magpie patrick

Quite so, although I suspect not that many. The oxford intercepts the Cherwell twice, the Trent and Mersey shares it's course for about a mile with the trent and the Caldon does the same with the Churnet, but in these cases it's the canal following the river not the river being diverted into the canal, the Grand Union (nee Junction) seems to grab every watercourse going south of Berkhampstead hopefully I'll get to see a bit more of it in June!

You are not kidding, i've just done the sums: if we assume a conservative cross section of 10 metres wide by 1 metre deep, a flow of 1mph equates to a wide lock, fall 2 metres, every 44 seconds The flow on the Llangollen is roughly equivalent to 285 lockfuls a day, or filling the locks 12 times an hour every hour, so even that canal is taking five minutes to get a grand union lockful down.

We've seen a new one but we're not buying it! It did give us the chance to ask the current builder lots of questions though. We have a two pronged plan If we find a boat, on a mooring we like (and it can stay on) and we like the boat AND we can afford it out of savings, we will buy it. We nearly bought the Mallard but we were beaten to it. Having got two boats we will then move towards selling Ripple If by, say, next summer we haven't found a boat we'll sell Ripple anyway and carry on the search. Ripple. much as I love her, is becoming a bit of an albatross around my neck, and the final straw is the inflexibility of the cruising range, which wasn't an issue when I was single and spent every waking moment on her, but is now I'm married, mortgaged etc. Once Ripple is sold we'd have more flexibility on budget. And no, I'll get the fourtrack and trailer when I know what boat it's pulling. Could be a Mallard, a Beaver or a Viking 23/26, as they are the main ones we are looking at. pros and cons to each...

Hi all, we went to look at a Wilderness Beaver yesterday, if it had fitted the bill we'd have bought it. Basically it did, it was fitted out as a four berth with shower, the layout we want, and has been well looked after. Nearly new engine and everything else well maintained. I got a bit of a shock though because the guy said it was 1983 built, which makes it 27 years old. My gut reaction is that the asking price (£13k) was a bit much for a boat of that age, but what would the difference be between a fibreglass boat 27 years old and one say, 12 years old?

Just to be argumentative BR, I think that length of the Grand Union Canal is classified as Main River by the Environment Agency

Yes but the Llangollen flow is the result of 6 million gallons a day drinking water for the citizens of Chester, a practice which started in the 1930s, and the Shroppie takes Wolverhampton's sewage. Yes the Llangollen flows faster than any river I've been om, or appears to, that said, it takes us four hours from Gloucester to Upper \Lode Lock and 2 1/2 back so the Severn flow may be faster than I think (fourteen miles with an hour and a half difference?) The Shroppie has a flow coz its so damn busy, but it still isn't much, the pound from Wheaton Aston to Tyrley has a fall of three inches in seventeen miles. Most rivers fall at least seventeen feet in that distance, which is why they need locks PS, Smelly/Dan, I think your comment was a compliment but I'm not sure

Laurence, are you sure you are not confusing SCC (Somersetshire Coal Canal) with SCC (Severn and Canal Carrying) Somerset Coal boats were a tad small, only a foot shorter and 2 inches narrower, but smaller. They were also primitive as far as we know

The paper you quoted had three "lowest recorded flow measurements" of zero. But perhaps if I say negligible flow, and that which does occur isn't by design but a feature of their operation, I think that pretty much sums it up. There are exceptions, the Tavistock Canal has a gradient of 1 in 6000 and a significant flow, while the Glamorgan Canal had a flow as a result of the round-the-clock operation of it's lock, this was a nuisance as it mean boats going upstream could carry less than boats going downstream

Could start a whole new thread here Chris answer one, we don't know, but as the canal closed in 1898 it seems unlikely although there was at least one iron maintenance boat on the canal. we believe containers were used when the canal had two branches both with inclined planes, Benjamin Outram is recorded as having recommended the system which was also in use on the peak forest canal at the time, but the Paulton branch incline was replaced by locks in 1805 and the Radstock Branch was converted to tramway in 1812. If containers were used, we don't know whether they continued to be used once the double transhipment ceased. the boats were actually slightly smaller than midlands and GU narrow boats because they were agreed with the K and A as being a half width K and A boat, so they were six foot ten by 69 feet Any information gratefully received

An interesting paper, obviously more concerned with water quality, however, I can't find where it says that canal flows but I can find these two statements under hydraulic issues "unlike rivers, canals have a ... lack of longitudinal bed slope" and "unlike rivers, canals do not lose water by longitudinal flow". It also contains a table with flows on the Union canal, the highest they found across four sites was 0.168 mph (I've converted their 75 millimetres per second figure), this was near the feeder where the paper admits the flow will be highest. The lowest at three of the four sites was zero, and at the fourth it was 1 millimetre per second, or 0.002 miles per hour. And the paper seems to have a running theme of just how awful the water quality in a canal can be due to the lack of flow

Thanks Chris, yes a disappointment but not a surprise

Really? tell me more!

I don't want to hijack Chris's thread, so if we take this debate further, lets move to another thread, but canals did not have a gradient designed into them. They get one if you use the locks or there is surplus water running weir, but throw a stick into a canal where no boats are moving and the stick doesn't move Aside from anything else this means the guy tipping his turds into the cut will find them hanging around his own boat for a while

That's the best piece of fiction I've read this week, 1mph would be a heck of a rate of flow on a canal, and they weren't designed with such a flow, in fact, you can often observe canals flowing backwards, i.e upstream if the wind is in the right direction. Back to the point. Chris, I take my hat off to you, send the letter

While I can understand your point about advertising these actions being a good way to give ammunition to the anti-boater brigade, I really can't see where Chris has used obscene language. His letter seems extremely articulate and measured to me

If it's the guy I'm thinking of, he shares his name with a mean sax player (deceased) what we need to watch, though, is that this doesn't become a case of BW losing half it's grant and then being told to bid for it from myriad sources

It's for several reasons but the biggest factor is lack of money, it is run on a budget per mile about a fifth of BWs. It doesn't help that it's not managed very well either, you have to book entry to the canal even if you've got a licence, and English Nature (as they were) put a ridiculous level of restriction on, given that before the canal was restored it was a stagnant ditch, and because it's hardly used, local communities don't perceive any benefit in it being navigable

No they won't because they won't own them, the charitable trust will own them However there must be a risk that canals will end up in the same state as the Basingstoke Canal - unnavigable for much of the time