Richard Fairhurst

No, not really. The big change was from Dave Fletcher-era BW, which was very focused on restoration and expanding the system, to Robin Evans-era BW, which was focused on financial self-sufficiency. The AINA Vision in particular was always a bit of a wishlist and one that reflected the particular aspirations of a few stakeholders. I don't remember people taking it particularly seriously even at the time.

There is no such organisation as "Active Travel". Active Travel England is an executive agency of DfT which, inter alia, advises it on disbursing funds such as the various tranches of the Active Travel Fund (originally called the Emergency Active Travel Fund). This particular fund is directed to local authorities, but there's nothing to say that future funding opportunities will necessarily be so constrained.

CRT are doing this sort of thing to persuade Government that they have wider social benefit, not just a subsidy for affluent boaters, and therefore still deserve funding. BW used to do exactly the same. I like Government paying for the canals, so good luck to them.

We'd had great service from RCR for many years, until a couple of years ago our tiller snapped on the Avon. RCR's response was basically "good luck, you're on your own". We were a little surprised. Fortunately an octogenarian campervan owner in the next field managed to liberate a couple of clips from some nearby Heras fencing, which just about got the tiller clamped back on for the trip downstream to Bidford Boats - who welded it back together quickly, efficiently and cheaply! RCR have otherwise always been very good so I'm inclined to put it down to too much work mid-pandemic. Ha, I remember that! Phoning up Chris Cliff at Middlewich to ask what the policy was about refuelling. "You can't have run out of diesel." "I promise you we have." "No, it must be something else. How far have you gone?" "Stourport." "Oh, ok, maybe you have run out of diesel then."

By definition, boat length/beam on any lock-free canal will be limited by the angle you can take through bridges, of course. So the 'Ampton Boats of roughly 85ft x 8ft 6in were the biggest practical length on the Wyrley & Essington and the Wolverhampton Level, even though both canals are lock-free. I guess there must be a similar de facto length restriction on the Bridgewater (and the Ashby, discounting the former Marston stop-lock and the isolated Moira Lock). Similarly, there was the Mon & Brec's turn under the Heads of the Valleys road until that got opened up, but I suspect you know more about that than me @magpie patrick!

Out on the W&B today and the wild-looking locks were delightful. Such an improvement over the Veg Pledge-era manicured lawns.

I really like Tewkesbury to Gloucester - the cliffs and woods give it a fair amount of variety and it's interesting wildlife-wise (we saw an otter there once). Upton to Tewkesbury is a bit monotonous though, I'll give you that. Good news about the Haw Bridge.

Plus the lock in the River Wansbeck barrage.

Coincidentally we were in the Lock on Thursday. Excellent steak, though it's a shame they don't do a proper cider any more. I don't think I've ever known the Wolverley visitor moorings so quiet. In fact pretty much everywhere was quiet – we were doing the Stourport Ring, and most days we only saw a single-figure number of boats on the move. I wonder whether everyone's taking their foreign holidays this year now that the Covid restrictions have lifted.

...and for other navigation authorities' moorings: https://www.district-enforcement.co.uk/moorings-enforcement

I wouldn't say CRT have turned a blind eye. BW/CRT have been trying to do something about "continuous cruising" being interpreted as "permanent mooring" since at least the early '00s: I remember writing news stories about it when I was at Canal Boat. But ultimately everything they do founders on the rocks of protest and of the ambiguity in the 1995 Waterways Act. The only way it's going to get resolved is with legislation to clarify the Act. The Government is unlikely to want to do that because legislation is expensive; rehousing people is expensive; and dealing with headlines about "ethnic cleansing" is not what they want to be doing. If a new Waterways Act ever gets drafted for some other reason then I could possibly see this being tagged onto it, but until then, CRT is limited to chipping away at the edges through tougher enforcement and little things like the £25/day mooring charge.

IIRC Jim Macdonald got Elizabeth (61ft 9in) through Salterhebble... just. I know someone who had a 60-footer moored in Huddersfield and who took it through the Broad locks, but I don't think he ever particularly enjoyed it!

Across the system as a whole I don't actually think the amount of moving traffic is that different to 20 years ago, but that conceals a lot of local variation. Sometimes you get a cluster of marina development all at the same time which increases traffic locally - e.g. Braunston (/Napton/Norton) in the late 90s/early 00s, or the eastern T&M a few years after that. The late 90s to c. 2010 saw a boom in new-build private boats, but generally these weren't cruised for that many weeks a year, and meanwhile the previous generation of boaters were getting older and cruising less. So although it meant more boats on the move, the overall effect was perhaps less than you might expect. Hire boat bases can make a big difference. Canaltime used to be a massive thing on the eastern T&M – it felt like half the traffic, though clearly it wasn't that much. Now (I think?) there isn't any hire operation at Sawley at all. Similarly the Llangollen seems significantly quieter to me than 20 years ago, which I suspect is due to changes in the hire boat market. Some waterways just go in or out of favour. The K&A has slowly got busier over the years. The Thames used to be an unusual thing for narrowboaters to do but that started to change in the late 90s, just as the plastic cruiser market was declining. I suspect some of the other rivers might actually be quieter now than 20 years ago. On the canals, there are without doubt fewer GRP cruisers than in the 90s/00s. Cities seem busier. In the 90s, going through Birmingham or Manchester (particularly the Ashton) was viewed as a bit of a brave thing to do, whereas now it's pretty unremarkable. And obviously there's been a massive growth in the number of residential boats with comparatively limited cruising ranges.

It works if you copy and paste from TextEdit on a Mac.

Going upstream under the Worcester bypass bridge when the river's at the cusp of amber/red would certainly be an exciting experience in an electric boat. Hours of fun as you watch the meter quickly dropping while you slog upstream at 1mph or less. The anticipation of whether you'll actually make it to Diglis or whether your batteries will give out and you'll need to anchor in midchannel in flood conditions. Frankly I can't see why people aren't queuing up to do it.

Yes, that's my understanding too. Often from Pontrilas in the Welsh borders, I believe.

£1.36m from the Leeds City Region Growth Deal and £500k from Bradford Council's Getting Building Fund.

Same with the "Worcester Birmingham" – that’s in fairly common parlance and even appears on CRT signs. (But then BW/CRT have often been a bit erratic with names on signage: I remember cringing at a BW sign saying “Welcome to Wendover Arm”.)

Quite often - I've been through it a handful of times in the last few years, either when the small lock's been out of action, or when the lockie is just efficiently speeding people through! I presume the Edward Elgar uses it too.

I've said this one before, but the lock on the River Wansbeck in Northumberland.

Heh! I wrote/coded the Boaters' Guides for BW's Waterscape website back in 2005. About five years ago CRT kindly commissioned me to update them for the modern age; I rewrote the whole thing with clearer maps, towpaths, judicious use of colour, all of that. CRT have all the code (and paid me for it!) but haven't brought it into use, so the 2005 version is still soldiering on. I'd love the new ones to go online one day. (For anyone who's curious, here's some test output from the new code.)

Very sad to hear that. Mike was one of our regular Carrying & Freight correspondents at Waterways World - I only spoke to him a handful of times (generally he'd go straight to Chris as the news editor), but he always had updates and timely photos on what was currently happening with carrying on the A&C and the Ouse. A real enthusiast of the old school.

I haven't seen any evidence that this is specifically a cycling project (and to be honest it wouldn't make a vast amount of sense as one IMO).

The main issue is that the roads aren't safe. People don't cycle on canal towpaths because they like looking at ducks, people cycle on canal towpaths because they want to avoid getting run over.