StephenA

In the 80's there weren't three Trans-Pennine routes open and neither was the K&A. . I think the problem is that funding hasn't just kept up with the extra responsibilities dropped on BW, and now C&RT, If you just look at those three: Rochdale : 32 miles and 91 locks Huddersfield Narrow : 24 miles and 74 locks K&A : 56 Miles and 78 locks Mileage wise it's not a lot but in terms of infrastructure its a lot to take on. Did BW and CRT get any more funding for taking these on? They have a limited budget - so when it comes to keeping things open they are going to have to cut back on things - and where do you think they're going to look at cutting maintenance? Is it going to be on a low use Trans-Pennine route, the C&H, or on something like the Four Counties / Llangollen? So if we want everything to be open and never closed then either they get a lot more funding from the government (which given the imploded economy isn't going to happen) or they will have to put boat licences up by so much that people get rid of their boats. Or we have to accept that things will be broken from time to time. Anyone remember Preston Brook being closed? Blisworth? Wast Hill? Harecastle? Closures due to serious structure failures are not new.

Certainly looks like Stoker's lock https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6245483

I think that's the state of the bores in ours. Starline basically said it was the last rebuild for the engine.

Our BMC 1.5 after a serious rebuild by Starline in Upton about 15 years ago has been rock solid (they did a much between job of it than Calcutt did). 15-20 seconds of heaters and it fires up on the first crank, even after standing idle for 5 months. Never idles for long times, tends to get long daily runs covering good distances. Had a few problems with the Alternator but that all got sorted out. Oil changed on the 200 / 250 schedule.

Yes that is a really bad section and also often suffers from bad side winds which means you have to go faster... and there seem to be a lot of very unhappy boaters on those moorings.

Correct - that was put in to basically save bandwidth. Even only serving our own maps to logged in users uses about 80GB of bandwidth a month - on top of the 30GB from Canalplan itself

I remember a few years ago going into the Royal Oak in Standishgate which had 20 gins and 6 different types of olives. Olives!!!!!

We had an odd experience years ago on the Middlewich Branch. It was a pretty grim wet misty day and we could see the silhouette of a boat in the mist ahead of us on the long straight stretch between Brickyard Bridge and Cholmondeston Lock . It didn't get closer and it didn't get further away so we assumed it was a boat ahead of us just chugging along at a sensible speed. When we got to the railway bridge we got ready to pull into the side and hold the boat whilst the other boat finished working the lock and we could get it ready. But there was no boat, the lock was empty (and obviously had been empty for some time) and the marina was dead calm with no sign of anyone around at all. So was it a boat that went into the marina? Was it just an optical illusion? or was it something else...

The official explanation is "I made it so you couldn't create a place with a pre-existing name, even if UTF-8 folded. What I didn't do was prevent you renaming a place like that. There's a check on rename, but it doesn't check the UTF8 folding."

Should be fixed now. We thought we'd fixed this bug previously but it looks like someone found a route through the add place process that wasn't fixed!

We are aware of the problem - each crash sends us an email! Nick was at work at 06:30 this morning so hasn't had time to look into yet. But I'm sure he'll be on it as soon as possible.

It seems to be back

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/notices/17474-tardebigge-lock-flight Please be advised that in support of the Police as part of an ongoing investigation, the Canal and River Trust will be carrying out some dewatering of select pounds during the week commencing 04/05/2020. As a result of this navigation of the flight will be restricted until the activity each day has concluded and the pounds re-watered. During each phase of de-watering the towpath will be closed to mitigate against fall from height and will be managed onsite by the Police. Canal and River Trust colleagues will be on-site each day to provide assistance and guidance where possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Police in Gloucester seem to be focussed on people visiting "The Range" and "breaking the law" by "buying non essential items".

Domain only expired recently Domain Name: JIM-SHEAD.COM Registry Domain ID: 68716368_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.tucows.com Registrar URL: http://tucowsdomains.com Updated Date: 2020-04-07T02:48:30 Creation Date: 2001-04-03T02:18:57 Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2020-04-03T02:18:57 It's a pity that he's had to let it go.