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Is this really a towpath improvement ?


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There are some positives about the scheme - there are new bollards the Leicester side of the chain bridge which will save the need for moorers to use pins. There is still a grass bank along the stretch used for mooring.

Also an aquiantance who uses an electric wheelchair who lives in one of the waterside flats bow uses the topath to get into the town centre where before he had to use roads and not very good pavements.

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On 26/05/2023 at 16:59, Roper said:

Seemed to have spent a lot of money making it worse except for cyclists.

 

I'm on a nice mooring on the towpath at Huddersfield, it's a pleasant walk, grassy, with a foot wide footpath, stone.

There are already these motorised cyclists using it, and now it is to be tarmacked. That is a retrograde step.

There are tarmacked roads and paths for cyclists but very few grassy routes for pedestrians, not to mention boaters.

What is to be done to stop all towpaths becoming freeways for idiots ?

Edited by LadyG
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On 28/05/2023 at 21:05, Richard T said:

There are some positives about the scheme - there are new bollards the Leicester side of the chain bridge which will save the need for moorers to use pins. There is still a grass bank along the stretch used for mooring.

Also an aquiantance who uses an electric wheelchair who lives in one of the waterside flats bow uses the topath to get into the town centre where before he had to use roads and not very good pavements.

I have never had an issue mooring with pins there, that's what pins are for, and I bet the bollards are set for the standard 57 foot boat!!

Good news for your friend, although I remember mobility scooters using the towpath before the "improvements"

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8 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Nah, they'll be random spacing as usual.  Slightly in the wrong place for everyone!

 

Yes it's amazing how that happens isn't it? 

 

I reckon CRT must have a computer programme for working out where to put bollards so they are least likely to be in the right place. Very effective it is too. 

 

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8 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Nah, they'll be random spacing as usual.  Slightly in the wrong place for everyone!

 

That's a bit harsh. I usually find that one is in the right place... :):)

Edited by cuthound
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On 26/05/2023 at 15:41, David Mack said:

Difficult to see how that canal-to-fence tarmac does much for wildlife. Or where boaters beyond the 24 visitor moorings are going to hammer in their pins.

Maybe the idea is to deter those pesky boat people from mooring

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As we speak, the south side of the old mainline out of Birmingham is being hard surfaced, presumably to match with the north side.  For those of us who liked to use the south side for walking as a way of avoiding speeding cyclists, there will now be no escape.  CRT clearly have completely ignored the concerns raised by many groups due to the previous round of towpath 'improvements' around Birmingham.

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Improve, don’t improve, will make no odds to some folk. This was on the North Oxford near Sowe Common on Monday, full family day out on matching quads, Mum and daughter on one with Dad and son on the other. I will say that they weren’t speeding though and did stop for a wave and a chat, they came back and over the bridge a few minutes later to blast along on the common where another quad was also ragging about. 

Pic quality not the best as a still from a vid. 
 

 

 

IMG_1203.jpeg

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2 hours ago, Hudds Lad said:

Improve, don’t improve, will make no odds to some folk. This was on the North Oxford near Sowe Common on Monday, full family day out on matching quads, Mum and daughter on one with Dad and son on the other. I will say that they weren’t speeding though and did stop for a wave and a chat, they came back and over the bridge a few minutes later to blast along on the common where another quad was also ragging about. 

Pic quality not the best as a still from a vid. 
 

 

 

IMG_1203.jpeg

Looks fun. I've always had in mind that if I retired and CC'd the network, I'd buy a tug bow boat and have a quad on it with some ramps, handy for nipping to the shops etc and easier than trying to lug a car around (or go back for it....or remember where it was) or cycling.

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11 hours ago, doratheexplorer said:

As we speak, the south side of the old mainline out of Birmingham is being hard surfaced, presumably to match with the north side.  For those of us who liked to use the south side for walking as a way of avoiding speeding cyclists, there will now be no escape.  CRT clearly have completely ignored the concerns raised by many groups due to the previous round of towpath 'improvements' around Birmingham.


come and say hello  

I’m not far back behind you 

Free ice cream 😃👍

 

 

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On 26/05/2023 at 14:51, Arthur Marshall said:

I suppose it depends on what it was like before.

I once remember being at a meeting with BW when a similar point about "tow path" improvement was raised. The query came from someone connected with (I think) the Horse Boating Society,  about the towpath and whether it was suitable for horses. The response from the BW representative was along the lines that the towpath is not meant for horses and that horses shouldn't  shouldn't be using the towpath  - a comment which raised a lot of eyebrows and spluttering among those present! At least we had ended up with a much better surface for bicycles. 

 

Howard 

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I remember being at similar meetings, about improvements to the Rochdale towpath in urban Manchester in particular, and the Horse Boating Society kicking off about how their needs were being ignored. 
 

Someone then asked exactly how many horse boaters there were and how often they boated the Rochdale…

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3 hours ago, doratheexplorer said:

Free ice-cream you say??

Ha yes

But as of today I’ve shut shop for a few days but do catch me next time. 
 

I might manage next weekend somewhere around town but really I need to push on. While I love being on the BCN it’s good to escape too. 

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On 03/06/2023 at 18:37, Richard Fairhurst said:

I remember being at similar meetings, about improvements to the Rochdale towpath in urban Manchester in particular, and the Horse Boating Society kicking off about how their needs were being ignored. 
 

Someone then asked exactly how many horse boaters there were and how often they boated the Rochdale…

 

The design of the towpath for horse towing, and the various features and design choices that come from that, are an important part of both the "look" of the canals and their industrial heritage.

 

Often they're useful when single-handing, or bow-hauling a butty. There's nothing more frustrating than a tail bridge with a couple of little metal plates bolted over the rope slot.

 

If a real improvement can't be made without interfering in the original purpose of the towpath, fine - but CRT often seem entirely blind to the history of the network or how their pretty-postcard infrastructure is supposed to work, and make intrusive changes for no good reason.

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My recollection of the Rochdale issue is that the Horse Boating Society was primarily objecting to resurfacing with tarmac in the urban areas around Rochdale itself, as part of Sustrans' Connect2 programme c. 2012.

 

And sure, there's a heritage issue there. The Rochdale towpath wasn't originally tarmac. But nor did it have brick-faced concrete bridges, the M60 crossing over it, chain pubs alongside, and so on. The canals aren't frozen in aspic from 1800 or 1850 or 1900 or 1950 or any other arbitrary cut-off date; they are ever changing.

 

I've not done the maths to work out how many people live within a few miles of the Rochdale in urban Manchester. The Manchester conurbation has a population of approaching 3 million so "well into six figures" seems like a safe guess.

 

The Rochdale through Manchester pre-restoration was grim. Not grimy in the sense that Farmers Bridge, say, used to be; not interesting industrial traces in the way that parts of the MB&B still are. Just grim. Cascaded locks, a broken-down towpath and a shallowed channel. The £24m Millennium-funded restoration was (like the original K&A project) a bare-bones "let's get this canal open" operation, but left much to be done, not least towpath works.

 

If it's a choice between resurfacing the towpath so that many more of the six-figure number who live nearby can make better use of it, or keeping it as it is for the benefit of a single horse-boater who might use it once every five years, I don't have any hesitation to say which side I fall.

 

That isn't to say that all such works should be automatically welcomed. I don't really see the point of tarmacing both sides of the New Main Line towpath either. But the Rochdale towpath is about as cut-and-dried a case as it gets IMO.

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About 10 days ago we passed the site of ongoing towpath works on the Kennet and Avon, from Ufton to Aldermaston. The obvious aim is to alter the existing towpath to create a full width tarmac surface suitable for cyclists. A stoppage notice has been issued stating that the work has been suspended but no reason is given.

 

My observations of this work suggest a very worrying situation which I will attempt to illustrate:

 

towpath01.jpg.03f851950bc59705a0d25724f3bfbcf7.jpg

towpath01: this shows the work near the Ufton end. Although there is some attempt to leave a narrow strip for mooring pins, the slope down to very low grade piling looks like having a very short life.

 

towpath02.jpg.28e0cb801897813a0506c902b880ed59.jpg

towpath02: a little later this wholly inadequate piece of wooden piling offers almost no support to the tarmac edge and I would expect it to crumble away in a short period

 

towpath03.jpg.7dfd5ff23dc22db44fbdbe2340035805.jpg

towpath03: here no attempt has been made to protect the bank and its current state suggests that boat movements will very quickly undermine the new towpath

 

towpath04.thumb.jpg.57affaf7f0abc912f7611588c8869f1a.jpg

towpath04: (sorry a bit fuzzy but I was steering at the same time!) here there is no strip left between the edge of the new path and the water. This was one of the worst examples I saw of very weak timber being added to form an edge for the tarmac that has no structural support value at all. The force of compacting the hardcore seems to have pushed the timber out already.

 

towpath05.jpg.e6ed01aac1791fcb89eb0a9c3758fe0a.jpg

towpath05: this last picture is just at the point where work has ceased. It appears that the existing path has a slope on both edges, one down to the canal and the other down to drainage behind the hedge. It looks as if there is insufficient width to make the standard tarmac width and that the contractors have made no provision at all for achieving that and supporting it properly.

 

I strongly suspect that within a very short time, certainly less than two years, if completed as it stands, this towpath will have serious defects at the edge, will add to bank erosion and be a danger to towpath users from possible hidden collapses.

 

As a boater, I am very concerned that, as with the OP's example, there is a move to deter boats from casual towpath mooring, although on the K&A that is just about all that there is. Designated visitor moorings are very few and far between. 

 

I don't know if there is any member of the Navigation Committee viewing this forum but it is urgent that agreement is reached with CaRT about looking after the needs of boaters when specifying and agreeing towpath enhancements that are aimed primarily at cyclists, and to some extent walkers. (Although in neither case was much improvement needed just for walkers).

 

I thought that some years ago when these improvements were first being introduced (and I am definitely not against them in principle) it was agreed that no further edge to edge hard surfaces be made, preventing appropriate mooring. Was that never formalised or has it been overlooked?

 

On another canal I have seen another new trend: to cut off armco at normal water level and then add coir rolls above. Whilst this is intended (or so one of the staff involved told me) to promote wildlife, it removes the option of safely mooring to armco (one of the more popular methods after rings/bollards, I believe) and the risk that boaters will put pins into the coir and seriously damage it.

 

If anyone has a suitable CaRT email contact to whom I can send this report I would be glad to do so - or alternatively send it directly!

 

Edited by Mike Todd
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35 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

On another canal I have seen another new trend: to cut off armco at normal water level and then add coir rolls above. Whilst this is intended (or so one of the staff involved told me) to promote wildlife, it removes the option of safely mooring to armco (one of the more popular methods after rings/bollards, I believe) and the risk that boaters will put pins into the coir and seriously damage it.

There's some of this going on down near the popular moorings at Napton, utter madness.

 

Also on the North Oxford we've seen a lot of the "wooden piling" with sausages on top, usually backfilled with dredgings by the looks of things. Some of the wood had already let go and been badly repaired with more of the same :( 

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Yet they seem to have been spot on at Rugely. 
With Armco and a solid support. 

Lots of extra mooring which is great. 
And that was a poor bank with plenty of stone edging having slipped away. 


I guess it depends on access to the funding in different areas? 🤷‍♀️

I assume funding from SUSTRANS/council/or whoever will pay for the path but not necessarily the bank to be repaired. 
 

Is that the dilemma?

CRT are offered so much for repairs?

Take it or leave it. 

Do they simply do what they can with the money they’re given at anytime?

And of course it ticks the box for more money. 

 

 

By more money I mean access to further funding from whoever and of course tick boxing for the DEFRA grant. 
 


 

 

Edited by Goliath
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40 minutes ago, Goliath said:

Yet they seem to have been spot on at Rugely. 
With Armco and a solid support. 

Lots of extra mooring which is great. 

 


 

 

That was already a designated visitor mooring, but I agree much better now

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On 07/06/2023 at 14:45, Mike Todd said:

About 10 days ago we passed the site of ongoing towpath works on the Kennet and Avon, from Ufton to Aldermaston. The obvious aim is to alter the existing towpath to create a full width tarmac surface suitable for cyclists. A stoppage notice has been issued stating that the work has been suspended but no reason is given.

 

My observations of this work suggest a very worrying situation which I will attempt to illustrate:

 

towpath01.jpg.03f851950bc59705a0d25724f3bfbcf7.jpg

towpath01: this shows the work near the Ufton end. Although there is some attempt to leave a narrow strip for mooring pins, the slope down to very low grade piling looks like having a very short life.

 

towpath02.jpg.28e0cb801897813a0506c902b880ed59.jpg

towpath02: a little later this wholly inadequate piece of wooden piling offers almost no support to the tarmac edge and I would expect it to crumble away in a short period

 

towpath03.jpg.7dfd5ff23dc22db44fbdbe2340035805.jpg

towpath03: here no attempt has been made to protect the bank and its current state suggests that boat movements will very quickly undermine the new towpath

 

towpath04.thumb.jpg.57affaf7f0abc912f7611588c8869f1a.jpg

towpath04: (sorry a bit fuzzy but I was steering at the same time!) here there is no strip left between the edge of the new path and the water. This was one of the worst examples I saw of very weak timber being added to form an edge for the tarmac that has no structural support value at all. The force of compacting the hardcore seems to have pushed the timber out already.

 

towpath05.jpg.e6ed01aac1791fcb89eb0a9c3758fe0a.jpg

towpath05: this last picture is just at the point where work has ceased. It appears that the existing path has a slope on both edges, one down to the canal and the other down to drainage behind the hedge. It looks as if there is insufficient width to make the standard tarmac width and that the contractors have made no provision at all for achieving that and supporting it properly.

 

I strongly suspect that within a very short time, certainly less than two years, if completed as it stands, this towpath will have serious defects at the edge, will add to bank erosion and be a danger to towpath users from possible hidden collapses.

 

As a boater, I am very concerned that, as with the OP's example, there is a move to deter boats from casual towpath mooring, although on the K&A that is just about all that there is. Designated visitor moorings are very few and far between. 

 

I don't know if there is any member of the Navigation Committee viewing this forum but it is urgent that agreement is reached with CaRT about looking after the needs of boaters when specifying and agreeing towpath enhancements that are aimed primarily at cyclists, and to some extent walkers. (Although in neither case was much improvement needed just for walkers).

 

I thought that some years ago when these improvements were first being introduced (and I am definitely not against them in principle) it was agreed that no further edge to edge hard surfaces be made, preventing appropriate mooring. Was that never formalised or has it been overlooked?

 

On another canal I have seen another new trend: to cut off armco at normal water level and then add coir rolls above. Whilst this is intended (or so one of the staff involved told me) to promote wildlife, it removes the option of safely mooring to armco (one of the more popular methods after rings/bollards, I believe) and the risk that boaters will put pins into the coir and seriously damage it.

 

If anyone has a suitable CaRT email contact to whom I can send this report I would be glad to do so - or alternatively send it directly!

 

 

Why not email your photo's with your concerns to Richard Parry?

 

At the very least he may have a go at the project manager responsible for this project. It smacks of lack of contract supervision.

 

If I had tried to deliver that as a project I would have been sacked, and rightly so.

 

 

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On 07/06/2023 at 16:25, Goliath said:

Yet they seem to have been spot on at Rugely. 
With Armco and a solid support. 

Lots of extra mooring which is great. 
And that was a poor bank with plenty of stone edging having slipped away. 


I guess it depends on access to the funding in different areas? 🤷‍♀️

I assume funding from SUSTRANS/council/or whoever will pay for the path but not necessarily the bank to be repaired. 
 

Is that the dilemma?

CRT are offered so much for repairs?

Take it or leave it. 

Do they simply do what they can with the money they’re given at anytime?

And of course it ticks the box for more money. 

 

 

By more money I mean access to further funding from whoever and of course tick boxing for the DEFRA grant. 
 


 

 


I went to a seminar with Richard Parry at the Crick Show, and he was asked about towpath improvements.  He said CRT spend none of their own money on towpaths, all the funding comes from other sources — for example, Sustrans, councils, or developers via S106 or CIL payments.  He said that if the funding can include bank works as well, then so much the better.  In the case of Canalside developments, when banks might have to be strengthened, they make sure that there’s long term agreement that repairs will be carried out when necessary.

 

At the same time, a friend told me he’d seen a thread on a cycling forum complaining that cycling money was being spent on canal banks and not just the paths!

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