carpet wallah

Mathematicians out there? If it takes about 5 minutes to get a boat through bridge 102 (as it did yesterday). ... how long does it take to get the same boat through a twisty 2,000+ yard tunnel? Perhaps it has already been achieved? Anybody know? Anybody waiting? And Blisworth? Seem to remember it being rather unfriendly to high cabin edges. ... that’s gonna take an awful lot of bow thrusting in the process?

Just speechless. .....

It's now about 4ft deeper than shown in the photo

Should make for an interesting discussion on Friday evening - folks reviewing six entirely different episodes at the same time

Precisely. We went through (both ways), three weeks ago. There were elderly folks (some even older than me), who had to be gently shepherded off the foot-bridges, away from the lock gear and even out of the arc of the balance beams, just to be able to work the locks, bless 'em. Perhaps some signs on the bridges, keeping visitors to the towpath side, would help. The odd stray gongoozler could then be rounded up by the volockies.

Sorry, are you seriously suggesting that the casualty was NOT airlifted to hospital? If so, I would suggest that you are mis-reading the article.She was treated on the scene by the medics and then taken to hospital in the air ambulance. This is clear from other reports. Given the circumstances, I cannot imagine any other outcome.

How tragic. Bobbybass, you describe the situation most eloquently. Unfortunately, with huge capital investment in these inappropriate boats, the hire company is stuck where it is. Maybe they could be prevailed upon to change their advice to hirers on the use of the thrusters, but that may involve educating the company themselves as to the problem in the first place. Sadly, they don't appear to be in strongest of financial health, so they may have other things on their minds.

"Running Scared", directed by the late, great David Hemmings. Starred Gayle Hunnicutt (his wife) and Robert Powell. Mrs C W and I were a couple of days into our honeymoon on a hire boat out of North Kilworth in September, 1971, when we were held up, with a lot of other peeps, by a sports car (Austin Healey?) in the cut, just before the bridge. It had a dummy at the wheel and was held up by flotation bags. There was another, identical car on the bridge, together with the ramp they were using to launch the "speeding" car into the canal. The film crew claimed that there was an explosive charge in the car, but after the mood amongst the waiting boaters started getting ugly, a diver pulled the floating car to one side and allowed us to wiggle gently past. As a boater of 2 days experience, I was rather proud of my manoeuvre actually. I read that someone found a print of the film a few years ago and it was shown in Braunston community hall (?). Gayle Hunnicutt was the guest of honour!

Tim and Pru are in London. Bless you Pru, you've fogotten the ground paddles, dear and you're trying to drown Tim.

Water saving, possibly. If boats start from top and bottom at midday, more chance of one up, one down, less boatless locks being emptied into the Monty, more water into Hurleston Reservoir.

Can there really be two of these guys out there? About 6 years ago we were cruising up the Macc/Peak Forest when we "caught up" with an OwnerShips boat out of Heritage Marina. If I were to describe his activities and the situation, I could just have cut and pasted WV's exact words - well under 1 mph, never once looked back. It was the end of the day and, after half an hour or so, I assumed, wrongly, that he was looking for somewhere to moor. Eventually, when there was the opportunity to pass, he blanked us. B*gger me, if, on the way back to Etruria a few days later, we didn't get stuck behind him again, going even slower! This time we decided to stop for lunch and passed his moored boat later, the occupants having gone Into town. I eventually concluded that the guy had mental health problems, his behaviour was that bizarre. Could he still be out there???? Did you notice if it may have been an ex OwnerShips boat, WV?

I think the situation is that PLM Ltd are still doing the day to day running of the Marina. PL is still the sole Director of PLM.Roy is the sole director of PLT, who hold the Marina freehold and the NAA and therefore CaRT would deal directly with Roy in respect of the NAA

Lovely work, Dave. On the subject of your post, I have to say that your experience is much closer to my recent observations of being passed whilst moored. I simply don't recognise the picture painted by many of the contributors to the recent "What's the Hurry?" thread, which gave the exactly opposite view. With the inevitable exceptions, I feel that general courtesies are as well or better observed than in the past.

Business Rates - About £25k - not exactly covered by the Petty Cash methinks

There are no courts, there are no court fees or lawyers fees. There is no administrator. There is nothing to sell, because the only asset is the freehold, which goes back to M Steadman under his mortgage. There were no tradespeople, as these deal with PLM, which is still trading. The only other creditors are CRT and the long lease holders, who will be satisfied if the successors to the title of the freehold (PLT) honour their leases. ....and if I was a millionaire, I would pay the IP out of my own money, to make sure that my interests were protected.

I don't think the title of "Company Director" holds that much kudos. When I was getting married, at the age of 25, many, many years ago, I had to arrange with the curate of my parish church for the Banns to be read. When filling in the form, he asked for my occupation. ............" er.. company director" was my hesitant reply. He retorted "What, of a market stall ?". What a pr*ck, still annoys me when I think about it !

The "mortgage or charge" you mention is a Mortgage Debenture by National Westminster Bank. This is a floating charge over all the assets of the company and gives the Bank extensive powers, especially the right to appoint an administrator or administrative receiver. Assuming the Bank is owed money by PLM, when they see the latest accounts they will wanting to speak to PL quite urgently, I would think. Considering PLM has relatively little in tangible assets, the Bank might be considered imprudent to have loaned more than a limited figure to PLM. That is why I have speculated that most of the £1.1 is probably extra borrowings from Steadman. The new company has to be there to acquire PLM's assets if the Bank realises that the company is insolvent, make a preemtive strike and sends in the receivers. Edited to add Of course, Mr Steadman may make the preemtive strike himself and go for volutary liquidation.

Well, the accounts for PLM are now filed at Companies House. Even though the £1.6m owing from QMP was still live as at 30/6/13, it has now been written off in the accounts, in view of subsequent events. PLM now has a nett black hole of £1.1m +. Apart from any money that may or may not be owed to the bank, one would be tempted to speculate that this is mainly unsecured lending to the company M Steadmen. If so, this is more money that he stands to lose in this tangled web.

Last summer we heard of two separate sightings of water voles near Hurleston on the Shroppie. That'll be the end of them, then. How sad. I still haven't seen a water vole for decades, but we did see a mink moving it's young, one by one, in a BW yard near the top of the Hatton Flight. It was just as you describe.

I wouldn't go to Chester, if I were you. Friends took me there on a canal boat, 47 years ago and I've been hooked ever since. Seriously, though, the 21.5 hrs and 43 hours quoted are red herrings. I have looked at CanalPlan myself and it reckons the RETURN journey, Anderton to Christleton would take about 4 x 7.5 hour days. Allowing for a bit of inexperience and high season, you should still have a bit of time to look round. You will have to queue at some of the locks, time for a chat. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Print off the CanalPlan route, before you go. It will have all the estimated timings and waypoints. You will find it a useful guide and reassurance when you are working out where you want to be at the end of each day. Keep an eye on the little one and enjoy !

Here's a date for your diaries: 31 March 2014. That's the last day that the accounts for Pillings Lock Marina Ltd, to 30/6/13, have to be filed at Companies House. The interesting thing is that the last set of accounts show quite a healthy position - EXCEPT that they show current assets of about £1.6m a similar figure to the unsecured debt from QMP. On the face of it, that asset may largely evaporate when the IP has finished his work. Balancing that were current creditors of about £1.2m. One could speculate that the bulk of that may be additional money put in by Mr Steadman and possibly some borrowing from NatWest, who have a mortgage debenture filed. I believe this gives the bank fairly extensive powers if they started getting twitchy about any loans or overdrafts they have extended to a client company. It will be interesting to see what qualifying comments the accountant has appended, when the accounts appear. Watch this space. .......

Can I ask: does a bizarre decision by an Australian High Court count as legal precedent in England?

1) This is the source of the intrigue here: QUORN MARINA PROPERTIES LIMITED NOTES TO THE ABBREVIATED ACCOUNTS For the Year Ended 30 June 2009 1.2 GOING CONCERN During the year an impairment provision of £1,344,520 was made on THE COMPANY'S FREEHOLD PROPERTY and as a result the company had a balance sheet deficit of £1,739,563 on the 30 June 2009. The accounts have been prepared on a going concern basis on the understanding the the parent company, other group company and M Steadman will continue to financially support the company until sufficient future rental income is received to repay them. 2). I would suggest that the reason that the long term liability to Steadman hasn't altered is that it's set up as a fixed, interest only mortgage. It may have been JL that disclosed (who else would know?) that regular payments of £10,000 were being made by QMP to MS. If this was interest, it would not be an unreasonable rate on £2.75m. What gets me (and a lot of other people on here) is what the hell kind of lease agreement exists between QMP and PLM? If it were a normal, arms length transaction between a landlord and lessee it would be for a set term and rent. If the lessee had insufficient income from moorers to pay the rent, why should the landlord need financially supporting by the tenant?

No, no, no. I thought we had sorted this out. Whatever else is true or false, QMP own the FREEHOLD. Apart, from anything else, it says so in the 2009 accounts, where the freehold was devalued from about £3.6 m from memory, to the value stated in the last accounts.