cheshire~rose

What a judgemental individual you are! Firstly, the volunteers appearing in that photo are predominantly not members of Chesterfield Canal Trust. They are volunteers that have chosen to come along for the day to help maintain their canal on a programme organised by Chesterfield Canal Trust in partnership with CRT. I am sure those in that photo who are in their 30's, work full time and chose to give a day off to assist the programme of works will appreciate you wholeheartedly ageist opinion of them. In fact 6 out of the 10 volunteers that day work full time and we get fully subscribed at weekends because so many people who usually work Monday to Friday choose to come out at weekends. Perhaps I should tell them they should not come as they need to go and do some overtime instead? I will conceded that the programme is predominantly organised by this old fogey and her husband (even though I am still have several years to go before I qualify for a pension). Yes we find things to do in retirement, we organise stuff so the workers can join us on their day off. Today we have been joined by a lovely chap in his 30's who works in the NHS. He decided to book some annual leave to join us. Also a lass in her 30's who usually packs dog food for a living. She wants to come back with her 16 year old son when she can slot it in as she says he would love it. It seems they should have more important things to do with their time according to you? I just spend my time thoroughly enjoying myself surrounded by passionate individuals from all walks of life. Each of them has a part to play, we all have our strengths and weaknesses and that is how working as a team comes into it's own. Experience comes with age, an experienced boat handler is important to keep a deep draughted boat from going aground when you need to reach litter or vegetation. Experienced people overseeing volunteers who might never have been on a boat before keeps them safe, clearly because they are retired they should hang up their windlass and don their slippers and take up a pipe because in your view people who have retired have no value to the restoration or maintenance of the canal system. I am finished with this discussion. I refuse to engage any further with someone who spouts such a lot of drivel passing it off as factual when you clearly have spent no time at all researching what the truth is about the restoration of the Chesterfield Canal before forming your opinion. Your opinions are, in my view, very offensive to those who so freely give their time to benefit the canals. That includes me.

I am sorry but - Clearly your ability to read what I have written without reading your own agenda into it is a struggle. I apologise of I come across as self righteous but I have far too many conversations with people who have had a chat down the pub with someone who says the canal will never get joined up and they believe them. These people have rarely done any proper research on how far the restoration has got themselves and so they form an opinion based on hearsay. or, misreading what someone else has written as you have done here. There is a wealth of information on Chesterfield canal Trust's website that you can read if you are genuinley interested. I apologise that I do not have time to start digging out the appropriate links to answer all your questions now and clearly my own words are insufiicient to convince you that this restoration really is on a trajectory to be completed, and to be completed during the lifetime of a lot of people reading this thread. I would suggest if you want to hear this information from people who know far more detail than I do - drop a line to Rod Auton, his email address is on the website. As for the basin, the finger pontoons in the plan were lost with the £250K funding that went down the pan with the arrival of HS2. Elsewhere on The line of the Chessie there is another lovely marina to be. It is not linked up yet but it is all ready to go except for finger pontoons. It is currently a fishing lake. Chesterfield Canal Trust do not own the basin. The pontoons that are probably going in there will be for narrowboats to bring an income to Derbyshire County Council. They are the navigation authority and so are responsible for maintaining the canal at that end. Meanwhile I am sorry I do not have time to discuss this in more depth with you myself. I am busy assisting CRT to maintain the other end of the canal This was the team we were supervising yesterday. Just 11 volunteers! We worked on a short section between Shireoaks Social club and The Lock Keeper at Worksop. We picked 16 bags of litter and carried out planned preventative maintenance on Doefield Dunn and Haggonfields locks. It was a lovely sunny day and everyone enjoyed themselves. We would never manage to get 16 bags of litter from Staveley! That was a total of 110 volunteer hours our team gave yesterday. Tomorrow is day 6 of 10 days spent spring cleaning The Chesterfield Canal across just 2 weeks. We have a total of 91 volunteer days tied up in improving the canal for those who use it. There are a total of 22 brand new volunteers joining us during this period. (two more had to pull out due to testing positive for covid) Earlier last week out teams were on the summit pound spending their days getting branches and logs out of the water (as well as PPM at locks) - rural or urban The Python team deal with whatever they come across. There is a lot of organising goes into this type of programme, there are a lot of volunteers we need to look after, many of whom have never been on a boat before. If I come across as self righteous then I apologise, I am busy and have not had the time I would have liked to formulate a fuller response to you questions. Perhaps I am optimistic because I spend my time surrounded by passionate people wanting to give something back to their canal and the communities they run through. We clear up the dog mess, we clear away used syringes, and get down on hands and knees to get the cans and bottles from under the hedges where %^&*(*% have dumped them. I know what run down looks like, the basin is not in a run down area. Perhaps you might consider coming to join us for a day and see whether any of that optimism rubs off? You would be made very welcome. I am sorry I am unlikely to be able to respond further in this thread for the rest of this week as I have 5 of the next 6 days overseeing a team of volunteers with Python. - 51 volunteers in the next week, including 8 students and their tutors coming to join us so they can learn about the heritage of the canal, be close to nature and put something back to their community. If there is something you require an answer to perhaps you can ask it here and someone else may be able to reply - or I can check in when I get my breath back next week. Or you can direct it straight to Chesterfield Canal Trust where you will get the latest details rather than the opinion of a some boater you chatted to who had formulated his opinion on who knows what

Clearly your expectations are far higher than mere mortal volunteers can achieve. Please explain what you expected in the 12 years since 2010? You acknowledge HS2 blight which stopped the restoration in it's tracks. You have not (as far as I recall) mentioned losing the best part of two years of momentum due to covid. You say you are always pleased to see the volunteers along the canal. How often do you deviate from the sections in water to see all the volunteers working there? I can't help but wonder where this run down area is you keep mentioning? The canal runs through a former mining area around Staveley and there used to be a big chemical works at Hollingwood. They are all gone niw. There are trees and nature reserves where they used to be. There are communities of friendy people who are proud of their canal. Have you been through Rotherham recently by boat? I can see that has seen better days but equally I can see the regeneration happening. You are very welcome to your opiniin but The saddest thing is that it precisely the people, like you who keep telling everyone that it's never going to happen and it's a waste of time that make those hard working volunteers wonder why they bother. Except they do bother, and, for those who are genuinely interested in learning about the progress and understand the challenges they will continue to explain and continue to put their heart and soul into making it happen. I sincerely look forward to the day we can prove you wrong

What area are you based in? Which boaters are these you speak for? If they are like Patrick, optimistic but not "that" optimistic then that's great but if, like you, they have little or no clue about what is happening or what is planned then why would they be optimistic? If, like you, they see an empty basin that's been that way for years without understanding why, that won't make them optimistic either. The trailboat festival doesn't usually return to the same place regularly. It moves around different unconnected sites around the country. It was the optimism of the welcome they received and the very clear understanding they gained about the direction and pace of the restoration when they came last time that made them so keen to come back. If the boaters you speak to are not optimistic try speaking instead to those who know what's going on, or better still, get involved yourself. Something positive everyone can do is to respond to the consultation which takes only a few minutes of time and will ensure that DCC know just how passionate people are that this canal will get joined up and what is more it will get joined up in the foreseeable future, no matter what high speed railways, worldwide pandemics or a bypass throws at those who are getting off their backsides to make it happen

As I have already said, the development of the basin was all planned, all agreed, and funding had been sought and won. The funding had been due to arrive in CCT's bank account within days if not weeks when HS2 dropped their bombshell on 28th January 2013. https://chesterfield-canal-trust.org.uk/hs2-route-to-affect-canal-enormously/ Because there was no guarantee that any of the development would still exist 25 years after that date the funding was withdrawn with immediate effect and since then there have been thousands of hours of volunteers time spent dealing with HS2. Yes the basin has been empty for many years. Yes the only boaters are currently the two CCT trip boats but if Covid had not affected us then you would have seen another 30 odd boats on that stretch when the IWA trailboat festival was due to revisit. They has visited before in 2016. Here is a queue of boats waiting to use the lock that year and a few other photos of a busy canal I was in a meeting just before HS2 dropped in. Robin Stonebridge, the then chair, had been looking at the momentum of the restoration to that point. There was a steep upward curve which, if that trajectory could been maintained would mean we could have got the canal joined up within 10 years. I saw his reasoning and it made perfect sense. Then HS2 hit the restoration. HS2 has not yet gone away. When will it get joined up? It's all about the money. https://chesterfield-canal-trust.org.uk/2027-restoration-appeal/ That link will tell you what the current plan is. The truth is that it is looking like that plan is unlikely because that plan was created before Covid struck, however, with The Trust working with the local community looking at ways their 5 million pound levelling up fund might best be used to the benefit of the area and so after a number of years of things standing still I think it is very fair to say that there is likely to be some good news that can be reported very soon.

It doesn't need to connect to the SSY system, not yet anyway, it just needs to join up with the connected bit beyond Norwood Tunnel. The Rother Link is a future plan, which, once the canal is open again, will create a cruising ring. I think it very unlikely that there will be a couple of miles of housing estate lining the canal. Much of the area is ex-pit workings and has been designated as nature reserves. Of course it "could" never get any further and fall back into disrepair and become a stinking ditch again if people choose to pick out the things that might be a negative about this but that isn't going to happen, The basin was built to moor boats. It would be ridiculous to expect the average leisure boater to want to moor on a stretch of canal that is so short. There would be no point in investing in pontoons for them to stand empty. Building the pontoons and allowing people to moor on them will bring income which in turn will assist with the cost of maintaining the canal. The basin is not two miles long, it is just a basin. If it gets boats in it then that is progress. If you are in any doubt about whether this canal will ever get joined up again go along and chat to the guys restoring it on a Thursday or a Sunday and you might change your mind. I have spent a couple of hours in the office of George Rogers, the development Manager this afternoon. I had no doubts about the viability of the restoration before I went in there but if I had done they would have vanished in a flash. It has been a very, very long time since I came across anyone with such negative feelings about the restoration. I have no idea what has created that?

At present there are only the two CCT trip boats operate on that stretch and that is because the canal is not yet joined up. When it is the head of a 46 mile long canal there will be plenty of boats making their way to the head of navigation. Yes, it has been quite a run down area, as any area which was a mining area where all the pits closed is. It is actually looking far better in recent years than when I first moved to the area. The blight of the chemical works has gone, there are a number of properties in the area being converted and smartened up. The canal has made a huge difference to the people in Staveley and they have all taken the canal to their heart. When HS2 dropped it's self upon "their canal" the locals turned up at the public consultation in such vast numbers that the HS2 folks wondered what had hit them, they accused CCT of bussing their supporters in! They were expecting strong words from the people of Renishaw about their beautiful hall but were not ready for the strength of feeling generated by the lovely people on Staveley. There are several plans for building some quality homes in the area and if you read the title this is part of a "regeneration project" It qualifies for funding for this sort of thing because it has been run down and it has funding being made available for levelling up. Before HS2 there was a plan for the basin to have finger pontoons with permananet moorings for boats, a few small industrial units, a few starter homes and a bunk house, That went out the window when the funding CCT were due to have land in the bank account within weeks was lost because of HS2. Since then Derbyshire County Council are developing it and they are keen to incorporate boats into that plan. It could well be they are residential moorings and so it is likely that the boat owners won't be worried they can't cruise too far!

Details from Chesterfield Canal Trust: "Derbyshire County Council is running an online consultation about the Chesterfield to Staveley Regeneration Route (CSRR). It finishes on Sunday 10th April. Click here to see it: https://csrr.consultation.ai/ Follow the link to the original information page to download a leaflet explaining about it: https://chesterfield-canal-trust.org.uk/chesterfield-to-staveley-regeneration-route-consultation/?fbclid=IwAR1YoyMQlTitPUgVWJYKr4FvG27Tbo0aBf0eJXmMhtsboa-EpfivWT5wn4s "The CSRR is a proposed new road to relieve congestion on the A619 and to provide access to the Staveley Works corridor, which is a major regeneration site. The CSRR runs from the Sainsbury’s roundabout in Chesterfield to the Hall Lane roundabout in Staveley, see below. The CSRR route crosses the canal at three locations; at Tinkersick, below Wheeldon Mill Lock and just west of Bilby Lane Bridge. It is proposed to divert the canal at the first two crossings, see below. There will be no new locks. The Trust is currently reviewing the detail of the consultation to formulate our official response. When this is completed, we will post it on this page. We have already had a meeting with the team developing the plans. Our initial comments are below. The two proposed diversions of the canal are sensible because the original plan would have made the bridges very oblique – more like tunnels. The towpath must be wide at the diversions (unlike at several of the existing bridges) and there must be sufficient visibility and space for 70’ boats to pass each other. The canal is currently a rural route and therefore there must be some screening between the road and the canal, using planting or earth bunding. The operation of the canal must be fully considered; for example the Tinker Sick overflow weir must be relocated on the diversion. The connections between the pedestrian and cycle routes on the CSRR, the canal towpath and the existing and proposed development sites must be carefully considered to ensure that appropriate visibility and width is maintained throughout. In many places the current towpath is very narrow. It should be upgraded where shared use for pedestrians, cycles and equestrians is going to increase. This is particularly important at Wheeldon Mill because the new route runs along part of the separate cycle path. The route is very close to the canal just west of Hollingwood Hub. The current level for the road is about 3 metres higher than the canal. This should be lowered to ensure the canal doesn’t end up in a canyon. (This would also ensure that the housing development between this point and Hollingwood Hub is not raised above the canal.) We request that any closures of the canal and/or towpath are minimised and preferably timed to the off-season when boat traffic is lowest. Please respond to the consultation. You are free to use our comments if you so wish. If you have contrasting views on the impacts of the canal or consider there are things we have missed, we’d be happy to hear from you so that we can review our response further. Please send your comments to secretary@chesterfield-canal-trust.org.uk. This is the first of two consultations this year. This one is the key opportunity to ask for changes to be considered, because the design is still at an outline stage. The design team will be developing the scheme further after this consultation in preparation for a planning application. They will be consulting again before the planning application, but by then major changes will be more difficult." Please follow the link to the original article for more relevant information: https://chesterfield-canal-trust.org.uk/chesterfield-to-staveley-regeneration-route-consultation/?fbclid=IwAR1YoyMQlTitPUgVWJYKr4FvG27Tbo0aBf0eJXmMhtsboa-EpfivWT5wn4s This is the full route This is the western end this is the eastern end. This shows the canal diversion at Tinkersick. This shows the canal diversion at Wheeldon Mill

I had not suggested you said clubs should be avoided, the experience you relayed suggested that for you. I have no desire to suppress the truth but Your memory serves you very poorly There are electric points run the entire length of the moorings at R&WBC and yet you say none was available. There are water points at regular intervals along the entire length of the moorings and yet you do not recall those either. These are not new additions at the club, they have been in place for many years. We have been at the club for 9 years and during that time there have been 3 different caretakers. While a new caretaker may have been inexperienced for a short period during one of those years the club I am part of is indeed a well run and well managed club. As you have obviously chosen to forget the electric hook-up and water availability it does suggest that your account of a poorly run and managed club may not be wholly reliable. I am sure there are plenty of people who have visited and enjoyed their stay. If you were incorrectly charged at the time did you raise a query? Ask for your query to be escalated to a committee member? If you did and were fobbed off then yes, that was badly handled, if you chose to say nothing about the mistake and yet still hold a grudge about it without having given the club an opportunity to put things right at the time then that is your choice and it is unhelpful to share that on a platform such as this. The bad publicity is something you have created, it was there before I intervened, the only difference was it tarred all three clubs with the same brush wish was unfair. I hope visiting boaters will be prepared to stop by and make up their own mind about how well run and managed the club is. The telephone number is easily accessible and visiting boaters are welcomed, whether they are AWCC members or not. Chargeable electricity and water is available along the entire moorings and a well priced and well stocked bar awaits. If visiting in the near future an apology for the lack of carpet in the bar area should be extended. They are recovering from a flood but the carpet should be going down any day soon. The welcome will be a warm one, their new air source heat pump heating system is doing a great job! They are also in the process of setting up video conference facilities in their function room which will be made available to canal societies and charities at favourable rates. Thankfully it is a club with a good number of younger people with a great rage of technical skills on the committee who are driving things forward for the benefit of the boating community. With that I will leave it there. Your very real memory of being wrongly charged at a boat club with no electricity and no water points that was badly managed and run in a place you can't recall the name of other than it being on The Chesterfield Canal may feature large in your memory The reality of the situation is that your memory bears little resemblance to what the club actually offers it's visitors. Perhaps you will come back one day and give the club an opportunity to create a different experience for you

Yes, you know exactly where it was, and from your description so do I now. My point is that anybody else reading your post does not know exactly where it is and so by mentioning it was on The Chesterfield Canal you have, in effect, suggested that any one of three of the AWCC clubs are places to be avoided. If you were not prepared or not able to state which AWCC club it was you received less than good service from then you should not have mentioned the location either. AWCC clubs are businesses and can be as badly affected by adverse publicity on social media as any other waterways business, whether a marina, a chandlery or a canal side pub. All businesses are struggling at present and so why would you write something that could cause harm to a well run and well organised club and then seek to defend your actions is a mystery to me

I apologise, taking the post I quoted alone it was not obvious to me that you were charged and yet you were a member. I can't speak for the other clubs on The Chesterfield but if there were no electricity or water nearby then it would not be the club where I moor and yet you by stating you had a problem with the Chesterfield AWCC club you have painted all three of the clubs on that canal with the same brush. Why mention any place at all if you are not prepared to say which club it was you had a problem with? I know the AWCC handbook is often very out of date and many clubs tend to be run by their membership, often a committee of well meaning folks of advancing years as befits the profile of so many boaters. They can often be slow to embrace technology and this fangled internet thing is scary and above their pay scale. We have not used the reciprocal mooring arrangement very often but it has been a Godsend to us on more than one occasion. We are only members of the AWCC because we benefit from a great value mooring at a lively club and so a reciprocal mooring, if it can be arranged, is just the cherry on the top of a very nice cake for us, not something that we rely on. We would be far more likely to be looking for a website or Facebook page for a club to get an up to date contact rather than rely on a handbook with a publication date that might be months after an appeal for updated information had been sent out to the clubs via an email address that is rarely monitored.

If non AWCC members request an available mooring at an AWCC club then there would usually be a fee to pay. It is usually quite a small fee but will vary from one club to another. If you were to request a visitor mooring in a marina would you expect that to be free? AWCC clubs are run as a business and they have overheads to cover the same as any other waterways business. There are three AWCC affiliated boat clubs on The Chesterfield Canal. You suggest that one of them was in some way not obliging and suggest that was because they expected a fee for use of their facilities? A temporary visitor mooring on a beautiful stretch of canal that is patrolled twice a day, with an electric hook up if required and access to water no more than a hose-pipe length a way at a fiver a night seems pretty fair to me, and if that money helps them to subsidise other facilities - such as a drop of decent real ale from the bar at just £2.40 a pint for those that choose to visit I am sorry you did not feel welcomed at whichever club it was you visited.

Thank you so much for digging that image out for us. We will ensure it is always properly credited when we use it. I sent it to the former owner who is thrilled to see it and has promised to have a dig among his photos to see what he can send me for the last 20 years during his ownership that we can keep as an archive for the future. Also this weekend this photo was turned up, kindly supplied by Richard Booth and said to have been taken in 2003 at Marsworth. If that date is correct it throws some of the other suggested dates for when the current conversion was done completely out so we need to do a bit of checking to try and fix a few dates in place. Fabulous photo! :

Such a sad thing to happen. A 4 year old should not have been anywhere near the water unaccompanied but none of us know the circumstances and 4 year old's can be slippery blighters! There but for the Grace of God go every parent. We find that a large number of the volunteers who join us with Python, who have no boating experience, are very surprised at how shallow the canal can be. We tell them if they fall in (anywhere apart from a lock) the first thing to try and do is stand up. The looks of amazement on faces is very obvious. If the person who raised the alarm could not swim, or was perhaps another young child, they may have been doing what the advise tells them, not to go into a body of water to rescue someone. It must have been very difficult to be in that situation

We have had mascerator toilets for about 16 or more years in two different boats. We experienced 2 problems in that time, one was a microswitch that had failed, inexpensive to replace frustratingly awkward to get to and even more frustrating that we did not have an operational loo while the fault was fixed. The other problem was when my daughter flushed a sanitary item down there, frustrating that she had visited the boat on numerous occasions and should have known better, frustrating that we had to strip the loo down to retrieve the blockage, frustrating to have to cross our legs until the job was done but, it didn't cost anything to fix. When I have visited boats with dump through loos I really find the smell that goes with the toilet system unpleasant. That is a big tick in a box for me with regard a mascerator. When we need to empty the loo on a boat we volunteer with I hate having to try and lift a great box of crap and urine out of the boat and trundle it along the towpath to the facilities then gag as the contents glug their way into the Elsan, assuming the elsan is not blocked or splattered with other people's excrement when you arrive. If you have any reason to think there might be a baby wipe, an ear bud or ladies sanitary item in there then you might do well to have a read up on how to dismantle the loo, get your marigolds on and go for it. I certainly would not be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and looking at completely changing to a different kind of loo at this point. I do understand your frustration though. Our microswitch problem was fixed quickly and easily by Oxley Marine who are also on The Staffs and Worcs near Autherley Junction. In my experience a good old jobbing boatyard will tackle this sort of problem with much less drama than a posh marina will. I hope you get it sorted very soon

Oh my goodness! Thank you! That is a photo of Chariene in 1973! What a fabulous photo. Did I say Thank you

Yes that is the place. Almost adjacent to the aqueduct there. I recall we were once passing by just as they were craning a boat in and they had shuffled various boats about to make room. It was the middle of winter and they were probably hoping that there wouldn't be any boats passing. We were more than happy to just hang back and watch. They apologised profusely for delaying us but we were very happy to have an excuse to stop and look. We took Delhi there to have her hull blasted then two-packed after we bought her. We were very happy indeed with the work we had done.

I doubt any boater who has cruised past Stretton Wharf over the years has not slowed to have a good look at a lot of the interesting vessels that have been visible on the hardstanding there through the years. What I am interested in is if anyone has any recollections of the boats that have moored there, near the aqueduct, over the decades. Maybe even taken a photo that included them? The approximate period I am looking for information on is the 1980's The boat in question was possibly there for most of that decade as a reliable source has memories of it being there in the early/mid 80's and it has been suggested it was sold in the late 80's. It is also suggested the family that lived there owned the boat from 1969 so it is entirely possible it was moored there for longer, or perhaps moored somewhere else? The boat would have been a 45' called Chariene. The only photo I have seen of Chariene is a tiny thumbnail and I think it was brown? I seem to recall the picture was on HNBC website but it appears to have been removed now. The boat had previously been a BWB Hire boat called Water Viper. It had been converted in 1959 and had a very typical 1950's square cruiser stern: The bow would have been quite different looking to anyone with an interest in old boats and may have caught the eye of an enthusuast with some rivets: We believe the boat was owned by a family with the name "Sheppard" It is thought they lived in the house adjacent to the wharf which is now a boys home. I am told that the boat was not really used at all, it just sat there. The family eventually emigrated to Spain and the boat was sold (late 80's we think) It is very possible the boat was owned by the Sheppard family at Stretton from 1969 as there are records that indicate that to be the case. Prior to that it was briefly owned by a CW Huxley from Willenhall If anyone has any information of photos that may help to flesh a large chunk of the history of this boat out then it would be very useful. The boat started out life as Delhi and around the year 2000 we know Warwickshire Flyboat Co carried out the conversion to what Delhi is now. It was owned by John Sykes before us, he had owned Olive but swapped it with Jason McCabe to get Delhi. We are unsure of the exact year that swap took place. We are unsure of when Jason McCabe's period of ownership started and whether there were any other owners in between The Sheppards and him. While we have some great details of the history of the boat from when it was built in 1930 to 1969 the period between then and the start of this century are very vague and if anyone has any leads I can follow up that may help to flesh it out a bit (no matter how tenuous) I would be very pleased to try and dig out some more information Thank you in anticipation

... and small, many historic boats are full size and come with a full size licence and mooring cost attached. If someone wants a historic boat to play with that doesn't have the ongoing annual costs of those two things weighing them down this could be perfect