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Paddle

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Everything posted by Paddle

  1. And a vaccine may *never* arrive. The common cold is a coronavirus and no vaccine has ever been found for it.
  2. What was the point of the Anderton lift in 1983? How had it survived that long? I first saw it in 1984 (I was small) and remember the counterweights and gear wheels lined up rather sadly adjacent to it. And whilst the canals were well past the days of likely abandonment by 1983, the Peak Forest was only reclassified from remainder-waterway in 1983 and upgraded back to Cruising Waterway.
  3. Plenty of opportunity for getting cross whilst winding, depending on how silted the winding hole is and how unhelpful the wind is, how well your reverse works and how likely the engine is to stall inappropriately etc. But what is 'cross winding'?
  4. I reckon the couple who got the 'double bed' in the boatman's cabin of BRISTOL might have been less than 100% happy...
  5. Building wooden boats for hire; those were the days! With electric lighting and power throughout, an inside 'loo and running hot water, it was considerably more advanced than some homes even at that time.
  6. Airbnb! I'm not referring to hiring a bare pitch, but to renting a tent in a field on Airbnb just outside Llangollen in August. Expect to pay almost £100 per night for that privilege. If you haven't rented a cottage for 12 years, and that was in the Highlands, then I'm afraid you've a nasty surprise coming to you for anywhere within reach of civilisation. (N.B. I love the Highlands and consider them to be extremely civilised, you know what I mean!)
  7. I was looking on Airbnb at the sort of place that I'd want to stay. Miners' cottages in Llangollen, £800. Tents, £600. Nice place, £2000. And I concede that a Black Prince boat is a long way from a 'nice place' but you do get to move on the following day! Edited to add, I expect to pay £300 for a two-night weekend away for two in February in a half-nice place somewhere within a couple of hours' drive of London. I don't do it often... Edited again to add, having had a look at English County Cottages, my impression is that you won't get much for under £1,000 (so long as you ignore the across-the-board 20%ish discounts that are currently available, no doubt due to Covid or because August is now close), and there's plenty above £2,000 or more. With just beds for four.
  8. You are absolutely correct, there is no sense in which they are devalued as people. However, they are also members of society (anybody living in their own home with a live-in carer is outside my definition). As such, they have to accept what is happening in society at large. Nobody created this virus. Nobody wanted this virus. It has appeared out of nowhere, and society has to deal with it as best it can. And having spent quite some time in care homes, visiting, I tell you: anything that would shorten my residence there would be a good thing. Generally people don't leave a care home otherwise than feet first. As a society we are not very good at accepting death these days; a GP friend of mine says that in his experience people with a belief in religion accept the death of their relatives much better than those without. And nothing of the above devalues the lives of those in care homes. But it does reflect the reality that we are all sharing a planet with a largely innocuous virus that does target the elderly.
  9. Is this true? I seem to recall hiring a boat twenty-five years ago was significantly more expensive than a holiday cottage. And if it will cost you £1600 for a narrowboat in August for four for a week, that's comparable with a nice cottage for the same period. A quick peek at Airbnb shows a *TENT* outside Llangollen will set you back £600-700 for a week in August. An extra £1,000 for a *boat* has got to be worth it, surely?
  10. For the benefit of anybody else reading this thread who knows little or nothing of the canal nor its structures: https://temevalleynorthparish.co.uk/local-history/the-kington-leominster-stourport-canal/ https://htt.herefordshire.gov.uk/herefordshires-past/the-post-medieval-period/transport/canals/the-leominster-and-stourport-canal/
  11. Since February ORION has apparently been painted green (instead of blue) and blacked. And it has a new 4-year BSC. So the Lister might well have been overhauled too... Bloke with financée and dog was probably delighted to be shot of it at about 4k in February, so whoever bought it would be onto a significant profit. There's no wooden boat that doesn't look as thought it was newly built after a coat of blacking... and no Lister that a stainless exhaust doesn't make look overhauled... Here's the February listing with different paint colour, and absence of BSC: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/48-Foot-Narrow-Boat-Project-Liveaboard-NO-RESERVE-/223913684489?nma=true&si=hqnR5xfThe5xhhOHFju%2FPjNlWW4%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
  12. Slow news day... "Boat used to inspect tunnel."
  13. Apologies, you may quite possibly be mad, but you should be regarded as a nomad.
  14. Score, Restlessnotmad, that took me through to a real person on chat who eventually fixed it for me. Thank you. Just for the record, Royal Mail should not have been trying to deliver to a locker, that was a mistake. I wonder who did receive it!?
  15. Thanks. The telephone number does not work. And I can't even find a chat bot. Everything has been stopped thanks to Covid-19. It just tells me to ask the courier. Royal Mail say that it's been delivered.
  16. Thanks both. Pearley you do get a barcode that you can wave under the scanner, and a code that you can type in if you prefer! I'm not convinced it will return to Amazon, as I'm not convinced that Royal Mail can put items into the lockers... and if they can it won't be RM taking them out again! If you use "Problem with Order" Richard West it suggests you check with your neighbours. There's no real, live person to help on those links.
  17. I'm firmly not afloat, but I'm sure this is common knowledge amongst those who spend a lot of time afloat, so please indulge me. I ordered something (grocery item) from Amazon Prime for delivery to the Amazon Locker near my home. It has finally (6 weeks later!) been delivered. I have been given a Royal Mail tracking number, but not a barcode from Amazon to open the locker. Royal Mail tracking confirms it has been delivered (though there is no signature). I am at a complete loss. Amazon don't even have a help function that I can see. Can anybody help please?
  18. Apologies for pollution, as unemployment heads back to 1975 levels so will living standards and life expectancy (murderous might have been a bit melodramatic). The 1975 hire brochure was showing a bright new future back then.
  19. Destructive doesn't even begin. Murderous. Politicians will have blood on their hands for decades to come as a result of the lockdown.
  20. That's the first time I've been compared with Trump! Not quite sure what you have a problem with, or why you think I'm like some half-witted American.
  21. 'Massive' problem? My suspicion is that the bigger problems are firstly that not enough people are spreading it (look how the number of suspected cases is dropping which shows that there is no problem, massive or otherwise https://covid.joinzoe.com/data ) and secondly that people who could perfectly well be working (and indeed should be working in order to spread it a bit) are in fact taking advantage of HM Government's subsidised 80% holiday because they can't be bothered to go to work.
  22. More unhappy about bandwidth, usually. They're the ones serving the picture each time somebody loads the page, which costs them bandwidth. Equally as the pictures aren't ever copied from their website my understanding was there are no copyright concerns (I looked at this some time ago).
  23. Fifty years, Mike? Sixty or seventy more like!
  24. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=J7FkAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA272&lpg=PA272&dq=thames+net+fishing&source=bl&ots=Jz39f9B68j&sig=ACfU3U12YfKs8aabtXpQI-_Ow9oewSO90A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjCzfusv9joAhXZMMAKHf1cDvUQ6AEwEXoECA0QKQ#v=onepage&q=thames net fishing&f=false Net fishing was certainly permitted in the Thames in 1670 - provided it did not obstruct the common passage of vessels or the 'destruction of the frie of fish'. Not sure what that means - fry?
  25. I don't know the answer, but would there not have been? There's still net fishing for salmon in certain Scottish rivers (or if there isn't, then it's been bought out in the last five years or so).
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