David Moorings

Yes there will be a link going on, I discussed it with the site owner this morning. We don't have a designated link page at this point but we'll be putting a link on the news pages for now and onto the link page once done.

After advice I am now responding in the right place, I hope. You're right, with a small team taking on a heavy workload we could of spent 5 years in the BETA stage but there comes a time where one has to try and pay the mortgage. We are working on the mobile platform issue with i phone and android but your imput willl be much appreciated. I have left my e mail address on the thread and would be all too happy to hear from you. The complexity of the site and the size of the task at hand leads to things from spelling mistakes to the odd piece of inaccurate information, much of this is being ironed out by us over the coming days. The first page is written in consultation with the landlord, the 2nd page by them. We have at all times tried to give as honest information as we could ascertain from first impressions to the food, ales and wine on offer. Some may fancy a "2 for £10" meal, others something more in the gastro line, the way we have constructed the model is to give you a good idea of what to expect before going in and leave it up to you as to whether it's for you or not. The function will be honed as we move forward, please be assured that we will improve all aspects as we move forward.

Thank you, we have a small blogging section where people who want share their personal experiences along stretches of canals whether walking, by boat or bike, I enjoy reading those whenever a new one is submitted.

We are working on this issue, particularly after feedback from today Sorr, missed that out, the pubs that want the editable function do pay a small surcharge to cover our costs for hosting. The pubs reaction to the site is positive on the whole and most that we approach understand the model and do not mind at all.

No not yet Thank you very much, obvously a lot of hard work to go. I'm a skinny widebeam wearer.

Dudley Canal http://mooringsandmoor.com/waterway/dudley-canals/ Dudley and Stourbridge have their own sections. I stated that a bulk of the BCN was over 3 sections, I will review my choice of phrase. the Birmingham Fazeley Line will be live in the next week.

Just to clarify, pub owners do not write their own reviews they state how to find them, what sort of food, beer, entertainment they do. We rule out pubs that we would not feel comfortable spending time in and look for the kind of pub that is inviting, generally has a good selection of drink and if they serve food that it is of good quality. This does rule out some but it means that people not familiar with the area are generally going to have a positive experience, we do all we can to find the best ones. That said different people have different preferences, this is why we feel that pictures and a description of a pub is useful.

It was one of many ideas, whichever route you take is flawed, crowd sourcing as well as our method. Our obstacle with hand picking pubs is time but we are progressing steadily and it will be better in the long run. I'll have a look at the Bristol to Trowbridge area for you and try and schedule something in soon, we have 13 pubs along the central section but also need to get to the area between Newbury and Reading.

Mis-spellings corrected. I'll be taking a bike ride on the upper Peak forest week after next and will add to the guide and find pubs. I access the site from wireless connections accross the country and don't normally have difficulty with site speed. Admittedly when using a dongle as many people on boats have to, then the site can run slowly but you could level that complaint at many larger sites out there, the map is an integral part of the site and it seems that is the main cause of slow down. We will get our heads together to see how best to improve the situation.

I'm taking on everything, it's frustrating making spelling mistakes but I have almost 100,000 words written just into the guides so occassional spelling mistakes are inevitable I regret. Easily remedied though. I knew I was putting myself in the firing line but it is more important for me to get things right than protecting my pride, looking at what people have written really helps with that. Terms such as barge I know are contentious but we want to appeal to people who may never of spent time on the waterways as well and it's a fact that the term barge gets 4 times as many hits on google as narrowboat and the like, I have tried to avoid the term but we have to reflect what people are searching. Extensive polishing up has been highlighted, I will be hunting for good pubs and shops etc up and down the waterways, including a trip to the Peak Forest Canal next week that someone has just pointed out a need for pubs and I may make the odd misspelling but it is coming together, and at something of an accelerated rate today! Everything reasonable raised here today will be addressed.

Corrected the misspelling of Devizes, apologies. The pubs provide us with the addresses, I have changed to Wilton regardless to avoid future confusion.

The pub owners have login codes to their own pages and can update their content at will.

Hi Martin, I'm confident that you running the site that you do that you want to use as many resources as possible to build a complete picture, we wanted to glean as much info for each waterway as possible, whether it was by ourselves boating, walking or cycling canals and rivers, we had selected friends, family and people we met while making the site, whether Chesterfield Canal, Dudley or Lancaster Canal trust or my friends father in law who spent 20 years on the Thames. As well as this we have researched by book and internet to amass a vast volume of notes and information, it was primarily down to me to organise all the information and put it into some semblance of order and write the guides. I sat in a darkened room for 6 months writing all the guides and it would be nothing short of a miracle if I hadn't made the odd gaff, I can't stress clearly enough how much I would want to put any right. Due to the nature of making sense of all that was put in front of me I condensed information and wrote all the guides from scratch, if I have made mistakes I am happy to correct them as I want our site to be as accurate as possible. If at any time I have inadvertently followed your guides too closely it is wholly unintentional and I am only too happy to rewrite. It is inevitable that your site was consulted as part of the process of researching the Northern Canals as I acknowledge that Pennine waterways is a great site but I was careful not to use more than just a few nuggets of information from you or anyone else and tried at all times to concentrate on phsical experience. You have my email address, if you would like to contact me we would be happy to have links between our sites and discuss further cooperation if you feel that would be of benefit. In the meantime i'll look back over the Ashton and amend accordingly. Yes, and quickly. No one means to make omissions or mistakes we try the best we can to make the best site we are capable of doing. The coastal website will run side by side with the inland site and will take some time to build so we wouldn't be looking for sea faring types to find us just yet. Unfortunately we have made the homepage as simple as we could, both in programming and content to ease the speed of connection. As by necessity we have to have the map function and the waterways list on the front page this is as quick as it gets for the time being. Also we are working on adaptive screensizes for different phones, for example the page size automatically resizes for blackberry but not i phone at this time, another job on my long list of things to sort. I had mentioned before that we will be releasing a free to use i phone app that will negate the need for internet connection, it will work on the GPS function, but i'll be honest with you it is some way off. I would just like to say thank you for all the constructive feedback I have had. All issues raised have been noted and are being worked on right now and probably well into the night.

Since doing this full time I and the other 4 have to balance building the site, adding content, phoning or visiting marinas, hire bases, pubs and shops along the way. If we had 50 people working on this i'm sure the site would be almost fully built but as I'm sure sure are acutely aware in this economic climate things are sometimes harder than they otherwise would be. We will be spending more time on the shropshire Union very soon but have to balance what on our doorstep with trying to get more content nationwide. As I said in the intro we are working hard to get all pertinent information as quick as we can. We are working on the linked canal feature within the map, the linked canals will come up in grey and the main waterway in black, as with anything else this just takes time, please bear with us.

Fair Comment, we hope to be a part of your plans for the evening, with the pub and shop owners keepin their own pages up to date with upcoming events and current guest ales it should still be useful together with the other info we offer. With the locations, it was actually surprisingly difficult building a properly working gallery, the title boxes were very glitchy to start with. There should be locations added to most images now, also with people that have contributed photographs we ensure that we credit them accordingly. Many thanks

It's hard to assess the completion percentage with all the physical ground to cover as well as site development as you can imagine. To give you an idea, our aim is to have a pub every 5 to 10 miles in the countryside and a couple of different pubs offering different environments in each larger town. I would like hundreds of images for each waterway, several blogs and good quality farmshops within walking distance of each waterway. New functions on the site range from featured pubs, trusts, latest news tabs on the front page to video guides and eventually a free app once we have reached a critical mass of content. New ideas abound but due to limited manpower we have to prioritise. I acknowledge there are gaps in the volume of information in certain areas of the country but we are working really hard to get good quality information and pubs for every waterway. I am spending 2 weeks on the Broads and Mid Level navigations next month and have a week in scotland in September that is as close to a holiday as I will get for some time. As more people visit the site we are getting people offering blogs and pictures in higher numbers and progress will speed up accordingly. We will only get better. Hope that covers it folks.

Thank you very much Ditchdabbler, appreciate the feedback. As important as a name is I think the name is less important than the content, that is and always will be our main focus.

We will be building the coastal section of the site over the coming year so we couldn't restrict ourselves to an inland based URL as it has to be applicable to both. Hopefully you find the content more agreeable than the name.

Barrie, and thank you very much. I hope you find the site useful.

Hello to all, I have been in touch with Daniel, the canalworld site owner, who has very nicely allowed me to ad a link to the directory and suggested I write a post to introduce myself and the site I have taken 2 years out of my life to help build. The site is called mooringsandmoor.com and a small team of 5 of us have taken a gamble on building the site which all but one of us has now given up work to see it come to life, I personally have been doing this full time for over 12 months as it was getting too hard to balance 2 jobs. After getting reassurance from Daniel I have left a link and explanation of the site in the links directory so I will try and not repeat myself. The idea came about 2 years ago when we were discussing how hard it was to find hire bases and marinas geographically and the fact that through a simple pub database we were never sure what kind of pub we were walking into until it was too late (sometimes). This was the nucleus for the idea that has now become an 800 page website. The core of the site is an interactive map, with guides, marina/ hire base/pub/shop finder with full details and pictures of the pub and image galleries for each waterway. My job at the moment is getting around to as many waterways as I have time for between building the site to find the best and most welcoming pubs I can, many of my friends and people I spoke to at Crick have offered to volunteer for this "arduous" job. As such we have minimum of 2 pubs on each of the 60 waterways we feature and on waterways that I have got to spend more time on there are many more, over 200 in total. I am not just looking for good pubs, I also seek out farmshops, butchers, village stores and anything else I can find of use to walkers, boaters and cyclists, if you look at our Monmouth and Brecon Canal or Grand Union page you will see more or less how each waterway will look once we've got round them all, although I still have a lot of work to do south of Stoke Bruerne. We have just launched a range of canal inspired clothing, available through the website and around 10 marinas so far, although that number grows every week. We have named it "Brindley and Dundas" and logo's at this time are lock gates and printed logo's inspired by the canal art seen on boat names. If there are areas that you know are great pubs that are not on the site I welcome you getting in touch, I have found some of our best pubs by recommendation. Yesterday I got the George and Dragon in Stoke Golding on the Ashby to sign up on the recommendation of someone I spoke to at the Crick Boatshow, great pub, locally sourced food and their own micro brewery. I also welcome any constructive feedback or suggestions for the site. I know I have stuck my head above the parapet by doing this but there is no sense hiding away when we are trying to build the best site we are capable of. My email is dave@mooringsandmoor.com Thanks to Daniel for allowing me to introduce myself and the site.

Website Name: Moorings and Moor Website URL:http://mooringsandmoor.com/ Website Description: The site is free to use and offers Interactive Maps, Guides, image galleries, boat hire bases, marinas, pubs and shops complete with pictures and up to date information edited by the pub on how to find them, what beer and food they offer, entertainment etc. The site also has an e shop with canal inspired clothing. You may of seen us (through the pouring rain) exhibiting at Crick this year. Any other comments: I am one of 5 people who have spent the last 2 years building mooringsandmoor.com, the site went live in January 2012 and subsequently we have been busy running about the country trying to find the best pubs, butchers, farmshops etc to add to the site. You can find guides, image galleries and at least 1 or 2 pubs on 60 waterways at this point with some great images contributed by users of the site as well as from ourselves. As we are a small team we have not yet fully populated the map with pubs etc. but being Midlands based we already have a lot on quite a few canals and we are moving ever further in every direction, you will never see every pub along every waterway on our site, we just want to help you find the best ones. There are already over 120 hire bases and marinas and over 200 pubs. Over the coming months we should of got around most canals nationwide and have a very useful database of the best pubs and shops which should be of great use to boaters, cyclists and walkers alike. The pubs are not just a database, there are pictures, mini guides and a page edited by the pub with up to date information on menus, entertainment, real ales etc. A large part of the reason we started this mammoth project was because with pubs changing hands so regularly in the last few years it was hard to know whether the service in a previously great pub would be the same form one visit to the next. I hope you like the site or at least appreciate the growing content and ridiculous amount of work that a small team of 5 has done to get it this far, we have kept it simple to use and are very busy working behind the scenes to add new functions as well as content to keep improving the site. If you have suggestions or feedback I welcome you getting in touch. Thank you for your time. David