David Mack

An update on the condition of the boat which sank at Barrow. Rather shocking to see how the strop which was used during the recovery has ripped through the cabin side plating.

Not as expensive as I thought. There's 60' and 70' residential narrow boat moorings currently available at Engineers Wharf, both at £8300 per annum. https://www.watersidemooring.com/366-engineers-wharf-residential-l1/Vacancies#berth4420

Much easier to walk up the offside than to go round via the towpath.

The paddles at Knowle are bigger than on the other 1930s widening locks - labelled as 3ft square I recall whereas the other flights have 2ft 6in square paddles. Presumably because the locks are deeper, 5 wide locks having replaced 6 narrow locks.

I don't mean to be rude, but you need to do far more research about the basics of owning and living on a boat before you worry about the finer points of which boat to buy. There are loads of boaters all wanting to be in and around London, and the place is basically full. They have grown in numbers over the last two or three decades, both encouraged by lifestyle articles in the media, and driven by the increasingly unaffordable cost of renting or buying in the capital. Official permanent moorings are few and expensive, so most London boaters are so-called 'continuous cruisers' engaged in an ongoing process of musical chairs shuffling about just enough to keep CRT's enforcement people off their backs. And many struggle to manage the movement, the need to fill water tanks, empty toilets, buy diesel and gas, generate enough electricity and not knacker the batteries, heat the boat etc., all while doing a 9-5 job in an office. If you are in London 'several days a week' you won't have time to get any distance away in your non-working days. Cambridge and Ely are a fortnight's travel away from London, via the narrow beam Northampton Arm. The Bedford-Milton Keynes Waterway is a pie-in-the-sky project which will take decades to complete if it ever happens. The only alternative route to the Anglian waters is via the sea or on the back of a lorry. Sorry if that sounds brutal, but going starry-eyed and uninformed into boat ownership looks like an effective way of burning through your inheritance and ending up without a lot to show for it.

Worth submitting a bug report - the canalplan owners do respond and try to correct any user problems.

Quite a lot got added in 1974, but not all of it BW/CRT waters, including: Ashton & Lower Peak Forest Caldon Great Ouse Upper Avon

Thatching still happens, so it must come from somewhere!

Ah, but do you need proof? Looks much the same today.

Don't think you could pull up a series of rivets a bit at a time with that one. Looks to be all or nothing.

Surely you can empty most of it by simply running a cold tap and using your existing water pump.

Or if I make a substantial donation to the political party in government, do I get to put my point of view directly to ministers on the issues of the day?

BW didn't build that. It and the nearby Summit Tunnel over the Old Main Line were built in the mid 1970s to accommodate the road now named Telford Way, to provide more traffic capacity, and also to remove heavy vehicles from Galton Bridge. It was said at the time that a bridge of similar span to Galton Bridge had been considered during the design stages, but rejected as more expensive than constructing a tunnel. But by the time it was built, the 1973 oil crisis had put up the cost of transporting the imported fill material so much, that a long span high level bridge would have been cheaper! It was also rumoured that the road builders had offered to put in twin towpaths, but BW said not necessary. Pathways over the portal each end were built to connect to the two truncated ends of the other towpath, but they don't seem to have been much used, and now the other towpath is completely overgrown and impassable.

Still more than twice the price of the freestanding cooker I linked to earlier. I wonder how that electronic clock/timer copes with 240Vac from a boat inverter.

That has to be applied to the wet paint with a sieve. Going to be fun trying to do that on 4 inch wide gunwales without losing most of it over the side!

That footbridge seems to have been closed for ages. What is actually wrong with it? I guess with there being a swing bridge alongside it is a low priority for repair, so will just moulder away until it becomes unsafe and is demolished.

I'm curious what issues you are having between Rochdale and Manchester. There are no stoppages listed on the CRT website. Although it is heavily locked, it's less than two days run from Rochdale to Castlefield and there are few places on this length where I would be willing to leave a boat unattended while waiting for a boat mover to be available. If you must leave the boat, the only places I would consider would be above Slattocks or by the Irk aqueduct.

There's lots of glass boats out there. They just have the glass in fibre form, encased in resin.

Well I responded to your first post, then got my head snapped off for not having reflected your later post. Makes me wonder why I bothered really!

True. Although the Poll Tax relied on occupancy information - presumably the electoral roll with some follow up checking to ensure people weren't ducking the electoral roll to avoid the Poll Tax. It wouldn't be that difficult to merge the ER data and council tax valuation data to levy a tax per occupant at a level based on the house valuation.

Perhaps inspired by this at Hyde Lock on the Staffs & Worcs: There were gates like this here in the 1980s, which later disappeared (or perhaps just rotted away). But when I was there last year I saw they had been reinstated.

They are a business. And they are located at the end of a branch so much of the passing trade never gets to their location. I guess they make far more money letting the berth out as a permanent mooring than reserving it for diesel sales. Then there are cost savings in not having to maintain a diesel tank and pump, no need to comply with all the relevant safety regulations or trading standards requirements to have the pump calibration checked. And probably cheaper on the insurance too. I suspect that only those boatyards that have a hire fleet can actually justify running a diesel supply service.