Peter X

Kate17, may I suggest you give a bit more information about what you're looking for please? So, you want to film for a few hours one afternoon, on a boat ideally in the west Midlands (lots of canals there!), but maybe a bit further afield. but when? How soon does it need to be, or do you want to leave it until better weather in the new year? There's a bunch of students, but do they all need to be on the boat and/or in the film? Are there any further requirements about the boat and its facilities, location etc., which may arise from the students or from the sort of film you hope to make? Will you need the boat to come with someone to steer it? And crew to operate locks or be extras? If so, will there be mandatory costumes? Or if not will your students be willing and able to assist as crew? Finally, if your requirements are particularly special and demanding, it might be hard to find the right boat at the right time and place with the right people available. People might even want paying! Do you have a budget for that? I think if you can tell us more, someone on here may well step forwards to help you. People on this forum are a pretty varied bunch, inclined to joke about a lot of things, but mostly helpful.

My guess is that CRT will find a way to get Denham Deep lock open by the spring, because fortunately they understand that keeping all their waterways open for navigation is an important objective. It can be an uphill task, but they do make an effort. Also, if the OP comes down via Oxford there's the need to have a gold licence or pay EA, then wait for the Thames to come off red boards. So I would advise the OP to plan to use the usual route from Rugby, down the GU then turn left at Bull's Bridge, and to try to find some suitable work on the way, maybe lining something up before setting off.

In theory I don't think cyclists are entitled to ignore the signs, because someone riding a bicycle is a vehicle. There is a famous legal precedent to say that once a cyclist has dismounted and is walking pushing their bike they are no longer a vehicle, namely Crank v Brooks (1980). In that case I think someone pushing a bike across a pedestrian crossing was run down by a car, the driver of which tried to argue that the person run over was a vehicle. This notion was sensibly rejected. I've never seen a sedan chair in actual use outside of TV and film, on a towpath or anywhere, but who knows whether it happens in the modern world, let alone what the law has to say about it? Anyone?

Are you going from P&S marine by water? If so, I assume you'll be waiting until the Denham Deep stoppage is over, then I suggest you talk a friend or relative (ideally someone with some boating experience) into being your crew, then allow two days; one to get down about 11 locks and some way into the Paddington Arm, and the second day to do the remainder of that plus whatever locks you need to reach your destination; only 4 locks to reach Battlebridge Basin, but including one of the pair at Hampstead Road (aka Camden Lock). Expect a crowd of gongoozlers there! You may also need to find someone with relevant knowledge to look after your animals en voyage. Try asking these two?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Shop_Boys Depending on when you go, if you need boating crew for an odd day (one of the two I mentioned) I might volunteer, just or the fun of it; I have some local knowledge of that route. Whoever is going to steer a 70' boat round the corner at Bull's Bridge needs to do it carefully of course. Also, where will your old boat need to go to, and when? By water? Do you intend to transfer your stuff (including animals) from the old to the new boat, and if so how and where? In Battlebridge Basin, or should the boats meet somewhere more suitable?

If it was indeed a late 1990s reference to the England men's football team not winning something, there are several possibilities: Maybe having failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. Or... Euro 1996 semi final v Germany (penalties!) World Cup 1998 last 16 v Argentina (penalties again) Euro 2000 group stage, losing to both Portugal and Romania Quite a catalogue of disappointment, often added to since.

I'll say something I often do when people come to the forum with this sort of dilemma. Which is to suggest the owner moves it themselves, with a little expert help at first so they get the hang of it. Partly because it'll generally work out cheaper than road haulage or paying a boat mover, partly because you'll get to know your boat in the process, but mainly because it's much more fun. I'm biased, I like going boating! In fact I've often gone along on such trips with people, and nearly always enjoyed it. Some factors I think you should consider: How soon does your mum need the boat (a) removed from where it is now (Hilperton), and (b) arriving where it's going (Evesham)? This may depend on personal circumstances; commitments coming up, and does she plan to live on it or just use it for weekends and holidays? Does she, or any friend or relative who could go along as crew, have previous boating experience? Preferably on rivers or canals, but people who've done lumpy water sailing usually adapt quite well to being inland. Is she confident that the boat, especially the engine, is in reasonable condition to set off on a long trip? If not, get it checked over by a professional. On the whole, if there's a rush, bear in mind that the cold wet weather of winter is not the nicest time to be out doing a long boat trip; this one's 2-3 weeks and includes the Thames from Reading to Oxford, currently on red boards after a very wet autumn. You'll need your engine working properly to make progress up river against the sort of current you'd meet this December. So maybe it'd be wise to follow this scheme?: First, find an experienced boater to accompany you the first day or two when you set off, and teach you the basics of steering and operating locks. Then potter eastwards along the K&A over the next few weeks. Make sure you have two people ashore to do it when you reach bridge 44, it's very stiff and hard to open/close! Arrange to moor up somewhere over Christmas, maybe before Reading. Perhaps in a marina, or on the towpath near a town. Taking it easy for much of the winter may seem attractive. Then in say March, head out through Reading and up the Thames. There are some tricky bits, it helps to have someone aboard who's done that before. If I'm available at the time, I might volunteer. The Thames is beautiful and always a pleasure when it's not in flood. You should end up going up the South Oxford in nice weather in April, then enjoying the remainder of the journey during the summer. It depends if you're happy taking your time.

In Battlebridge Basin there will be little or no flow of water to push those boats sideways, so I guess they'll hardly move, particularly if many of them are moored with those pipe fenders down at the sides. Even if people aboard move about from side to side of their boat a bit, or some wash from a passing boat comes into the basin, I think it would just produce very gentle bumping.

So does it "generally require at least two people" to open a lock? The answer has to be "it depends". At most locks two is plenty; one to get off the boat, raise/lower paddles as necessary and open the gates, while the other stays on the boat and steers it into the lock. But lots of boaters move around the system single handed doing everything themselves, or if there are two crew ashore doing the locks it's often a bonus in terms of getting ahead. Do journalists generally use generalisations? Yes! Where it's really important to have two people ashore is when you're going through bridge 44 on the K&A, the very stiff swing bridge just west of Monkey Marsh lock, a few miles east of Newbury. Come on Bloomberg, start a campaign to get CRT to fix that! There could be a Pulitzer prize in it...

This puzzles me, as if you're on the Grand Union, to get to Staines by water you need to get down to Brentford, up the tidal river to Teddington, then some miles and locks up river from there. There are plenty of places near the GU for you to shop in west London, but perhaps you mean you're currently living somewhere on land near Staines? But your boat on the GU (e.g. its Slough Arm) might not be very far from Staines as the crow flies. Or as the green ring necked parakeet flies. Those are common in SW London and Surrey and I've observed they tend to fly in straight lines too! As others have suggested, in the circumstances you should probably consider getting a CRT Gold licence. As I remember it he EA do indeed like each boat on the Thames to have a unique name, but I expect they'll work something out. You could perhaps opt to change your boat name first when you get the licence? By the way, technically the EA don't use the term "licence", but any leisure boat without a CRT Gold licence going onto the non tidal river must "register" (various periods of time are possible) and pay them for the privilege. Different complicated rules apply to commercial boats, let's not go off topic into that!

There's another unimpeachable source, "the man on the Clapham omnibus". But I've often been on a Clapham omnibus over the years and nobody ever asked me for an opinion. So I think that expression means someone made the answer up too.

So did they mean "rat not fish"? Or "This fat Ron"? Maybe Ron ate all the bacon?

Jennifer, starting at Staines you may be unwise to move yet, as the Thames has been on red boards for a while during this exceptionally wet autumn. However I see today on the EA site that some parts between Windsor and Teddington are now down to yellow, so there's hope for you. Do keep an eye on that, but if you're setting off in the spring there's a good chance it'll be safer by then. A big part of dealing with the flood risk on rivers is to make sure the upstream end of your boat is properly tied; each time you moor up on a river, attend to that first or your boat may get swung around by the current catching that upstream end. Also, have some slack in your mooring lines in case the water level rises or falls.

A few years ago, while I was helping to move a boat from March (the town not the month) to west London, we moored one night between locks 13 and 12 of the arm, in what I think was the spot mentioned in post #5 by nbfiresprite. We didn't need shopping, we'd got enough supplies on our way up the Nene. It did have a bit of noise from the adjacent main road and the M1 beyond it, but was otherwise OK. Or as said, if you want to get down from the GU to Northampton marina in one go, 4-5 hours should be enough to do the 17 locks and few miles involved. As the first 12 locks are close together, going down them remember to begin to fill each of locks 2-12 before you empty the lock above, especially if someone's gone down ahead of you.

If you have a friend in the UK, in an area you'll be in regularly, who doesn't mind pretending you live in their house/flat/whatever too, that may be a practical solution. But they'll have to consider council tax, the landlord if they're renting, insurance and maybe other reasons why officially having a lodger could be a problem for them.

On the whole, a wide beam boat can go right up the GU to its end at Camp Hill top lock, which is a few miles from the centre of Birmingham. That's not in a great area, I'd say Staines is massively nicer! All the GU locks were designed or later modified to take a pair of narrow boats, hence they're 14 feet wide, but the maximum width boat that can get up there is limited by certain pinch points. I recall some previous discussion mentioning a bridge at "Blue Lias" which is about 12 foot something? Also, remember that the two long tunnels Blisworth and Braunston were also designed with narrow boats in mind, so they have two way traffic and boats routinely pass inside. Therefore before you take any boat wider than 7 feet through those you must pre-book your passage with CRT; it's usually timed for about 8 in the morning or thereabouts.

Those replies all sound about right to me. Looking at the physics of it, your boat will be about 18x3 metres, so if it would sit half a metre (about 1'8") into the water, it would displace 27 cubic metres of water i.e. 27 tonnes. So my guess would be maybe in the range 20-25 tonnes when empty, and 25-30 tonnes when fitted out depending on the boat's design and what you put in it. I suggest you make a list of the weight of the steel and everything else, maybe in a spreadsheet, and add it up.

In my experience the air in long tunnels does sometimes become rather unpleasant to breathe, but it seems to me that common sense largely tells us the answers. Fires do indeed consume oxygen and produce some CO, both being undesirable things in tunnels, however having got your fire lit in cold weather you don't want to be putting it out. So Alan Fincher's suggestion that it's best not to build the fire up before entering a long tunnel or while passing through it seems good to me, and I see no harm in leaving a fire burning slowly then adding more fuel when leaving the tunnel. Of course the steam boats need to burn coal to get a boiler full of hot water for propulsion, so they'll have to judge how much fuel they should add and when, with a view to limiting the amount of smoke they make in a tunnel as best they can while still being able to get through. Maybe to some extent I suppose they might try to have plenty of steam available as they enter, thus not needing to burn coal so rapidly as they go through? I've never crewed on a steam boat, so I'm not sure whether that works for them? Likewise the great majority of boats use diesel engines and have to run them producing all the usual emissions to get through a tunnel, so all that can be done is to just try to potter along at an efficient speed and hope not to choke the steerer and/or people on any following boat too much. I generally try to avoid using a gas hob much while in a tunnel, planning ahead so that cookery and boiling water for tea making happen elsewhere.

Some people, myself included, are deeply unfussy about interior design; I have form with both of the above. As a student in the 1970s looking to rent a room, I viewed one which had not just orange painted walls, but the ceiling too. And the carpet and soft furnishings were all orange. The location was good, in fact I only turned it down because the room was too small and hence poor value for money, not enough space for my stuff. In 1985 I bought a house with avocado bathroom fittings because it was a decent sized house for the money in the right location; my fiancee at the time didn't mind that colour nor did I, and when we separated 10 years later it was still there. Last year she'd died and the house was sold; I don't know whether the new owner still has an avocado bathroom. Whether the mystery boat of this topic has a dodgy interior decor is maybe of interest, but somewhat off topic of course. Other unanswered questions, such as what the boat was or is now called, who it really belongs to, how to recognise it and which police force/station a sighting should be reported to, are more important. Also, are the Northwich Guardian going to pick up this story?

On the Regent's canal in London on Saturday, I too saw a few boats on the move despite the cold weather. Didn't Bob Geldof write a song about this? I can see no season 'cos there are no seasons, what season do you need?

Having spent the last phase of my IT career up to my retirement in 2016 earning a living out of Microsoft Access databases and related programming, I can assert that none of them were kept on post-it notes. A computer was the essential storage medium. I trust that Pete Harrison will preserve his database for posterity, I'm sure he'll be aware that the technology still exists to do so. Three years ago I gave up work so as to have more time to go boating, a decision I've never regretted.

There are certain topics on canalworld which leave me wondering what really happened and how things panned out. All too often the OP doesn't return to the forum to satisfy our curiosity/nosiness. Having only just now seen and read this topic, perhaps it will be helpful if I try to summarise the outstanding questions: Is the OP the genuine owner of the boat, and if anyone sees it what police force/station should they contact? As she gave us "crime number 691256" perhaps she should get some benefit of the doubt, but more relevant information would help. "Please send picture of boat" comes to mind. Is the OP the same Halina Kitchen of Northwich Guardian fame, after all it seems a somewhat unusual name, and if so... has she reformed her behaviour since 2011 and put her dodgy past behind her, is she still an item with the infamous Mr Daniel Jones 8 years later, and might he be a suspect in the boat's disappearance? Are the police looking for him too? Has she given the story of the boat to the Northwich Guardian? Perhaps they should do a follow up article, with a link to this topic?

I'm sorry for sending this topic off on a tangent, although my suggestion was technically on topic and has led to a rather interesting discussion. Anyway, if the OP does take up the idea, do please let us know what response you get from the admiral.

Thanks Dharl, my information was out of date, based on what my father told me when he was a junior MoD civil servant working in Admiralty Arch in the 1960s. He'd had a peek inside the first Sea Lord's office and was well impressed by it. Hopefully the government is making lots of money out of that hotel, it being a building steeped in history in such a prime location!

PS: To sum up the south better, I thought I'd see how the Medway is doing; that's on red too: http://allingtonlock.co.uk/ But the Kennet appears to be not too bad?: https://riverlevels.uk/flood-warning-river-kennet-from-thatcham-down-to-reading#.Xc6wbsD7TmY

I'm not (yet) aware that anyone's house is flooded in the south, however it's rained more than usual down here, the Thames is on red boards, and the NT posted this today to say that the whole of the Wey is in flood too: https://riverweyconditionsnt.wordpress.com/2019/11/15/15-11-2019-river-in-flood-dangerous-conditions/ But it's all in Surrey, so according to Jeremy Corbyn the government will sort out any problems in a jiffy.