Nationwide appeal for volunteers to join help the charity preserve and protect the canal network

[ditchcrawler]

4 hours ago, Grassman said:

It costs CRT a lot in training (chainsaw and chipper etc every 5 years), equipment hire (which sometimes involves hiring a workboat or hopper boat as well as equipment), and provision of PPE. For that they get around 3,000 hours free labour each winter in return.

 

If you do the maths I think that despite the costs CRT do benefit from it and of course we boaters do as well.

 

Only if they were going to do the work if you didn't do it. I wonder if all offside vegetation management is relying on free labour ?

[Grassman]

4 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

Only if they were going to do the work if you didn't do it. I wonder if all offside vegetation management is relying on free labour ?

 

Not necessarily. CRT are doing some themselves, well their contractors are. The problem with this is that the contractors tend to concentrate on the larger vegetation and because they aren't boaters they miss out smaller vegetation which they don't think is important but it is is actually causing more of a problem. Places like sight-lines, on bends, either side of locks or bridge holes, opposite popular moorings, or overhead branches. Obviously not all volunteers are boaters either (9 of us are, out of our 12) but I reckon most OV work-parties would have one or two boaters amongst them. 

 

When we started doing it in 2017 we were the first volunteers that CRT used for the OV cutting. They ran it as a trial and obviously thought it was a success because  since then they have rolled it out in other parts of the network. I don't know what the split is between contractor and volunteers though. My motivation for initially  approaching CRT about it 5 years ago (we are all IWA volunteers) was that I felt if we didn't do it, it just wouldn't get done. The fact that my boat was booked for an expensive re-paint the following year had a bearing too  . I wish they'd train and equip us to do some much needed dredging, but that's never going to happen unfortunately! 

[D Ash]

We noticed a cleared section on the T&M north of Salt (about) 4 yrs ago.  Would that have been your team?

One pitfall with cutting back foliage above the water level may be that boats feel they can move further over but the roots and/or silt are still there.

[magnetman]

20 minutes ago, D Ash said:

We noticed a cleared section on the T&M north of Salt (about) 4 yrs ago.  Would that have been your team?

One pitfall with cutting back foliage above the water level may be that boats feel they can move further over but the roots and/or silt are still there.

Indeed. I remember in my first yar living on a narrow boat which was 1994 going through the cutting on the Oxford summit towards Fenny. It is a long thin cutting I think it might have originally been a tunnel. As it opened out the coal man Ivor Bachelor came past in Mountbatten and I moved my little 30ft boat across because the vegetation had been cleared. Hung it up really badly on the roots. 

 

He always ribbed me about it after that. Steel top small narrow boat so yes it did tip over somewhat. 

[Grassman]

18 hours ago, D Ash said:

We noticed a cleared section on the T&M north of Salt (about) 4 yrs ago.  Would that have been your team?

One pitfall with cutting back foliage above the water level may be that boats feel they can move further over but the roots and/or silt are still there.

No not us,  that section comes under Stoke, we work from Fradley depot.  You make a good point about the roots and water depth and we do try to take this into account. We can tackle roots but being in the water the chainsaw isn't as efficient so we only tend to do the ones which significantly protrude, but you're right, and also we wouldn't see any that are under the surface. However our workboat and hopper boats are quite heavy, especially the hopper which has the wood chipper on it, and draws over 2ft, so if it's shallow we can't get close enough to do any significant cutting even though we have long reach polesaws. 

[Allan(nb Albert)]

On 28/01/2023 at 15:17, magnetman said:

Indeed. I remember in my first yar living on a narrow boat which was 1994 going through the cutting on the Oxford summit towards Fenny. It is a long thin cutting I think it might have originally been a tunnel. As it opened out the coal man Ivor Bachelor came past in Mountbatten and I moved my little 30ft boat across because the vegetation had been cleared. Hung it up really badly on the roots. 

 

He always ribbed me about it after that. Steel top small narrow boat so yes it did tip over somewhat. 

Off topic!!!!!!!!!

I can remember when Ivor used to moor at Braunston Turn. We were alongside for diesel and coal. A gent moored close-by arrived with a wheelbarrow but did not seem to know what fuel he wanted. Ivor pointed him to a black board ( sorry - chalk board) but did not get any sense out of him other than he wanted something that was slow burning. Ivor shouted to Mel to get him four bags that had been dropped in the cut. Four bags were put on the wheelbarrow, he paid and left.

Never been able to figure out if it was a wind up!