Richard T

Nice to meet everybody last night. Has anyone done a tally to see how many of us we were? It was great to see so many boats in the basin. How many boats were there? I counted at 10am this morning 6 in the basin, 7 on the Leicester section, how many by the Albion? Chaos this morning - fancy a load of boaters upsetting a fishing match!! They do seem to use the pegs through Loughbrorough a lot at this time of year maybe because water levels are fairly constant and parking is easy. Everytime I've been down to work on Dasque this year there has been a match, even when they had to break the ice to get clear water. Seriously we do have to live with the fishermen and next time (assuming we have another gathering) I'll let their secretary know so that they can avoid using the affected pegs. For their part I expect them to put signs up in future advising that there will be a match and asking boaters to moor elsewhere. There is an unofficial winding hole south of the town at the Peter le Marchant base - there are tyres on the off side wall to put your bow on.

When we worked through Stonebridge last summer a family with 8 children were watching - it wasn't long before father and the older kids were twirling windlasses and saved my muscles. The sanitary station was not brilliant and the rats around the rubbish point were nearly as big as cats. One had got stuck in a bin - it got a headache with a well aimed bottle. The landscaping in the area looks good but I suspect that it provides good cover for the rats. WJM was also on the Lee.

Being lazy and not wanting to read through the whole thread has any one spoken to the landlord of the Swan? They have a private room upstairs which is used for a folk club etc. It would be ideal for the evening and would stop the rest of the drinkers getting bored with canal talk. The landlord may open up this room for given the amount of ale we may drink during the evening. What time are we gathering?

The engine room and engine on our boat has got a build of greasy dirt around the bilges and on the swim. Whilst it is relatively easy to clean the swim and bilges using elbow grease and a degreaser, the engine and gearbox are much more difficult. Has anyone got ideas on the best way of doing this? I'm quite happy to hire the right gear for a day or two and have access to safe disposal for oily water. Is it safe to use a hot water pressure washer? or will the water get where it shouldn't and cause problems?

if you go further down the link that Alan has inserted you will see pictures of our BMC 1.8 in which the oil coolers for the engine and gerabox can clearly be seen. It is a Thorneycroft marinisation. You can also see where the take off for the calorifier is. Whilst doing all this work it is worth while putting in a remote oil filter - it makes oil chamging a lot easier and cleaner. The filter is not easy to get to being under the fuel filter and inverters and on top of the starter motor. We bought ours from Thorneycroft it didn't take long to install and has been well worth the money spent. If maintenance is easy it tends to get done!!

Don't forget Colin Ward on Moor Lane in Loughborough. Not easy to find so use Google. If asked nicely Colin will tell you the name of the beast you are about to eat!! We shop there for all our meat and the craic in the shop is worth the queue. Other good butchers are to be found in Penkridge, Alrewas, Berkhampstead.

See link for news on further funding for the Ashby.Ashby

Also try different styles of boat. Some like Middlewich or Union Canal Carriers have cruisers semi trads and trads for hire. You can usually look at other boats when starting or finishing your hire. Go and have a look at brokers like Whilton Marine or Harral you can get a feel for styles of boats that way.

Very sure - I could publish the next photo in the sequence which is of the delightful lock cottage. The paddle gear is stiff but workable. Just out of interest are you into long distance canoe racing? If so we passed you several times on the same cruise on the Lee and Stort. Ours is a non descript blue boat called Dasque which has now been repainted.

We used the working ones on the Hanwell flight last year. Couple of pictures for interest.

John Boddy at Boroughbridge for solid timber. Is there a James Latham branch in the area? as they do all the sheet materials including resin impregnated for locker tops etc.

Why not a band saw - easy to use and safe unlike some practices mentioned above with circular saws. You then clean up using a router, plane or if curved spokeshave or even -if you have access to one - a drum sander. But whatever you do don't use a table saw where there is any chance of the back of the blade catching on the timber other wise things can get very messy and the queues at A&E are not good places to spend time! Finally an oak floor will expand and contract and needs an expansion gap which can be filled with cork which is easily obtained from DIY shops.

Roger - very interesting photos of a bit of not often seen Leicester. My real wish for the Soar is for the citizens of said city and surrounding areas to stop using the river as a tip. IT makes the section below Belgrave look very attractive with thousands of plastic bags and bottles caught in the waterside vegitation!! It is most off putting and eventually the rubbish makes its way downstream until the Loughborough residents add to it and so on. I don't kow what the answer is unless the local IWA organise an annual clean up each spring to remove the worst of it. I would volunteer to help if organised and might even be able to provide a small dinghy.

Sorry I only heard a few minutes of the commentary I was on my way home from my local recycling centre or in common parlance 'tip'. Radio 5 might provide the answer if asked.

I have memories - maybe a bit vague - of Betelgeuse being used as a fully converted live aboard at Macclesfield Marina about 1994. I think the mechanic/engineer at the marina lived on her. Ed Mortimer or Steve Jackson (Camel) would have more information. At the time Steve had just bought Camel and taken her to Macclesfield prior to conversion. Ed was operating Auriga as a hire boat - we were her first hirers and did a lot of work on her for him. (See AM Models web site for a photo of Auriga in Macclesfield Marina livery.

Keep me in the loop as you've probably gathered Im Lufbra born and bred so spend a lot of time championing the delights of the river Sewer. Actually is not as dirty as it used to be so perhaps it can now be called by its proper name.

To take this thread a little further - how many other football league grounds is it possible to travel to by canal boat? ie within about a kilometre of the ditch or river! Easy ones for me are Nots County, and Forest where misbehaving visitor supporters get an early bath! Leicester City and switching codes the one and only Tigers. Stoke City, Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Walsall, Wolves, the Baggies. How many more are there?

Couldn't beleive my ears this afternoon - I was listening to the Radio 5 commentary on the Wigan Tottenham game when the commentator mentioned that the England manager was in the crowd and that he was then planning to to Old Trafford for the Man Utd Chelsea match. He went on to discuss what mode of transport he would use and finished by saying ' he could always go by boat, the Leeds and Liverpool canal passes this stadium (JJB) and the Bridgewater is outside Old Trafford'. What he didn't say was that it would take longer than the gap between these two fixtures. As a regular Radio 5 listener its the first time I've heard canals mentioned.

A bit further away at Penkridge but very good http://www.henryvenables.com/

We are based on the Soar and have yet to have any problems with vandalism. We have boated into Leicester moored on the pontoons at Castle Gardens and gone to concerts at the De Montfort Hall leaving the boat unattended. It is a fallacy to say that you have to do Thurmaston or Birstall to Kilby Bridge in a day to be safe. There are reasonable if remote moorings in the Aylestone area where we have moored overnight eg above Kings Lock. Birstall is a very civilised place with easy shopping and excellent moorings. It would be nice if access to the Space Centre and Abbey Lane pumping station was made easier from above Belgrave lock. If the arm and wharf above Lime Kiln lock were restored there would be more good moorings. The area above Freemans Common lock adjacent to the Walkere stadium also looks OK but have not spent a night there. It is a pain that the locks in the Glen Parva area have locks on them but note the city centre ones do not. Having spoken to BW staff at Kilby Bridge they said that a well known former lock keeper at Foxton did much to discourage boaters from going through Leicester! North of Leicester the river can be interesting after rain, but remember it goes up and down quickly especially in summer. There are safe places to moor and indeed leave boats. I think many boaters who are used to canals are put off by river boating and its unpredictability. To us its just part of life and we accept that occasionally we will not be able to boat when we want and we may have to leave it for a few days whilst water levels drop.

As a regular user of secure extranet web sites I find it perverse that Canalworld allows users to be permanently logged in. In the commercial world anywhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour of inactivity results in users being automatically being logged out. Personally I think this should apply to Canalworld otherwise it makes a mockery of statistics such as to how many users are logged in at anyone time as many of them could be inactive and may have been so for a considerable amount of time. I personally log out at the end of every session and when only browsing do not log in unless I want to add a post. I think that this might apply to the majority of memebers. There is also the issue of security especially on multi user machines as being logged in could result in another user using a log in and possibly finding out your password and most people only use a small number of passwords. I realise that to some members it might be inconvenient to have to log in every time they wish to post but in the long term I think that this would be for the good of the forum - it might make members think before they added a crass or inappropriate post such as some of those on the Little Haywood air crash.

Had my most frightening boating experience in Gosty Hill. It is very tight and deceptive - the 'Keeping Up' photo sequence is taken from the east to west. The western portal is much higher and gives a false sense of security - only when a 150m or so inside does the roof drop suddenly and you have a mad dash to remove the chimney and the exhaust pipe as well as the plant pots! However I digress we were going through many years ago in a 70ft hire boat. We were following another boat when we came to a complete stand still no amount of engine would move us forward or backwards. Investigation showed that we had a railway sleeper trapped between the boat and the tunnel wall - needless to say ths was on the opposite wall to the timber rubbing strake and chain on the tunnel wall. Presumably the boat in front had pushed it under the strake and got through. The tunnel is really narrow I think its tighter and as low as Harecastle. The sleeper was so firmly wedged that I jumped up and down on it to no avail. Fortunately the boat had a very substantial gang plank and using it as battering ram we managed to force the sleeper under water to where the hull started to taper and the ease it out and on the foredeck. This took quite a long while so I had my teenage family starting to panic and I was thinking that I would have to walk 200m the nearest portal to get the emergency services out. Before we cleared the tunnel we also picked up a pallet. It was a frightening experience. Friends did manage to pick up a body on the bows in Wast Hill a couple of years ago which was also a bit disconcerting!

A few years ago as part of the Birmingham challenge we took little woolwich Auriga throught the tunnel from Parkhead to Dudley. We arranged a tow with the tunnel trust - it was a great trip very eerie going through silently. Auriga went through easily with the cratch down and the mast and stands taken down. Unfortunately we have no pictures.

Off work with a nasty dose of flu so was catching up on a DVD which I have had for a few months. It is of Scouting around Loughborough in the early 1960s shot on Super 8 and now transferred to DVD. There is about 3mins of Willow Wren camper Warbler on the S Oxford - its very nice footage. Also on the Cranfleet Beeston reach is to be found 50ft wooden top Lapwing - externally it looks right apart from the paint job -it still has the nice big brass air scoop the location is so remote the thieving ... have not nicked it. On Cranfleet cut there is another wooden top whcih I am convinced is ex Willow Wren but it has no name. To finish off GUCC motor Slough is still moored on Sawley Cut.

Remember that the crack is a potential source of combustion gasses entering the boat and they include carbon monoxide. So for your own safety replace ASAP and check that your CO detector is working.