Tony Dunkley

When I said '30 years earlier', I meant the 1960's, . . . 30 years earlier than the 1990's photo. The ex-Wisbech timber for Leicester was loaded into narrowboats just lowside of the town bridge, either overside if the ship was still there, or from the wharf if it had finished unloading and gone. Because of the distance, . . . . virtually the whole length of the Nene, then Northampton Arm, the Junction to the top of Buckby, and then the Leicester Cut, the ex-Wisbech timber for Leicester didn't pay as well as the ex-Boston timber for the same Leicester importer, which was a quicker run with boats despite being roughly the same distance from either port by road. The ex-Brentford grain traffic to Wellingborough finished in 1969. I've no idea what other traffics continued into the 1980's, . . . the last time I was on the Nene was sometime in the very early 1970's when we went for a jaunt downriver for old times sake after doing the public boat trips with a pair of narrowboats at some IWA boat rally in Becket's Park in Northampton.

When you buy a boat Licence, or a Pleasure Boat Certificate, you are paying for the right to moor to the towpath, or navigation authority owned bank, as an adjunct to using the boat. The Licence T&C's that C&RT are so keen on imposing on everyone do state [at 3.2] that ~ "The Licence does not allow you to moor the Boat in any Waterway whilst cruising away from your Home Mooring except for short periods of up to 14 days . . . . . . " In specifying what the Licence does NOT entitle the holder to do [ie. moor for longer than a 'short period'], it follows that it also specifies, by implication, that which it DOES entitle the holder to do.

It does look like Kings Lock to me, . . . . but it looked a lot better some 30 odd years earlier, with pairs of boats loaded with either imported timber ex. Wisbech for Leicester, or foundry sand from Leighton Buzzard for Stanton Ironworks at Ilkeston.

Sounds as if you've got/had a Coventry KF4, which is a 4-cylinder 2-stroke diesel, much used by the Admiralty in small craft in the 50's. There aren't many of them about these days, but there is one in a boat which moors a few yards away from me, and funnily enough the owner of it asked me if I knew any source of parts for it just the other day. Have you still got yours ?

The law is clear and unambiguous with regard to both statutory and Byelaw powers for dealing with offenders, and you're correct in your 'might is right' reference, . . . that, and the Court's presumption of probity on their part, is all that C&RT have to back their actions, . . . the law most certainly does not.

That's probably true, but will only be shown to be so if and when C&RT do ever actually deal with an offending boater via an appropriate and correct legal process. To the best of my knowledge, they never have done as yet.

I like the Soar, and the Leicester Cut [from Kings Lock to the top of Buckby], and I first got to know and enjoy them both as a very young boy in the company of his Dad, either hitching a ride with him on the British Waterways carrying boats [by then, Nottingham Pans and Bantams] that ran between Nottingham and Leicester [Memory Lane Wharf/Depot] or exploring the cut, by car or on foot, from Aylestone to where it joined the main line of the [Grand] Junction, now usually referred to as the Grand Union. My first job after leaving school was with a Leicester based carrying company, Seymour-Roseblade, that ran both narrowboats based at Leicester, and broadbeam boats operating on the Manchester Ship Canal, Bridgewater, Weaver and Leeds & Liverpool. There was quite a considerable traffic in imported timber to Leicester with the narrowboats, either ex. Boston and coming up the Soar, or from Wisbech, on the Nene, via the Leicester Cut. This all too brief revival of commercial traffic from both directions to Leicester coincided with a great improvement in the condition and maintenance standards on the Leicester Section, due mainly to the conscientiousness and efforts of the then Section Inspector, Matt Mortimer, based at Kilby Bridge Yard and responsible for the length from North Lock, Leicester to the top of Buckby [Norton Junction, as it is now known]. There was an extensive, year on year, program of lock gate repair/replacement throughout the 1960's, and a good annual tonnage of dredging, starting with all the worst spots first and including the 20-mile, and from being a distinctly neglected and run down waterway, due in no small part to the minimal maintenance it had during World War II, the Leicester Cut was returned to being a viable waterway able to accommodate loads of comparable tonnage to that which was customary on pairs of narrowboats operating on the other Southern Region waterways at that time. It saddens me greatly to see the neglected and run-down mess it has now reverted to under, first, the stewardship of the shambles that BWB became in it's latter years, and now in the even more incompetent and unsafe hands of the sick joke apology for a navigation authority that is C&RT.

A worthwhile alternative to publishing an endless stream of neglect and dereliction updates would be to to maintain water levels 'on weir' and keep on top of maintenance and repairs, but I do realize that such measures are almost certainly well beyond C&RT's severely limited abilities.

Thank you for all that, . . . . I haven't laughed so much in quite a while. I hope you enjoy your couple of months boating and that your boat doesn't start leaking again around all the doublers you had to have welded on a while ago. Of course, if it does, then C&RT may have to cancel your Licence on safety grounds, as they recently did with 'Tadworth'.

It's about as helpful as any inventory of neglect can be :~ There's a [land]slip in a cutting part blocking the cut near Foxton, and it's been like that for over 2 years. There's a fallen tree part blocking the cut between Cranes Lock and Newton Harcourt Top Lock, which has been there since the end of March. The cut's half empty of water between Kilby Bridge and Leicester, and has been like that since August last year. They haven't bothered to do the regular dredging that has always been necessary below Limekiln Lock and the cut's full-up with the silt that comes in from the storm drain there. There's a sunken wreck in the middle of the river near Barrow. The bogs at Bishops Meadow [Loughborough] are out of use because the cesspit's full. What a wonderful example of how NOT to maintain a waterway.

* In your post #77 you have quoted me as saying the following :~ Tony Dunkley, on 29 Jun 2016 - 06:22 AM, said: The crucial bit is that most of us have a peaceful time and a good life mucking about on the water. Did you really mean what you've said in the last sentence of your post ? If so, I think your attitude stinks. _________________________________________________ In the interests of accuracy and fact, it must be noted that the first sentence [in underlined bold above] was what YOU said in your post #60 of yesterday, and the second sentence, quoted above, is what I said in response to it. If you are compelled to make statements such as this, and in the context in which it was made, then you should at the very least have the decency to stand by what you've said, rather than creating the impression that you are quoting someone else's views and sentiments.

No, of course not, but I do object to a philosophy that seems to be that the most

Just out of curiosity, . . have you asked Canal & River Trust for this info? . . . I would love to hear them struggling to come up with a useful answer to something which is almost certainly a complete mystery to them. The Leicester Cut finishes a couple of hundred yards below Kings Lock at Aylestone [which is on the outskirts of Leicester] and from there on you're in the river Soar except for three lock cuts [ Suttons cut from Thurmaston to Junction Lock, Barrow cut and Zouch cut] and the 3 mile stretch of canal though Loughborough. The Soar joins the Trent at Red Hill, on the southern outskirts of Long Eaton, and from there it's a bit over 2 miles, via Sawley Lock and Sawley cut, upriver to Derwent Mouth where the Trent and Mersey meets the Trent [and the Derwent]. There are plenty of places to tie-up along the whole length from Leicester.

You're wandering off into irrelevancy and confusion. The question in hand is C&RT's flawed and absurd contention that a [home] mooring which happens to be at some considerable distance away from wherever a boat is in use, is a 'ghost' mooring, doesn't exist, doesn't permit daily use of the licensed/registered boat in the same small/limited area, and doesn't exempt the boat from having to comply with S.17(3)[c](ii) of the '95 Act.

It's certainly true that C&RT strive to conceal or misrepresent as many 'facts' as they possibly can, but surely, this in itself speaks volumes as to the rights and wrongs with regard to their actions and conduct. Did you really mean what you've said in the last sentence of your post ? If so, I think your attitude stinks.

I'm not sure if there is in fact any direct connection with C&RT's headquarters being located where it is, but it would seem that there is a process for large scale bread production which may well have been adapted as a basis for administering our inland waterways :~ [PDF]The Milton Keynes Process - British Society of Baking It's a rather ponderous and uninteresting document to get through, but essentially, it's a thesis on the mass production and output of half-baked material.

That is undoubtedly what C&RT would wheel out as an argument to support their hanging the silly 'ghost' label on such a mooring, but the argument simply doesn't stand up to logical scrutiny, because it fails to take into account that a boat only has to be 'kept' or left on a mooring when it is not in use. A 12-month boat Licence, or a PBC, entitles the holder to use the vessel on any or all of the 365 days it is valid for. A vessel in daily use, for any legitimate purpose, on every one of those 365 days, would never have need to return to the mooring because the need to have anywhere to leave and 'keep' it would not arise during the period of Licence/PBC validity. As the vessel never needs to return to it's mooring, the distant location is of no consequence, or importance, whatsoever.

That's a very common stance from those who know they're on the losing end of an argument, but no matter how much you may try to distort or misrepresent the wording of S.17(3), being 'satisfied' that a usable mooring exists somewhere on or around the UK mainland, and will be 'available' to use when the boat is not in use, is NOT the same as making a decision as to whether it is 'satisfactory' or 'unsatisfactory'.

Yes, I agree, . . . . you should definitely read it more carefully.

So what if they do ? There's nothing in either statute or Byelaw that requires moorings to be 'satisfactory'.

That is something nether realistic, nor even remotely achievable until the national disaster that is C&RT becomes part of the 'history' they pretend to be so concerned about. Being left in peace to enjoy what you've paid for should not be a matter of hoping for the good fortune and luck.* *This post has been 'Moderated' to remove "abusive content". For the information of anyone wondering what 'abusive content' needed 'moderating' out, it was simply a reference to the fact that some people who work in Milton Keynes suffer from an anatomical abnormality that causes the small bony protrusions on the backs of their hands to come into frequent contact with the ground. The original, uncensored post is quoted in it's full abusive horror in post #56.

There shouldn't be any 'problems' whatsoever on any occasion when a boat returns to the same spot, or place, irrespective of whether or not it has returned to it's [home] mooring in the intervening time. There is absolutely nothing in either statute or Byelaw that entitles C&RT to demand that a [home] mooring is used at all, let alone returned to regularly, and neither is there any sort of 'clock' that needs 're-setting', other than in the warped and feeble minds of a few ill-intentioned twerps at C&RT. You really should not lose sight of the fact that in buying a boat Licence you have bought and paid for the right to use the waterways under C&RT's control in much the same way as Taxing a motor vehicle entitles you to the use of public roads. Taking your Highway Code analogy a little further, . . . would you find it acceptable to have DVLA or the Highways Agency dictating where, when, and how frequently you were allowed to use your car ?

As this is a return/recurrence of the same fault you had last year, and it now can't be the injectors, it is almost certainly a sticking valve, or valves. You will probably be able to a temporary 'fix' yourself, but the reason for the sticking valve(s) will need attention, . . . . otherwise it will just keep happening repeatedly. I've sent you a PM with my phone number. If you're at Foxton, then I would be able to get out to you tomorrow.

. . . . . and do they 'manufacture' and impose something that has the appearance of licence evasion when dishonestly paraded before a Judge as such ?

It looks to me like an earlyish Dennis Clarke effort, or possibly his younger brother Colin, . . both were nephews to, and taught by, Frank Nurser.