john6767

Make sure your roof is clear for the tunnel and the entrance bridge to Hawne Basin, both are tight.

My understanding is that it is the summit area around Harecastle tunnel that is impacted by water shortage, therefore you should be fine with that trip as you don’t need to go near that area.

We have just come of the Llangollen, and decided to come back to the Midlands via the Shroppie, the warnings about the T&M in the Harecastle area seemed to rule that out as we did not have to go that way. We are still planning on using the T&M from Great Haywood to Fradley, so I hope that is ok, as that decision is just based on cutting out the lock count by not going up to the Birmingham plateau.

If I had a pound for every time someone has given 2 short on a blind bend or bridge over the last month, I would have about 5 pounds. I don’t think in any case they were turning to port though 😀.

This was a volunteer not an employee, but going up Atherstone top lock one of the lock keepers said that he kept hearing this strange tale of a lock with only a foot drop in the direction that we were going and did I know about it, and was it really true.

That is what we do too, so far the handrail paint has survived.

I guess it had to stop because of COVID. We have done it twice in the past, I think it is a good idea for the CRT people who are office based. The family members one if new I think. We took one person the first time, and two the second time. For me more than two does not seem a good idea.

How does HVO work in terms of duty?

I tried it, and surprisingly canalplan treats Sharpness to Portishead as tidal river not seaway. It looks and smells like the sea to me!

Down the Severn is the way to go if you want to cross the Bristol Channel. Most people are not ever going to want to (or be brave enough to) do that and would just go GU, Oxford, Thames.

I would have thought that a lot of the 750k value of that property is in the land, I would think knock it down and build two 5 bed detached house on the plot at perhaps 1.2M each and there would be 500k profit in it.

Dorridge has more trains going to Birmingham, as it is the terminus for the local trains on that line, and all the fast, ie London, trains stop there as well. I would have thought that Warwick Parkway and Warwick would have less trains than Dorridge, but they do the the funny cross country Stratford trains, which I have never fully understood. We live near to Whitlocks End station, and similarly that is the terminus for local trains on the line to Stratford, and has a train every 20 mins to Birmingham, with going on to Worcester or Kidderminster and others terminating at Snow Hill.

Lapworth and Hatton have limited stopping trains, but I would say all trains stop at Warwick Parkway. If a fast train is running late then Warwick station is the one that gets dropped out.

If you want to leave the boat for a month at a time just take a 1 month temp mooring in a marina, then you can use any marina that has space and are not limited to a few. The marina we are at do regular visual checks of the boats, but with COVID and the enforced situation of boats being unattended for long periods they have introduced the facility where you can pay a small additional fee and have the boat checked inside and the bilges checked etc. I would not be surprised if others don’t do the same if you ask.

In the main it is concrete edge near Hatton station, so most people don’t bother stopping thete as it would be on pins. I have done it a number of times, so if you are happy to leave the boat on pins it is fine. There is a short piece of piling by the house by the station car part near to the canal bridge, there is often a boat on there. There is also Lapworth station which is close to Kingswood junction. If you stop at Saltisford arm then it is near to Warwick Parkway station which is close to Hatton bottom lock. I guess it is, do you want to stop above or below Hatton locks.

I think going slower would be the key, that is way too fast for anyone to be going into a blind bridge hole on a bend.

If you mean to turn left at Isis lock and go down past the long term mooring then I would say anything longer than perhaps 30ft would need to reverse back. If you just want to turn round you can go down Isis lock and turn below, there is a sign at the lock explaining you to do the safely with the flow.