magpie patrick

60 foot is too long for the locks, might be okay in a mooring in Bridgwater docks (which were built for very much bigger boats!). You could probably get the boat to the first lock, but I doubt there is anywhere to turn a 60 footer if you did, as the canal was built for boats 54 feet long

Thanks for all the suggestions guys - I'll pass on the wind up gramophone and the wax cylinder for the moment - sounds like a cheap measure in the short term would be a Walkman (I have two - one CD and one mp3) with a cable to a speaker. Plus perhaps get myself a spotify account on the phone....

Having done a lot of work on this sort of thing, I'm sorry to disappoint, but there isn't One problem is defining full, as it comes down to level of service rather than absolute capacity - even 85% of absolute capacity would probably be an unpl6user experience, so where should the line be drawn?

I haven't had time to read the whole thread so apologies if I repeat what others have said but In 20 years (approx 1995-2015) the number of licensed boats went from around 25000 to 35000. About half way through this period BW realised the had a problem and actively promoted new marinas - on a good site a boat mooring pond makes money - the key is a level site at canal level. I was slightly involved in the finance of one marina which cost 8k a berth to develop and the annual charge before VAT was an average of 2k - even with operating costs added this was a good deal for the banks. Old boats never die - its almost impossible to get rid of one without either abandoning it or paying someone to take it away. Marinas aren't always in the same place as the demand for moorings.

Simple enough question I guess, but in years and years of boating I've never satisfactorily resolved this - how to listen to recorded music onboard. Ripple had a decent "in-car" stereo which took CDs, Lutine has not, and Juno hasn't either. Radio reception is patchy (and tbh I tend to use radio for spoken word) and neither boat has room for a boom box to be plonked anywhere. It also always seems the CD I want is in the car, the office... I want a system that works like a CD player, as in, I decided what I want to listen to, press a button, and hey presto its playing through speakers - I realise I will need to load the music onto it first . It needs to recharge off 12 volts and be fairly small (think "transistor radio" when they were a thing - go on a shelf) Others must have the same desire (even if dramatically different taste!) - how do you do it? Suggestions much appreciated thanks!

The chance to be ridiculed 😂 Aside from the cartoon look, which appeals to me, the sitting position and the small cabin covering the wheel (and camera etc) look very practical - this may prove an illusion! I could also see the appeal of gliding round a newly dug out bit of canal in one - if one held a restoration festival in 100 yards of reopened canal one or two of these would catch the eye

Indeed - but he couldn't reach the steering wheel... Anyone any thoughts on the boat?!?!

I rather fancy one of these - would take waterway exploration to the next level... Anyone any thoughts? (Other than "he's really lost the plot this time...")

And someone else a much larger one! In the days when people went pleasure boating in what amounted to small dinghies with cabins on* then a trip to Horseshoe Falls would not be problematic *This is not supposed to be derogatory - I quite like the idea!

This is true, and there are several quite busy roads crossing navigations on moveable bridges, and the A36 and the A367 (as the Warminster Road and the Wellsway are now numbered) are probably less busy than some which are carried on swing bridges today. What would matter, though, is the context of the time the decision was made - I have no knowledge of the history of the A340 in the early 18th century when Aldermaston Bridge was first installed - but it was 90 years earlier than the bridges on the Coal Canal, so trade everywhere (including on the Warminster Road) would have been less. Also the area around Bath hasn't kept up with the rest of the country in terms of population increase - Bath is only twice the size it was in 1801 whereas England as a whole is around 6 times the population, and urban areas are 15 times more populous, , so traffic here has grown less than in the rest of the country. The A36 Warminster Road was certainly very important in 1805 when the coal canal opened, 30 years later an 11 arch viaduct was built to carry it over the valley, just as the canal was also reaching the height of it's trade - it's difficult to imagine a road justifying a structure on this scale would have been a suitable candidate for a swing bridge

Somewhere between 6 foot 10 and 7 foot 2 - in a location somewhere between Norton Juntion and Manchester by one of a number of options...

We've moved away from the topic, but moving only round the corner from where this topic started, the entrance bridge to the Coal Canal was, for most of it's life, a masonry hump backed bridge, but originally it was a swing bridge, as were many others on the route. Not all of them, it's doubtful if even then a swing bridge on the Warminster Road or the Wellsway would have been acceptable. The entrance bridge has come full circle, as it is now a lift bridge. The last bridge on the Canal, Terminus Bridge just before Paulton Basin, was also originally a swing bridge, then a masonry arch, and now only the base survives at towpath level - that gives us some interesting options come restoration

The opening line of "Pies and Prejudice" by Stuart Maconie states "The BBC has no South of England Correspondent" - so perhaps there is no such things as the south!?!?

Yes, they did build the bridges humpy to keep costs down - an extreme example below (Lockgate bridge - lower Frankton)

And therein hangs a tale! Certainly round here the high profile structures are pretty whilst others are not so well finished - we do have the dubious advantage of Bath Stone being the local building material which helps on the aesthetics (dubious as it's not the easiest of stone to build with - it has to be laid the same way as it came out of the ground) Not just canals either - go look round the back of things like the Royal Crescent and realise the grandeur is only facade deep.