magpie patrick

Mum and Dad took Tingay's boats on rivers, and they certainly didn't have an anchor! I think having an anchor is a more modern ideal, possibly born of bitter experience.

It's more that given a fixed budget you can only replace half as many gates - how will those not replaced be dealt with? Presumably by closing the lock?

It is seldom heritage considerations that stop the use of steel gates. The last tender quote I saw had steel gates at approximately twice the price of oak, which would mean only replacing half as many gates.

A shallow draft won't get you through a broken lock gate or past a burst embankment though, and that is where closures will happen. Old hands (so old they're now dead) used to tell tales of nailing planks and carpet to lock gates to stop them leaking. Most closures of yore were when the locks stopped working. To solve that you need a hovercraft

Genuinely very sorry to hear of your trials and tribulations Carl - never met you but you were always a voice of reason and good humour on the forum. Go well: to quote a famous saying dream like you'll live forever, live like today is your last. None of us knows the days we have left

Yes the probably would at most of the bridges - I didn't get a picture of the really low one. Given what pit ponies could pull on a colliery tramway the would be up to the job. One problem with the Tennant Canal is we don't really know - it's assumed it was operated in a similar way to the Neath Canal, which it joins at Aberdulais. The Tennant was privately built, no act of Parliament as George Tennant owned (or bought) the land and didn't need any powers to build it. It seems to have been managed as part of the estate and so records are not easy to obtain even if they exist

There have been serious proposals for water transfer via the Thames and Severn (which would be restored as a side effect) - it always seems to fall foul of the "not invented here" syndrome when Thames Water are asked about it

CRT - bring a paddleboard and mix with boats big enough to squish you NR - Bring your own train? er, no, just no...

Not as far as I'm aware - the canal is very close to the high tide level in the adjacent river, to the extent that some culverts under it require marine licences for any work on them as they are in the tidal zone, any subsidence in the surrounding land would lead to it being inundated, and it isn't. No, trade finished in the 1930s (according to Hadfield, I'm not convinced it lasted even that long) - that said, the canal has until recently been navigated by motorised weed cutters that kept the channel clear to allow water supply to industry. Well they'd fit under the bridges! Looking at @Tonkas answer, I suspect he's right - ponies rather than horses...

No, the canal is privately owned and all towpath users are there under sufferance - its not a right of way or even an official permissive route, access is maintained for maintenance. This kind of thing puts the cyclists off - the route under the A465 - the "path" is about 2 feet wide with no handrails

I've been for a walk with others along the Tennant Canal - one thing I noted was the lack of towpath headroom under the bridges. The boats didn't have cabins so the centre of the arch didn't need to be all that high but the 'oss would have needed to go under as well! This one, using a 5 foot 8 inch engineering graduate for scale, was one of the taller ones and had no alternative route. One required me to be on my hands and knees to get under, but one could walk round it instead. So were they using large ferrets to pull boats on this canal? If not, how did they get the horses under the bridges?

I don't presume this, but whenever I take those two pups to the canal towpath the walk is slowed down by people (usually women and children) stopping to pet them. I don't ask, I don't offer, it just happens

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!