David Mack

A young sardine saw her first submarine; She was scared as she looked through a peephole. "Oh come, come, come!" said the sardine's mum, "It's only a tin full of people".

No way are they modern 'fakes'. Nobody would have thought to do such a thing before the 1970s or 80s, and if they had been done more recently it would be well documented. The only possibility is that some unused castings (or perhaps ones recovered from demolished bridges) might have been found in the back of a depot somewhere and installed in suitable locations. My guess is that they do not date back to the canal's construction, but were added at a later date when rope wear to the original stonework was becoming an issue, and a decision was made to fit cast iron guards to all (? - or most) SU bridges. This would have been during the peak horse-drawn years, before the railways had too much impact on trade (and before motor boats rendered them unnecessary) so perhaps 3rd quarter of the 19th century?

I note that the Pipsqueak is not approved because they say they can't afford to test it, so it is not sold for use in homes.

That's 20p a kg. Most of the ones near me are looking at £1-2 per kg which makes them more expensive than smokeless fuel! A couple of years ago I bought a cubic metre of hardwood offcuts, mostly oak, from a local timber supplier. Lovely stuff to burn, and I put to one side a fair number of the larger and more regularly sharped pieces to use in craft projects (including some lovely bits of walnut). Sadly they haven't offered any more for sale since.

It also requires 8" clearance either side, so effectively still takes up quite a lot of space.

But even so, the only things that should go into your cassette toilet are pee, poo and paper (and water). Wet wipes, sanitary towels and the like won't block your cassette, but they may well block the elsan point when you empty.

But that doesn't make much of a headline!

Back in 2009 someone asked on a similar thread "What happens if I get it wrong?" and I posted some pictures from the MAIB Lindy Lou report and added the words "and a dead girlfriend". That post got deleted. But sometimes shock tactics are needed! (The owner of Lindy Lou got out of the boat when he woke in the night to find the boat on fire, his girlfriend did not.)

Regulation 7 (3), last line:

But it is exactly what many with a home mooring in a marina do, so you can't be faulted for that. I don't see that the marina has any say in the matter. If you pay for a mooring, and you have no other declared home mooring, then it is de facto your home mooring at that time. You can advise CRT of that, but I don't see that you have to tell the marina.

Absolutely. The low point of towpath condition would have been around 1970 ish. I can remember lengths of the GU and North Stratford near I grew up where the towpath had entirely disappeared right up to the roots of the towpath hedge, and the choice was either to walk through shallow water where the towpath had once been or to divert through the hedge and walk through the adjacent field. Around 1973 BW started a programme (in our area at least) of sheet piling the edge and dredging the channel, dumping most of the dregings behind the piling. The result was a horrible gloopy soggy mess between the piling and the hedge, which took about a year to dry out, and settled irregularly. But over time this morphed into the towpaths we have today. My worry now is that this piling is now about 50 years old, and you can already see places where it has rusted through at water level. I can't see the funds being available to repeat the job, but it is going to be needed in some areas in the years ahead.

And give us some pictures of what you think are fake ones.

Some of the period photographs @mark99 has been posting on the forum were taken within the lifetime of some of us here and show towpaths in excellent condition.