Peter X

You mean people rehearse for it? Last year when I crewed for p6rob we only met for the first time on the Friday evening. Went for a curry, quick tour of the boat, short move along to our starting position, a night's kip and up and away. Fortunately the skipper had a decent plan and I'm pretty good at making myself useful. I'm not taking part this year, the NBT had to back out, but I'm hoping to be back with them or someone else for 2020. Feeling a bit jealous of those taking part as the weather forecast seems OK, hope you all enjoy it.

What are you lot like? Not elder, the tree; I have ground elder in my garden, a very pesky weed that spreads rapidly by a network of roots. This stuff: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=215 Unfortunately my neighbour on one side has no interest in gardening and it invades under the fence. Along with stinging nettles, bindweed etc.

I see no particular reason not to use a ladder in the Northgate staircase locks, other than their depth. As whenever using a lock ladder, just take it steady and be sure to hold on. I climbed down the ladder in the top lock last month, in order to walk along the top plank then be a human bow thruster so we could squeeze past the bottom gates; Nuneaton and Brighton are a very tight fit in that lock.

I live in Surrey but when I dig my garden I don't find oil. I have removed a lot of ground elder roots this week though. The BBC article seems to me to be about Trump's ongoing trade war with China and especially the US imposing restrictions on Huawei, due to suspicions about espionage. I don't think he's stopping US citizens from using the Internet to reach foreign websites, just limiting Huawei's access to US IT networks and technology.

As far as I can remember, I did watch the landing live, but not Neil Armstrong stepping down onto the surface. As the latter happened in the middle of the night in UK time, most of us on here probably did the same.

Oops, my earlier post got it badly wrong. In the opening frames the boat is facing uphill, so I think the man should be lowering the paddle because he's just realized that if he goes on filling the lock his centre line tied to the bollard will make the boat heel over. That'd get the teenagers off the roof.

It appears to have very little tumblehome, but at least there's a nice rail for the crew to hang onto. There's at least one trip boat in London that has a lot of open windows like that; they have transparent plastic covers which they roll down when it rains. Practical, because a lot of passengers can get a good view and you could get them out quickly in an emergency, but maybe not very pretty.

Did March to lock 13 of the Northampton arm (i.e. slightly longer at each end) in four nine hour days two years ago, so yes Peterborough to Northampton needs four normal days and two days would require moving after dark even in June.

Me neither! Looks to me as if the boat's part way down but he's winding the paddle down, even though the boat's in the middle of the lock, not cilled. However it's possibly the right decision in the circumstances, until he's got the two teenagers in off the roof, that's not a very safe place for them to be. Perhaps one of them ought to be on the opposite side of the lock with a windlass anyway. Also, tying the centre line to a bollard instead of having someone at the stern is not good, in a deeper lock that could be dangerous. By the end of the ad he's got the paddle up again but he says nothing's happening. Maybe by then the lock's almost empty and he makes the common mistake of wondering why the gates won't open because he can't see much water moving; at least that's fairly plausible.

It all depends how much of a hurry you're in... Yes, if you do it in a sort of average way, ie two people in an average modern narrow boat doing about 7 hours per day, then it'll be around 17 days, the route via the north end of the GU and Brum being probably a little faster than via the T&M; more locks but less miles. But there are some variables here... If you're single handed, or you and your crew don't like the sound of doing lots of locks, better to go via the T&M. Brum is more urban; I like it because the industrial history you see is interesting, and you will probably meet less traffic. If you have limited time to do the journey, make sure you have crew to help you, two of them if possible subject to space aboard, and get up for a dawn start every day. At this time of year there's a lot of daylight, you'll get a long way and that 17 days will be reduced to maybe 12 days or less; just don't expect to do anything much except boating then! There are unlikely to be stoppages at this time of year, most of the big maintenance work gets scheduled for November to March. If something does happen it's more likely to be a boat sunk in a lock, or a tree down or some such thing, and CRT normally clear those within a day or three. You'd have to be very unlucky to get held up by something major such as an embankment breach.

The Beatles lyrics only said that they lived on a yellow submarine, but implied nothing about other people's colour schemes. Also, this wouldn't be them because they were beneath the waves of a "sea of green", not the Grand Union.

Or maybe I could help with that? Apart from the weekend 22-23 June I have no commitments between now and about 20th July, and I'd like to get my teeth into a good long boat move.

Has that sticker denied us the opportunity to see a pictogram of a cyclist's head hitting a bridge arch? Come on you forum artists, do your best! I would like to see a Ronnie Tucker watercolour of that.

My daughter, who spent four years living in Sasketchawan and did some driving out in the wilds between the cities, told me that moose are a problem out there, posing the same danger as Mike Tee's camels, i.e. coming in through the windscreen. Similar sized animal I suppose. She came across one once, while driving her 4x4 (standard vehicle for the area), cautiously being on a remote mountain road with five children in the car, and followed the correct but slow procedure; stop and wait for it to walk off. There are bears too but she never came across one of those. She's now returned from Canada and does not have a car; London has other very different but greater problems for drivers.

I can confirm that too. Our struggle to get Nuneaton down through Napton no. 9 lock in August drew a small crowd, mostly consisting of other boaters waiting their turn to use the lock so definitely interested. They were friendly and helpful, pulling on ropes as directed, and there was some excitement as the boat made its escape.