magpie patrick

You can have a separate dining area without it being a dinette - the term usually applies to fixed seating and table, often with the table dropping between the seats to form a bed. Free standing furniture is an option.

I'm not usually moved by celebrity death, not that I'm callous but I don't actually know them, they've often reached a great age, their art lives on and death comes to us all, BUT Tim West was a great actor and narrator, and in Great Canal Journeys his compassionate handling of Pru's dementia was heart warming and a real example of deep love, an example to anyone in a relationship when the cruel cards of old age are being played. Via the TV screen they have taken me to canals abroad that I shall almost certainly never see for myself. The repeats will seem different and a little empty knowing he is no longer with us. RIP Tim West, and I trust someone will look after Pru for you.

It would be listed building consent and that would need a justification for the works.

But the steel gates will be around twice the price and the wooden ones will last 25 years, so given present budget constraints it makes sense to use wood, assuming of course the gates need replacing.

This is where it could get even messier TWT took over the Rochdale Canal (I assume this means they bought the RCC) TWT gave BW a contract to manage and maintain the Rochdale Canal TWT merged with BW when CRT was formed.... How does it work when CRT have a contract with themselves! None of this voids the arguments over grant contract duration btw

I would have to look at the funding contract - however I think there is a lot of confusion above about what a charge entails, and whether a funding contract is one. The typical wording is along the lines of "and shall be maintained for the approved purposes for a period of thirty years...." to not maintain the scheme for the approved purposes is a breach of contract. BW tried to stop trips at Standedge and got pulled up on this one. I don't know whether breach of grant contract would show up as a charge the way that these other items do - I suspect it wouldn't. I also suspect the managers of many grant aided schemes (not just canal ones) 20plus years after the event, are blissfully unaware of these condition until they get bitten by them.

I don't know what was purchased but it's a fair bet that Town Centre Securities (who owned the Rochdale Canal pre-restoration) transferred any obviously profitable sites to another entity before selling the canal. For the canal itself the physical restrictions, diversion of the water supply/drainage function and the planning policies on place to protect it by the late 1990s would make it almost impossible to develop it. If it were now, the owners would struggle to give it away.

Thanks Allan, you have confirmed what I suspected Where that leaves the rest of the grant I don't know - and no I don't have my own copy of the project file! To elaborate more on why this isn't "how tis done" Bear in mind thgat to get approval for the capital grant the applicant has to have a plan as to how maintenance will be undertaken. Let us suppose that a grant of £10 million was approved to restore canal and that it had to be maintained in a navigable condition for 30 years. On year 29 it closes and investigation finds that the owners have no intention of trying to reopen it, arguing "we almost made it". If this was because of a technical failure way beyond their control (perhaps canal washed away in extreme floods) and enormously expensive to fix on an otherwise well maintained canal the breach of contract would have occurred in year 29 due to circumstances beyond their control, still a breach, still a clawback but not a very big one. Now suppose the same owner had done no maintenance at all in the hopes the capital works would last 30 years but, not surprisingly all the gates are rotten and none of the locks work anymore, the canal is silted and one season of non-use has led to widespread reed growth blocking the channel. Although the breach of contract regarding navigation started in year 29 the failure of maintenance started many years earlier. Could be a massive clawback with interest.

No, only in monitoring it's delivery which would mean I had to be fully aware of the conditions That's not how it works - there is no agreed repayments (too big a risk of it seeming "worth it" to breach the contract). To fail to see out the maintenance period would be a breach of contract that would invite clawback of the grant. The clawback clause is potentially the entire grant with interest, the amount would be determined by negotiation, arbitration or the courts and would depend on the circumstances. It's the reference to "ordinary stock" that intrigues me, that's not a grant as such. It sounds like a reference to purchasing the Rochdale Canal Company or similar (which would be "ordinary stock") but I don't know that this is what happened. Certainly the canal had to be purchased by the Waterways Trust, although I don't know whether they bough the company to achieve this.

I think I am that other poster, so to clarify, all grants for works have terms not only for spending the money, but for maintaining the asset on which it has been spent. The first means, for example, that the Rochdale Canal restoration had to be completed in accordance with the approved purposes, otherwise the money would need to be handed back, the second means that on completion it has to be maintained "according to the approved purposes" for a period of time. I do not recall what this period was for the Rochdale but I have never known the maintenance period to be less than 30 years and on the HLF funded section of the Cotswolds it is 80 years. Other grant bodies have their own approved purposes and periods over which the works must be maintained I would have to check what that charge of securities is for; the short particulars suggest it wasn't for an £11.5 million pound grant, not just because of the amount but because of the reference to "ordinary stock" - a grant is not "ordinary stock". The canal was in private ownership before restoration (Technically the Rochdale Canal Company, who were in turn owned by City Centre Securities) so it may be that. The Millenium Commission was dissolved in 2006 and it's assets and liabilities were transferred to the Big Lottery Fund, which is now normally known by the name National Lottery Community Fund

Marple locks are caving in one every couple of years at £2-3 million a pop - steel gates is small change.

Those were the days - five people on a forty footer!

I think you're right - I can't find an advert of the period but even as I wrote it "Castle Cruisers" didn't seem right.

Given its Bosley Locks and the magazine is dated November 1977 then I'd go for the one in Macclesfield - Castle Cruisers Not as much as you'd think for a hire boat in the north west. Time was almost every hire boat within striking distance of the Llangollen has them. Dad took some students up the Llangollen in a Willow Wren Kearnes 70 foot 12 berth, in the days when they had wooden cabins, it didn't have bridge bars and half way through the trip the A level woodwork student had an impromptu project resulting from a lift bridge incident

I get a similar noise in my flat if the wind is blowing across the bathroom window at the right speed - took me a long time to work out what it was. My flat doesn't move, your boat presumably does, which would add another variable. Should perhaps add my bathroom window is always open a crack for passive ventilation, other windows are not.

Both great photos, but I like this one especially - just look at the way that cargo is retained!

Unless the other guy was thr bridge keeper one wonders what the honorable member's gripe with him was? I mean, one doesn't normally get in a heated discussion about such things with random strangers!

Heaven knows where this belongs, but it's not general boating. As the lock in question is now closed I though H&H would do! Photo below taken from the IWI website where the 2019 World Canal Conference is featured. The lock is on the old route of the Grand Canal in Yangzhou, a city on the north bank of the Yangtze. The lock drops to the level of the Yangtze from the canal level. What drew my attention was the odd shaped inlet on the right side of the lock Next is a pic of the same lock in 2007, taken from the Flickr account of John Meckley. It shows the lock in use and thus it is clear that the inlet is part of the chamber And finally a view from Google Earth which clearly shows the inlet leading to what looks to be a non-navigable drainage channel. The weed growth suggests the lock is no longer in operation and there are parallel locks on the new canal route Question - im pretty sure no one will know but if anyone wants to speculate.... why would a drainage channel join in a lock in this way? Why put the inlet in rather than just a pipe? Why not above or below the lock? The lock is fairly new (post war) so there would have been some flexibility over it's location For those who are curious, these are the locks on the new route

Shire Cruisers get hit from both directions - floods AND frequent lock failures!

I'd heard that too, and am certainly aware that rivers are closed "more than they used to be" - that's another pressure on hire operators.

Let me put it another way - how much margin would it be wise to allow over the combined width of the boats! an extra foot? two feet? three?

Which would start by increasing licence fees for hire boats, which would result in even more giving up! One big problem from the commercial perspective is that fees would have to go up before the system improves. On another note, I believe the owner of the company in Skipton is 66, and thus has one eye on retirement and certainly won't want to carry on is it's getting harder (I can relate to that - I'll carry on so long as it's straightforward). I suspect business owners in their sixties seeking to get out will become more common - like everything else about the canals, the demographic of business owners is probably getting older

Indeed - I normally add between 600mm and one metre for pier width - but I'm specifically looking at width for boats to prevent the likelihood of them damaging each other by scraping or banging against each other - yes I know you can use fenders but to do that there has to be room for them!

Fair comment, although looking at most marina's I've been to there isn't such a restriction - whilst the boats don't touch one can reach across and shake hands with your neighbour and I'm sure flames could leap that gap To add, the two narrow boats next to each other in front of the building is the kind of thing I have in mind. Whilst t wasn't what I was asking, I guess that for the longer piers the gap is bigger than that required just to moor a third boat as boats actually have to travel through it? So pair of moorings the gap might be sixteen feet but for those with a passage between them it might be more like 26 feet?