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Richard Fairhurst

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Everything posted by Richard Fairhurst

  1. Has Bradley closed?
  2. 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.
  3. 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...
  4. 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"...
  5. 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.
  6. 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).
  7. The nearest derelict canal to me right now, the Cassington Cut:
  8. Though the other side of the coin is that car accidents are a massive drag on the NHS and boat accidents aren't.
  9. 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".
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.”
  13. 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.
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  16. It'll do until someone publishes a proper red-covered cruising guide to the Middle Level!
  17. The current issue of Waterways World can be read for free online, in recognition of the fact that most people can't get to newsagents/chandleries right now: https://reader.waterwaysworld.com Lots of good stuff in there (not just my map of the Middle Level ).
  18. No-one is really speaking up for the working-age leisure boater either... The working-age leisure boater needs two things IME. First, unoccupied short-stay visitor moorings at "destination" locations, so that they have somewhere to go in their rare leisure time. For example, we now have the realistic option of a day-trip from our Worcester mooring to Upton: for years that wasn't really possible because of boats overstaying on the visitor moorings. When we moored in Burton, the changes to introduce more short-stay moorings at Alrewas were really valuable - and predictably, they were loudly opposed by retired people who wanted to be able to sit for 14 days on their preferred village centre mooring. Second, reasonable 7/14-day moorings near stations for "weekending" (i.e. moving from place to place over successive weekends). These don't need to be particularly plush - just somewhere, ideally piled, where you can leave the boat for a week or two in the reasonable expectation it will still be there when you get back. The sweeping bend just south of the hire-base at Alvechurch is one such. This sort of spot has, inevitably, become harder to find in recent years because they're also prized by continuous cruisers.
  19. Doesn't help that they screwed up the election (as chronicled at the start of this thread) and the voting pages were incredibly user-hostile to begin with, especially on a small screen. I can't be the only one who tried and failed to vote, and then didn't return to try again when the bug had reportedly been fixed.
  20. No, they don't. There's a de facto closure from Ryders Green Junction to Swan Bridge Junction due to pollution. CRT have put a sign in the middle of the channel asking people not to proceed (at least, they had a few years ago... I presume it's still there).
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  25. I spent a day poking around the Leominster Canal, photographing the remains - the occasional in-water patch, the random embankment, the blown-up aqueduct, the inexplicably difficult tunnel. It was when I was working as assistant editor of Canal Boat magazine and had decided to write an article about it. Lots of traipsing around fields and taking photos. I got a few funny glances, but that's par for the course when you're sniffing around obscure canals in the middle of nowhere - I guess I'd technically been trespassing on occasion and landowners are a bit sensitive about that. On the way home, I thought I'd stop in Leominster and buy a few nice bottles from the specialist cider shop there. "It's good to know you can still buy a decent pint even though the end of the world is imminent," said the shop assistant while I was paying. Ok, seems like a slightly pessimistic angle to take on life, but hey, you do you. Driving back along the A44, I switched on the radio somewhere around Bromyard. It was a news programme, which seemed weird for that time of day. Apparently some people had flown planes into buildings in America that morning. Oh.
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