magpie patrick

Indeed, pretty impressive lock all round. You can see two ladders, one for softees and one for nutters on the left No, I don't know where it is, usa somewhere

This weekend Val's sister is coming over, they'll go to the spa while I "entertain" myself (once upon a time this was going to a rugby match but now seems to be getting some job done on the house!). In the evening the Royal Oak are having a, wait for it, a Ferroro Roche Easting contest which Val is keen to enter! Bank Holiday weekend is a long one, leave the mooring Thursday Lunchtime to overnight in Gloucester, Friday catch the tide and Get to Upton for the Folk Festival, three days at the Fest, then Tuesday and Wednesday back with an overnight probably at Ashleworth

Ello all, Val and I have been thinking of getting something along these lines 3 metre inflatable with an outy of course question is what will it navigate (legally) that we can't get a bigger boat at, a trailable I mean not a 62 foot narrow boat and If we had an electric outboard could we carry enough battery for a day trip? It has to be an inflatable like this because we have no garage or drive to store a rigid on. The plan is it will supplement other boats, although we may go camping as well, as in, camp by a lake and use it. Any other thoughts that would be useful

You'll have to sponsor them...

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.