haggis

We must be very good managers on Copperkins as we have only spent about £3600 this year. Mind you, we had an expensive repaint last year so we tried to keep expenses down a bit this year. haggis

One advantage of long term hire, if you can arrange it, is that the boatyard or owner of the boat will still maintain it so any problems while you are boating and they should fix them Buying your own boat, however, the problems are yours to solve! With a "new to you" boat you might get problems and on the other hand, you might not :-) haggis

yes, I would rather they did useful things too. CRT just needs to decide that the volunteers are not there to help at locks but to keep the area looking good then we will all know where we stand. haggis

I agree, Nick, it is a bonus if a volunteer offers to help and if there are no volunteers then we just get on and do locks ourselves as we have been doing for more years than i care to remember. It is when I see volunteers standing chatting to one another or strolling along when there is a boat which might benefit from a bit of help that I find myself wondering what their duties are. If they were litter picking or painting or doing something else useful then that is great but I have seen a lot of pairs of them just wandering along chatting to one another this year and it does make me question how beneficial some of them actually are to the canals. haggis

We have had very mixed experience of volunteer lock keepers! We have even been told by one guy at Napton that they were not there to help boaters but to look out for loose bricks etc and tell CRT. More recently, we had excellent help from a CRT employee at Farmers Bridge. We were going down early (two of us) and he was on his way to litter pick. When he went past and noticed that there were just the two of us, he said he would set the locks for us. The gates are so good on that flight that he just had to open a top gate on every lock and that was a great help. At Audlem a few weeks ago, on the other hand, when we approached the bottom lock, there were 2 volunteers helping a single handed guy in front of us. However, when his boat left the lock, the guys walked off down the canal (away form the locks) and were not seen again till we got near the Shroppie Fly when they walked up past the boats and stopped to chat at the CRT gazebo. By this time, a queue of boats had built up so I asked the volunteers what their duties were. They listed lots of jobs including helping boaters. I then asked why they had chosen not to help the single handed boater and the reply was that they also had instructions not to let the situation develop where there were 4 boats in a pound and anyway, their shift was finished. By not helping the single handed boater, there were 4 boats in the pounds by this time! That ended up being the slowest trip we have ever had up a flight of locks. It took us almost 7 hours to boat form Nantwich to the top of Audlem flight. We later found that the problem was caused by 2 friends on a boat each and while they were lovely chaps (we had met them elswehere on our travels) they didn't have much of a clue about locking :-) and the boat following them didn't seem to offer any help. Had a volunteer been there to help, it would have been very much appreciated by those following on who were all helping one another and chatting as we waited.... haggis

Good to hear that Sarah and her dogs are OK. I have often wondered where she was and how she was getting on. haggis

Is the article in Towpath Talk not pretty accurate? Cotswoldman did say that Vince Moran of CRT would not speak to him any more and we all came out in sympathy but it later transpired when fuller details of the email correspondance was made public that what Vince Moran of CRT had suggested was improving the User Group meetings to make them more beneficial to boaters. I don't see any mention of anything being at the behest of the IWA in the Towpath talk article I read. I am probably wrong but that was my take on what happenned. haggis

We were moored outside the NIA for a day or so last weekend and the only mention I saw of the Floating Market was on a boat window and you had to be quite rude and look closely to read it. More on site advance advertising might be a good thing although, as Nicknorman says, there area lot of folk passing there at the weekend. Having met some of the boats on their way there we wished that we were going to be able to attend. haggis

A set of keys, including house and car keys, were found this afternoon beside Farmers Bridge locks in Birmingham. If they are yours, Andrew Denny of Granny Buttons has them. He can be contacted via his blog or the Waterways World office. Haggis

Re good places for a curry in Birmingham. We like the Celebrity in Broad street. We have been going there for years when we moor in the city and we ate there last night and were not disapointed. I think Nicknorman and Geoff may also have been there last night too, but later than us Haggis

We are moored outside the NIA on Copperkins. We love Birmingham too!

But surely, they will padlock top and bottom to stop boats entering the flight outwith the set hours but boats in the flight will be "let out" at the other end. haggis

But, Mark99, it wasn't really only one shot, was it? The Ombudsman sent his draft response to the op for comment and it is hardly his fault that the OP didn't look at her emails and see it till it was too late to comment. haggis

When putting a case to the Ombusdman (or anyone else) surely the person making the case should include all relevant information. The OP says that her case hinges on the fact that her email was ignored yet she didn't even even send a copy to the Ombudsman yet seems to expect that CRT should have done so. I think the case was lost because the Ombudsman never saw the most relevant bit of information but even if he had seen it, it might not have materially affected his final decision. For somone to say that BW instigated a Section 8 procedure to "get her attention" says a lot about how she deals with officialdom. When she says that BW didn't go through all the preliminary Section 8 procedures, she probably means that she ignored their communications. Thats just my take on the situation and I may well be wrong. haggis

Thay may be the case with self pump out kits but with "other" pump outs, whether operatd by a boatyard or by the boater himself, there is a seal between the pump out hose and the boat (else the pump out wouldn't work, I reckon) and the other end is a long hose which disappears into the yard tank or a drain. At no time are the loo contentrs exposed to the air therefore there is virtually no smell during the pump out. haggis

I have 2 gold memberships in my name :-) One for a trip boat in Scotland beacuse not all the drivers are able to cope with an engine problem if something goes wrong, and one for a shared boat (in England) for much the same reason. Having RCR membership gives peace of mind and although we have hardly used them it is good to know that they are there.

Dean, if your plan succeeds (I see no resaon why it shouldn't) you will not have to go to a water point so frequently but will you not still need to move to get access to an elsan? Unless you install a pump out loo, of course :-) haggis

Well done, Dean. I don't think many would have the stomach to do what you did. haggis

And mine, when I saw it ! the one you saw was one that escaped my proof reading. There were others :-)

Typing and proof reading never was my strong point :-) . I think my "I" and "U" keys are ganging up on me! haggis

When faced with the choice of seing stuff from the loo through a little inspection window or seeing it in the flesh as it emerges from a cassette, I know what I prefer :-) . With the pump out, I have a choice of whether to look or not but with a cassette, you really have to watch all the time to make sure that everything goes where it should and nothing gets spilled. I haven't yet mastered the art of emptying a cassette with my eyes closed. :-) haggis

I don't make a point of looking but when the pump out is being done, I will be standing beside the boat and the hose and inspection window will be lying on the ground not too far away and I may glance at it from time to time. Also, we need to know when the pump out is nearly done so that water can be put down the loo - (from pails or a hose) to rinse it before pumping it all out again. Dean, there is a wonderful world out there full of amazing things and when you took the decision to have a casette loo, look what you missed :-) haggis

The normal movement of a canal boat must be enough to break up solid waste or else it wouldn't be able to go through the pump out pipe. The diameter of the pump out hose is quite small and if you ever look at the little inspection window in the hose while the pump out is in action you will see that it is slurry which goes sailing past. If the lumps didn't break up you would end up with a tank full of lumps and that just doesn't happen. We don't usually use any "agent" in our loo tank so the only thing breaking up the lumps is moevement. Neither the pimp out loo nor the cassette loo smell :-) haggis

You can moor at Speirs Wharf on the Glasgow branch of the Forth and Clyde canal. I would say 2 days cruising From falkirk to Glasgow but you are dependant on Scottish Canals working locks for you. There is a boating event being planned for the Commonwealth games with the boats leaving the canal system at Bowling, turning left and going up the Clyde. There is a weir in Glasgow which is only open for a short time at very high tides and it is hoped that the flotilla will be able to go over the weir and further up the Clyde. haggis