Jimbobs

Thanks for the replies everyone and many thanks Jen-in-Wellies - the British Canoeing website has a mine of information, such as: “In nearly all cases there is a Public Right of Navigation (PRN) on tidal waters. This includes the seas, estuaries and tidal rivers – up to their historic Normal Tidal Limit (NTL).” And, as it happens, there’s an ordnance survey map in the house we’re staying at which has the NTL marked. Every day’s a school day and I certainly know more this afternoon than I did this morning. PeterScott - we walked down the river in Berwick this morning at low tide and there certainly wouldn’t be any boating at that time!

I’ve been thinking for a while about getting a small motor boat, something like a small dory with an outboard, that I can trailer around and pop in the odd river or take to the coast. I’m on hols in Northumberland at the moment and was walking along the Tweed, a bit upstream from Berwick, and thought that it would be lovely to have a potter up the river. According to the Boatlaunch website, there’s a public slipway in Berwick so it would be possible to get a boat in, but the river isn’t listed as navigable on either the CRT or IWA websites. There’s a trip boat that runs from Berwick and goes up the river, and it’s a pretty big boat, so the river is obviously deep enough. I’ve searched online and I can’t find anything about a navigation authority that covers the Tweed. I’m not sure you can get ever so far upstream, probably 10 miles-ish, and it would almost definitely depend on tides. Assuming that the boat was CRT licensed, insured etc, is there any reason why I couldn’t just drop a boat in at Berwick and potter as far upstream as the depth would allow?

I think you might be reading that wrong - I’m reading it as a licence for EITHER trailable boats OR for boats with a non-CRT mooring. My understanding is that this is exactly the licence you need if you keep a boat at home.

OP, have you seen these folding boats? https://nestawayboats.com/shop/portabote-fold-flat-boats/ They seem to get reasonable reviews…

Good effort! While we’re on the subject of Nottingham though - Castle Marina needs adding.

Well, I for one am massively impressed by your skills and can’t wait to see how this turns out so please keep posting updates!

I would add that, if you have time to watch many YouTube videos, then this might be a good place to start: It’s quite a good insight into just how much bloody hard work is involved in a ‘project boat’. It certainly put me off the thought of attempting a restoration project!

What are the issues with parallel hybrids that makes them inferior? There are a lot of builders offering them at the moment, but are they all doomed to be the Betamax of the boating world??

It was still there on Saturday. I stopped at the water point between it and the bridge and a local wandered past and got chatting. According to him, the boat is now stuck as it’s too fat to get through a couple of bridges further on and some repairs to a towpath under a bridge behind it now mean it can’t get back either. He reckons it’s been there for about a year….

Looking good! This is my favourite thread on this forum - please keep the updates coming…

I thought Progress looked familiar. She was featured in July’s Waterways World - being used as a travelling stage for music performances on the Oxford Canal. I think that’s why she’s got the rope around the deck - to stop over enthusiastic musicians from falling in. Maybe the venture didn’t make as much money as the owner thought it would…

According to one of the Facebook groups our little gang of Einsteins decided to moor overnight in the lock. The lower gates leaked during the night and hey presto! I wonder what the angle got to before the first one woke up??

Well, in the last YouTube vlog that I watched the couple got stuck in ice with 2 full cassettes, and hardly any water or food then got Covid and ended up on the wrong side of a stoppage leaving them stuck on the Erewash for 3 months so not all vlogs are roses and castles… What I have found interesting is that quite a few of the vloggers seem to have moved aboard thinking that the lifestyle will help them with various mental health maladies only to discover that incidents like the above, plus dodgy batteries, breakdowns, mysterious engine problems etc. mean that the idyllic lifestyle is actually just as stressful as the rat-race plus mortgage they think they’ve left behind.

I assume there’s also a ‘deterrent’ aspect to the cancellation fee. Otherwise there would be nothing to discourage someone who needed a 6 month licence from buying the cheaper-per-month annual licence and then cancelling after 6 months. You may consider it unfair, but it’s certainly not fraud if it’s stated up-front in the Ts & Cs…

No VAT as such, but there is stamp duty which scales with the value of the house being purchased: https://www.gov.uk/stamp-duty-land-tax