Athy

So, at a guesstimate, about a 10% increase in boaters' grumpiness during the last year. I hope that next year's sample will be cheerier - boating should be about enjoying the canals!

It looks as if the first one refers to the area through which a canal runs, and the second one to the canals themselves.

Don't get parinoid about it. (Yes, I know....)

I absolutely do, yes, thanks for explaining!

A pleasing thought - but how does a name starting in Parg keep coninuity with Parbella?

But if it's intended for living on, you live inside it and, as with many such boats, the interior is pleasingly spacious. I especially like the comfortable-looking lounge and the shelves with all those books on them - books on our n/b tend to be stacked vertically!

Thanks, Alan. This thread is now being locked, so please reply on the other one which is still extant.

I too am getting many such e-mail notifications. They seemed to start the last time that there was some sort of forum software alteration. I found my setting sand clicked the one which said "no notifications" but still they come, dozens per day, most of which appear to be about Brexit!

I remember that CART's people did have alook at the work but I don't know why. We're going over to the boat this weekend, and if the Local Moorer Who Knows All is there - a very well-informed chap - I will ask him and I'll report back to you.

Are you suggesting that the work done in Cropredy is in some way underhand or illegal? Do you have any evidence to substantiate this view?

The actual festival runs from Thursday August 8th to Saturday August 10th. During those days, and the following day, the village is to all intents and purpose simpassible by road. But they don't let the campers and caravanners in until the day before the event, so the flood of humanity is really there for only about four days. If you mean by canal, you're quite possibly too late already - available mooring spaces normally start filling up about now, and if you want to moor you may have to stop before the village, or of course go through it and take the first available space. There is, however, an element of "Who dares wins" about mooring spaces, and you may find a fairly central one only days before the festival. After it, the boats disperse gradually: I'd leave it until the following weekend if I were you.

The offside bank at Cropredy has been tidied up and dug out, apparently by the new owner of the village's Manor House. It was done last year. There are rumours of future moorings and of a small marina, or at least a group of sideways-on moorings (which was first mooted about the same time as the big marina, which has now of course been built). We who moor locally are "watching this space".

Well done. You were lucky that they were one of the people who, against informed advice, had a padlock on the outside of their boat. Out of interest, had there been no such external lock, what would Plan B have been?

Perhaps you could remove the words "of today" and it would still be true. In my 20s and early 30s I earned a fair salary as a schoolmaster and I thoroughly enjoyed spending most of it. It was only when I got married, and my wife told me that I wanted to buy a house, that I started saving really seriously It's nothing new.

This is perhaps because the vast majority of boats on our canals are narrowboats: in other words a similar proportion of owners moor in difficult places, be their craft wide or narrow.