Richard Fairhurst

I've not seen him for about 15 years but back then he hadn't changed much since that 1975 programme! He lives in Clairac on the Lot, IIRC. One of the few waterway writers with a real flair for words that I was lucky enough to encounter in my years as a hack (John Liley was one, too, and Mike Lucas from Mikron another).

Although the notice has been in place since 2015 - not that Maisemore or Llanthony were navigable in 2014 either! It doesn't help that the map on the CRT stoppage page gets it wrong by highlighting the navigable section of the eastern channel, when the notice applies to the western channel (and to the eastern channel below Gloucester Lock).

It continues a bit further southeast than that, to Hope Mill, which is just before Brimscombe on that map.

The information in those guides is really old. I wouldn't necessarily trust it. There's a good piled section north of the M54 bridge, on the eastern bank, where we've safely left our boat for a week or so.

CRT is one of only four "core partners" to the HLF bid (the others being CCT, Stroud DC and Gloucestershire CC). I think you can therefore take it as read that they intend to be involved with the ongoing management of the canal. What sums of money change hands behind the scenes to enable this is another question, but I would expect that the HLF grant comes with a condition that the canal will be open to navigation x% of the time for the next y years. So in theory the first few years' maintenance should be "baked in" to the project cost and/or the partners' budgets already. But @magpie patrick will know much more than me about this sort of thing.

Muphry's Law dictates that you have a surplus double space before 'notice', and an errant line break after the 'n'...

The New Oarsman's Guide to the Rivers and Canals of Great Britain and Ireland is probably the earliest leisure canal guide, and dates from the 1890s. (There's an earlier Oarsman's Guide but I believe it's mostly rivers. The 1904 Bradshaws is intended more as a commercial navigation guide than a leisure guide.) There's a copy on Abebooks currently for £188. I do have a copy and I'll scan it when that accursed Chinese book scanner I backed on Indiegogo finally turns up...

It's not really "of late" - people have been using the phrase (and being chastised for it) for 20+ years, online and offline. I pretty much banned it from WW when I was editor, and from Waterscape before that, though no doubt one or two slipped through. I think you can forgive it when describing certain rivers which are generally impassable in the winter, but certainly on the canals there's no cruising season.

Ours is not much more (25hp) and can struggle with the Severn at times. If it's at the cusp of green/amber then we'll typically make slow progress upstream from Tewkesbury to Worcester. On the one occasion we did it on the cusp of amber/red it was horrid - less than 1mph over land going under the Worcester southern bypass bridge (always the fastest current in my experience).

Oh god no. The ones who call themselves "real boaters" are the worst. Usually Midlanders in their late '60s, called Keith, with a beard. They inevitably have a 1990s NABO sticker saying "CANALS were built for BOATS" in the window and a sarcastic sign about "Which bit of SLOW DOWN don't you understand?". The signwriting used to say "Keith & Mary Pillock", but Mary had the good sense to up sticks as soon as the kids left home and so the "& Mary" bit has been inexpertly painted out. I generally like pretty much everyone I meet on the waterways, from first-time hire-boaters to the Broom-Broom brigade, but there is a particular breed of supercilious, know-it-all old fart that brings me out in hives. (With apologies to any 60-something Brummie Keiths on here.)

A river navigation, and not detached insofar as it flows into the sea, but: the River Wansbeck in Northumberland. There's a lock (nominally still operational, though I wonder when it was last used...), and a slipway a short way upstream.

Has Bradley closed?

Not going to get into the whole CCing thing here, but the dimensions proposals are seriously problematic. The CRT dimensions document starts with "This is a rough guide only". I've seen probably a dozen iterations of that document in the last 20+ years and they have always been very approximate. (There was a decent one co-ordinated by Paul Wagstaffe circa 2000, I think, but it somehow got lost and replaced with a less useful one.) You can't incorporate something that calls itself "a rough guide only" into T&Cs. You certainly can't do that and then give yourself the right to change it at a whim at any point in the year. And if you want to enshrine the South Stratford being unreservedly 7ft wide into a contractual document, well, good luck with that one.

Who says it is? I've met people from Kings who work on this sort of thing (though not the people involved in this particular project) and I have every confidence that they understand the basics of a statistically valid sample...

We've done it a handful of times (Iago is 40ft). We shared the locks down from Etruria to Stone once with a 30ft Sea Otter - bit of a tight squeeze. But the most fun was when there was an enormous queue at Tixall Lock: when we finally reached the front, we beckoned a cruiser from way down the queue to come in with us. Fair amount of seething from the shiny 56ft brigade who they were "queue-jumping"...

Severn stoppages are often early autumn, because the river gets more unpredictable as it approaches winter. Both Diglis and Stourport bottom locks (obviously) have gates opening onto the Severn, so I can understand CRT wanting to get them sorted before the river rises too much.

I'm not sure there's even a concept of an "official name" any more. Probably the nearest is CRT's "functional locations", the internal codes they use to refer to waterways, and that has the Oxford as one waterway (code OX).

The nearest derelict canal to me right now, the Cassington Cut:

Though the other side of the coin is that car accidents are a massive drag on the NHS and boat accidents aren't.

On Sunday it was announced that Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 will be going back from 1st June. Yesterday, more detailed guidance was published and the Government expects these classes, basically, to be taught in half-sizes - i.e. 15 per class rather than 30, for distancing reasons. To do that, fairly obviously, you need twice as many teachers and twice as many classrooms. In other words, the full staff will be working, taking up the full building, for these three year groups. Which would be fine. Except those teachers also still have to set work for years 2-5, assess all that work and give feedback to the kids and parents. There's also the vulnerable y2-5 kids and the children of key workers to accommodate and teach in school. It doesn't add up as it is. So if you want even more kids to go back to school, as you seem to, the only way is for the Government to abandon social distancing in schools, so that classes can be taught at their usual sizes. That's a valid view, sure, but I hope you're confident in your epidemiological model that it won't cause Covid-19 transmission to go skyhigh again, because I'm not. Alternatively, as the ever eloquent Mrs Melly says, "soooooooooooooooooo hard done to innitt".

They do indeed, but it's not clear why. The situation is the same: a solo visit to a boat. If you moor your boat at Victoria Basin (Gloucester), operated by CRT, then you can visit it. If you moor your boat at Diglis Basin (Worcester), operated by BWML, you can't. CRT and BWML have seemingly read the same guidance and drawn different conclusions. Waterside pubs are an entirely different situation.

Or at least, it claims to. Formally it's the national sports governing body for boating, yachting and sailing. Canal boating isn't a sport (well, apart from the BCN Challenge...), and generally the RYA has about as much relevance to canals as British Cycling does to riding a bike to the shops.

10.40am, email from CRT: "With the Government announcing a first step in lifting restrictions on outdoor activities, and allowing people to drive to spend time outdoors with members of the same household, from Wednesday, the Trust is lifting any remaining restrictions on boat owners visiting their boats though the Trust advises against travelling long distances unless it is essential to do so.” 11.17am, email from BWML: "per prior Government advice, our marinas are not currently accessible to those customers who do not have the marina as their primary residence, and we continue to ask all leisure customers to respect this mandate until the Government gives us clarity on any changed advice.”

Indeed: Hugh (last-but-two editor at WW, though that undersells his many years running it!), me (last-but-one editor at WW), and Kevin (last-but-two editor at Canal Boat) have all posted here. Plus Andrew is assistant editor at WW and has posted here - earlier today, in fact.