magpie patrick

A sausage (cooked) - when ascending the Rochdale 9 a few years ago...

That's fine - but tell me how your stance will save the canals as the funding dries up. Personally I feel that the CRT baiters have an irrational grudge, and probably had it against BW. That's why they go for issues like this. The big battle is to stop canals closing - that might mean doubling the licence fee if no other funds can be found. The nitpicking troupe have not yet come up with a workable answer to this one. All they can bleat is "mismanagement" without explaining how better management would produce the millions needed.

Yes I read it - non-story the Daily Mail of the canal world. I'm also fed up with the CRT baiters in this forum. We're soon going to have a fight for the survival of the canal system and all some people want to do is pick holes whilst the whole edifice (the canals,not those running them) collapses. There you go, battle line drawn.

As a consultant I produce reports - there are always a number of versions the client doesn't see. In my case these are numbered upwards from v0 (the first draft) and have reached v7 before the client sees them. The first version the client sees is "draft final" or "final" NBW are reading far, far too much into the use of the word final.

I lost the wooden bit of Ripple's tiller at the junction at Hardings Wood Junction, thankfully I wasn't holding it at the time! I was holding further down the bar, ironically because I needed to reach the morse control which was on the left and the tiller needed to be hard right. That said Ripple had an elliptical counter not a square stern, the tiller was beyond the profile of the stern but would not be beyond the cabin if travelling into a lock. I'm sure I've seen wide beams with an offset tiller connected to the rudder stock with a bicycle chain arrangement or similar

Thanks all again, and good local gen from @nicknorman I'm looking at the logistics of getting there - one big issue is the hours that respite care is available, we can't leave until it starts and that's likely to be 11am. This means we can't make the journey in one day by train or car but also is likely to mean we can't get a flight that day either - at the moment our idea is to make the journey by car part of the holiday - hot foot it to the borders on day one the day we set off and then a more leisurely drive on day two. The four night boat option would allow us two nights on the road in one direction and that might be very appealing. That said, logistics are my problem - the real gems of advice you are all giving are about what to expect when we get there! The NC500 looks wonderful, but it's way off the scale for what we can manage in the time - I think we'll stick to the Great Glen! *I did think NC might stand for @Naughty Cal

Thanks all - some food for thought. Le Boat appeals as they start from Laggan so we could do a leisurely run to (say) Urquhart Castle and back seeing something of both canal and lochs Oich and Ness. The alternative of a twin centre holiday on Inverness and Fort William also appeals. I hear you - unfortunately circumstances dictate its a short holiday or we don't go at all.

I love these old images! But for the OP and others benefit one has to remember these boats were designed to carry 30-50 tonnes of cargo and in images like this had perhaps 3 tonnes of passengers. Unlike modern boats the old working boats didn't have apertures below gunwale height. Put 30 tonnes of cargo on a modern leisure boat and the exhaust, sink outlet etc will be under water. The accidents I recall on inland waterways with passenger boats were often the result of top heavy loading with too many passengers on the roof. There was also one I seem to recall where passengers were on board during a broadside launch... just putting lots of people in the cargo hold of a canal boat was relatively risk free, even if it would have given a modern MCA inspector apoplexy

The Lady and I are hoping we can get away for a week in August - this assumes we can get care in place for a dependent and that hamstrings us a bit as in it is likely to mean we have exactly one week, say from 11am on the day of departure to 6pm on the day we get back with seven nights in between. We're fancying Inverness/Loch Ness - V has never been and it's 40 years since I last went. The logistics mean we may well only get five nights up there so our initial thoughts were hotel in Inverness and day trips, or possibly hotel in Inverness for 3 nights and then 2 nights in Fort William. First question is nothing to do with logistics though - V has heard the midges are little terrors in August, is that true in the Great Glen? Second is - can we get afloat? The only cruises I can find are end to end and are seven nights on board, nothing short of a personal helicopter will get us there and back in time. I note one or two passenger trip boats on Loch Ness although these seem to be trips an hour or two long rather than day trips, but it may be a two hour trip on the Loch gets a lot further than I think it will. Any trips anywhere else on the Caledonian Canal? My attempts at a Google search yield either a mass of mostly irrelevant information (if I wanted a cruise in the Outer Hebrides I'd ask for it) or nothing at all Any help much appreciated - we may write this off as not doable in a week from Somerset, but we'd very much like to give it a go. Thanks all

Arthur, you don't often talk rubbish but that bit about only liveaboards can CC is completely wrong. On many occasions I have made long journeys around the canal system whilst returning home to work every week - one summer Ripple went from Marple to Middlewich, then along the shroppie and onto Nottingham then to Stourport to Leigh to Anderton, back to Shardlow then to Birmingham, then Stourbridge, Froghall and Anderton again and I held down a job in Bath. To my mind, living on board holds one's cruising aspirations back.

I went a bit further and turned at the incinerator - I knew Ripple wouldn't fit the locks (she was 62 foot) but I hadn't factored in that canals with short locks have short winding holes too

This ^^^^ And easy enough to do in error even if you know what you're talking about - a colleague of several years ago based his bid for consultancy work in Dublin on a similar bid he'd done in Stockholm - after many checks to make sure there were no references to Swedish places and policies he sent the bid out, with the price in Króna....

As Matty said, and the closer you get to Froghall the better it gets In the 1960s BW offered to maintain and repair the canal as far as Hazlehurst locks on condition the canal society drop their campaign for restoration to Froghall - Ben Fradley, the then chairman of the canal society, is alleged to have replied "we are not being shown to the garden gate and then being barred from entering the garden"