet against that happening...

(Sorry, couldn't resist. I interviewed Vince Moran for WW at about the time of the lock bollard controversy. He was very honest and straightforward - even if you didn't agree with the policy, I think you could respect his reasons for it. Robin Evans later said I'd stitched Vince up by printing his responses pretty much unedited, which RE felt didn't look slick or professional. Personally I thought the opposite - people would rather read someone engaged, passionate and down-to-earth than a bunch of slick, smooth PR-driven answers. Sometimes you can't win...)

Thames lock-keepers operate the weirs - that's the point. That's why there are still full-time lock-keepers and that's why they're largely funded from the flood budget.

I was under the impression that the EA flood budget paid the majority of the Thames lock-keepers' salary... or so goes the argument that comes up every time an EA->BW/CRT transfer is proposed.

Nuffield and Oxford City Council have in the past proved unwilling to forego the revenue generated by the car park. To be honest, canal interests' campaigning for a restored basin hasn't always been too inspired - focusing on the benefit of creating a new winding hole (!) rather than the regeneration/development story that sells it to property owners and local authorities. I've heard suggestions that Nuffield and the City might now be a bit more open to the idea. Unfortunately, though, the city and county councils have rather squandered the opportunity by treating all the developments in that side of Oxford piecemeal - Botley Road railway bridge, Frideswide Square, the Westgate and Bonn Square. A coherent vision could and should have incorporated a restored basin, but coherent vision has never been Oxfordshire's speciality. Still, this recent land deal could offer another opportunity...

Exactly that. I got an overstaying notice once after 13.5 days on the Staffs & Worcs (we had a cc-ing licence at the time and were weekending down to what would become our new permanent mooring). I phoned the enforcement officer, who was hugely apologetic for the mistake. No need to be forceful or confrontational - a quick "this is what we've done" was all it took to resolve things.