magpie patrick

Ahhhh, that's where I'm going wrong Two sponsored kids in Romania is far better than money in the bank though, believe me... I had this but all my robber landlord asked was to borrow the boat once a year to take his grand daughters on holiday, and he didn't always take it up!

Things have certainly changed, my first five years were spent at Booth Lane in Middlewich, with a view across the A533 to the Canal and the Royal Venton Sanitary Ware works. That was 66-71. Of those, the one thing I'd avoid like the plague with kids is the A533! But traffic was a fraction then of what it is now, and I would have kids on the B3111 in Bath where we live (it isn't signposted) but I'd watch them like a hawk near the front door. It's traffic is probably higher than the A533 was then I don't think the politics of "yer can bluddy well afford it" is a good way of conducting business, however, unusually I have some sympathy with BW. I enjoyed some else's EOG mooring for 2 1/2 tears, and they charged me nothing, but BW still had a boat floating on their canal over their land, and so half the going rate seemed fair, after all BW couldn't grant access to the mooring, but they could decline to permit it (something many people miss. If your EOG is on a blind bend BW may say no!), and the owner is getting benefit out of BW maintaining the waterway. An end of garden mooring on the Somerset Coal Canal has, I suspect, limited appeal

bear in mind 1) you have to manage a boat and a six year old. I'd caution against the L and L or any canal with too many locks for this reason (the L and L locks are heavy and wide) unless you have three adults on board. 2) Six year olds want six year old activities, and stopping in a village to play in the local park usually goes down a treat 3) they won't enjoy what you expect and you will see the world through new eyes afterwards. Slightly off topic, but when I took a friends six year old to a rugby match, he was excited at seeing "the ball kicked through the big H" but what really made an imprsssion was the disembodied voice from the tannoy and the floodlights.

They are not Brindley's, he built the basins with just the two large locks, as no one in their right mind would take a horse dran narrow boat onto the Severn before it's locks were built. They have another snag too, I single handed down them and you need to get the lower locks ready before you can leave the upper ones. Not a problem in itself but the corollary of that is you need to get the boat into the lower locks before you can go back and close the gates on the upper ones. A boat following you can't easily see the bottom gates of the upper locks are open because of the bridge, and by the time I'd got back they'd started emptying the upper lock...

I'd take issue with that, research by Newcastle University in the early nineties indicated anything up to a 20% premium, and as 20% premiums don't appear overnight I think it's safe to assume there had been some hike in the value long before. Probably from the early seventies although even in the 1960s developers were building houses that backed onto canals and were not putting fences up, so at the very least it was a selling point.

Sadly, after so much talk, we won't be there, Val has come to the top of the waiting list for a minor but important operation, now scheduled for May 6th, and it was only a moments thought to say postpone our holiday. We'd love to meet you all, so please keep us posted on future events. We're still going to the Upton Folk Festival by boat, getting the boat back on May 5th