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Grassman

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    Continuous cruiser
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    Retired

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  1. For me, Birmingham is better by a long chalk. No matter what time you arrive you're pretty certain of finding somewhere to over-night. Not so with Manchester especially since they've turned some of the VM's into permanent moorings. Birmingham seems to encourage visiting boaters where as Manchester doesn't.
  2. That's the problem. It's like when the first time we booked a 3 days mooring in Little Venice, I was moaning about it to friends and family, and they pointed out that where else can you stay in the middle of London for £10 a night.
  3. When we did the Mersey into Liverpool in 2021 and booked the locking off the river at Brunswick Lock into Liverpool Marina, they asked if we wanted to stay there for a few nights at £60 a night! Having already pre-booked a week at Salthouse we obviously declined the offer.
  4. All have been based around our canals and rivers and the details of the locations have been spot on. If it's as good as his previous novels it'll be a good read.
  5. Some, and probably most, don't start until Easter. But in my winter cruising area I've often seen them at Penkridge and Atherstone. Never at Fradley though. They seem to be a strictly Easter to October operation, except for the last few weeks but that's only because they've been helping the dredging boats through the locks between Woodend and Hunts Lock.
  6. It's a great experience and you'll love it I'm sure. Just make sure you have a good supply of tea and biscuits for Stuart 🙂
  7. I've been told from a very informed source that the once the HS2 trains join the existing WCML at Handsacre they will be slower than the existing trains for the rest of the journey north because they won't have the tilt mechanism, so any time gained coming from London will be lost once it joins the WCML. Also the HS2 carriages will be shorter so the capacity might be less as well. The same person told me that there's already a bottleneck on the WCML caused by Handsacre Tunnel where the existing WCML has to reduce from 4 lines to 2 lines, so the addition of HS2 trains will make it even worse and probably slow the journey down even more.
  8. It's main reason I approached CRT 6 years ago about starting a joint IWA/CRT offside vegetation cutting venture in our area and why I've been part of the volunteering team since I started it 🙂. I had booked a full back to metal re-paint job on my boat for 2 years ahead and wanted it sorted before I splashed out all that money! Suffice to say that 4 years since the re-paint (by CTS, Cannock), and a brush job not spray paint job, it's still looking great. I've incurred the occasional scratch from protruding vegetation but because of the quality of the paint job and depth of paint, I've been able to polish them out quite easily.
  9. It's probably a combination of the above possible explanations, but I think the change in our climate has a lot to do with it. Heavier downpours of rain saturating the ground before it has chance to drain/seep away is bound to put more pressure on the stability of embankments. Also not just heavier downpours but we seem to be having more prolonged spells of rain meaning that in places the ground is already saturated and struggles to cope with any more.
  10. Similar to mine. I stood with Sir Alf Ramsey in the gents urinal. That ought to count as it was in a pub, and we were both getting rid of our pints after consuming them 🙂.
  11. I think it's getting increasingly difficult to get volunteers. Obviously this depends to a degree upon what type of volunteering it is, but generally they tend to be retired or semi-retired people, and as each generation of retirees evolve, more of them seem to have other interests to pursue so don't have the time or inclination to volunteer. Add to this is the fact that many are having to stay in work for longer due to the changes in the retirement age and/or due to economic necessity and this exacerbates the problem further.
  12. I forgot to point out that CRT also have things like NI contributions, holiday pay, sick pay, pension costs etc, to add to the basic salary meaning that the savings with using volunteers are obviously more than those I mentioned.
  13. Nobody has mentioned CRT's contracting out some of the work which must figure in the equation somewhere. I wonder how the cost of that compares with using their own staff and/or volunteers? For our (IWA) offside vegetation cutting I have 2 teams of 6 volunteers and each team does about 6 hours a day. I think the UK minimum wage for paid staff is £10 an hour, so using volunteers is saving them at least £360 per each days work. Some (not all) of us are trained to use a pole chain saw and wood chipper which cost CRT about £150 for each course but the certificate lasts for 5 years. All other training such as helming, is done 'in house'. Other costs are medicals (about £100 a year per volunteer), a mileage allowance (£0.43ppm) which less than 50% actually claim. Then there's things like the provision of PPE etc, but they'd have those costs using their own staff anyway. I think the value of volunteers is subjective, in that it comes down to how important what they do is deemed to be. Things like litter picking, painting, other 'cosmetic' jobs, and lock volunteering. The navigations could manage without them but would be a worse place if these jobs weren't done. Each has its value and merits but are they as important as something like vegetation cutting which has a direct benefit to navigation? Opinions on this will no doubt differ. Then there's the perceived benefits of volunteers being the public face of CRT. When doing the offside veg cutting we get a lot of nice compliments from the public as well as boaters, and like them or loathe them the lock keepers engagement with the general public is good for CRT, especially given the fact that they are trying to get the public's support at the moment. Whether it's a good thing or not, CRT are currently looking to deploy volunteers more and more for vital maintenance work such as dredging for example. Starting shortly they will be doing some dredging in our area, and we will be assisting with shuffling the hopper boats, taking away a full ones and feeding the dredger with empty ones. Is this a good thing or should they stick to contractors or their own staff for this type of work?
  14. No, that was my choice as I like to watch them again and again so I can take it all in 🙂
  15. Thanks Simon. I've watched all your blogs, some several times, and those blogs of you others too, and I still haven't been put off doing it 😀.
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