magpie patrick

Oreo and Truffle - not mine but I often borrow them!

I think I'd stretch Juno 2 feet sideways, although I'd need a new mooring as the entrance to the Coal Canal is an old narrow lock. That's the only narrow lock she ever goes through though! End result would be a Viking 23 that's 9 feet wide.

First immediate thought - the entire system of long-term paid for moorings is, with a few limited exceptions, based on the concept of leisure use such as you describe. Not only is it okay to leave the boat unoccupied, its expected and in some instances it is a requirement that you don't live on board. I will add that looking back over 40 years of boating I travelled most on the various boats I've had when I wasn't trying to live on the damn thing!

They replace about 4% of the gates each year - that's around 60 locks worth or 120-240 gates, so they do quite a lot but they don't usually use a crane. I think the problem here with one gate wedged against the other is that they may need to lift both at once, and sheerlegs probably aren't up to that.

This statement... Suggests they don't normally need one

Images become historic when something has changed since the image was taken. Images that have an approximate date are historic even if nothing has changed, as they help to date changes - if it hasn't changed since 2002, then changes in the scene since (say) 1990 are more tightly defined. I have several books of canal photos that were simply intended to illustrate, but 30,40, 50 years later the scenes have changed so much they are now valuable historic documents.

Thank you, That's an angle I hadn't yet got to - the role of the planning system in the waterways that have been restored (or in some cases destroyed!) The Welshpool bypass is a particularly interesting one as the intervention meant the canal is reconnected across Welshpool which was not possible before the bypass. There are several instances of canals being protected or getting "gain" from infrastructure schemes.

They don't need one other than a desire to cause chaos When I worked at Frome Town Council we had rangers inspect every item of play equipment in each park first thing (around 630am in summer) - the number of times we found bolts loosened, or even left in place but the nut on the other end removed. not every day but often enough to warrant these inspections. It was rarely obvious damage (that's reserved for the toilets) but an action that someone knew might cause the equipment to fail. In most cases the equpiment would have worked "for a while" before the bolt fell off.

The towpath isn't continuous but there is usually a parallel path (often on the old railway). I've found it easy enough to park a car for the bits I've walked - which is quite a lot of it. The last bit to the Witham followed the Tattershall Canal, which predated the Horncastle navigation

Me too, and lest anyone get gloomy over how illness might affect canal exploration, here's a pic of me on the towpath of the long disused Horncastle Canal - and that thing running to my nose is portable oxygen... I'm not going to let a little thing like chronic illness get in the way! (For those wondering - i stay in hotels with creature comforts)

Unfortunately they are going to be expensive - mine for a Viking 23 narrow beam is well north of £1500 just for the canopy, and I already have the frame - if you need a frame as well then you probably need to smash a couple of piggy banks open

I will admit my second foray into this (and I had a permanent mooring) ended when I got skin cancer - I woke up one morning in my lodgings, the wound from the op had become infected and I both looked and felt like a mouldy potato, suddenly all those needless luxuries of houses, toilets connected to mains sewerage, taps that never needed their tank filling, endless hot water etc - weren't luxuries any more. I was reminded of this last week when we took Juno out for the day - I was recovering from a COVID type bug and found everything hard work, the deft step on and off became a major climb, pulling the ropes (on a Viking 23!) felt like mooring a container ship. I watch Canal Boat Diaries with a nostalgic pain for the great journeys I have made, and I will go boating again, especially as SWMBO is keen for us to do this in retirement (for once it's not me suggesting a two-three month summer voyage) but I will always have a land base with mains services to retreat to!

Detection wasn't always easy - in about 1725 Saltford lock on the Bristol Avon was so badly damaged by saboteurs that it had to be rebuilt. The culprits were never caught although it is thought (known?) that they were sponsored by mining interests from the Radstock area aggrieved by being undercut by imported coal. [Caught by the merge] By chance, sorting through my magazine rack, I came across this article in WW from December last year. Not only does it describe events around a murder in Manchester but it looks at the canal company police which some companies employed from the 1840s onwards.

Is that the colloquial term for anything over 6 feet wide? 🤔

Surely the point of the 30 minutes max rule is to make it obvious you can't leave the boat there and go shopping or have a leisurely lunch on board. Every rule will have ways in which people can wilfully misinterprete it. "Boat must not be left unattended" - crew has a five course dinner on board. "Water point only" - operate all those thirsty appliances whilst on the water point and stay six hours... "30 minutes" - time to give someone else a go

Fascinating! Sadly our itinerary for the great Glen holiday doesn't have any spare time to get to Arisaig. Floating timber is still navigation I would argue - there were canals built in Norway for use by log rafts

It was Gordon Bailey's initiative when he was Mayor of Stockport so 1980 would be about right. Back then (and possibly still now) each mayor had a "Mayor's project" - I do wonder how the others are fairing nearly half a century after inception.

This is on Facebook and thus may not be visible to some members - someone may know who ho extract it, I'm afraid I don't! super fast boat lift Definitely boating, perhaps not general boating though

Your first paragraph defeats your second - the boat in your first paragraph has travelled to several checking areas to remain unspotted. If it has stayed in one place it will not have remained unspotted. There is only one criterion for overstaying - you were in the same place for too long. If the boat isn't there it hasn't overstayed. Cruising range is a different matter and more difficult, but it would take quite some skill to remain unspotted on the K&A for example, where the entire route is walked weekly. You'd have to know what day the route was walked, what day the next section was walked etc to the extent it might be easier to comply! Finally, no court is going to accept the idea that, because CRT didn't know where you were, you must have been breaking the rules!

It looks very good aesthetically, but on a website like this it will get questioned! Are you one of the volunteers? The team are doing a grand job

You shouldn't, and that fact you haven't logged them should be interpreted as they are not there on that particular length of waterway, ipso facto they are not overstaying on that length of waterway.

One of the key weaknesses in the system is that there is no interpretaion of "no siting" - if a CRT spotter walks past the same spot three times and you are there on the first and last of those they don't pick up on the significance that you weren't there on the middle one - that only gets noted if they see you somewhere else.

Thank you - that was my suspicion! no lid, no spout - almost useless as a water can!

The original plan for this was to lift boats across the river - there was a problem to solve as the EA wanted the proposed aqueduct to be above a certain level, and this mean locking up at each end. The idea of the swing was that it would lift boats over the river at a level clear of any floods, where as an aqueduct would potentially obstruct flood levels. The issues around the proposed aqueduct were resolved but the concept lift was then applied to a link down to the river which, when improved, would link the canal to the city centre. There is a pedestrian footbridge in Derby city centre that swings - not for boats but to get it out of the way of flood waters - high water on the Derwent is a serious issue.