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HAVE you tried to download a boaters' guide from Waterscape recently? If not, don't bother, as you will not get it.
Instead, some idiot has used the link to preview the new CART site, so all you get is a load of crap and an appeal for donations!
Priorities again, my friends, CART before boaters every time.
Update: Guides are now available—but not for all it seems—though way out of date...
Move it
I have lost count of how many people have complained about the boat moored at the bottom of Middle Lock at Fradley on the Trent & Mersey, making it extremely difficult for boaters to moor for the lock.
If there is more than one boat—and there often is, especially at week-ends—so with boats moored both sides that particular one gets bumped—with its owner often complaining.
Shouldn't have it in such a confined space mate, and the powers-that-be shouldn't be so greedy in wanting rent for that length that should be used for locking. Just plain ridiculous allowing space for only a single boat to moor for the lock at such a busy junction.
Good eh?
There is a report in a newspaper, I shall not name, telling of comics who have set off on a trip by a canal boat from London to Edinburgh, calling at Henley-on-Thames, Oxford, Stone, Manchester, Glasgow and Falkirk before arriving in Edinburgh for the Fringe.
The various comics will be giving performances along the way, but methinks they will not get all that far past Manchester, unless they know something that we boaters certainly don't...
The reporter told us:
"Mucking about in boats is a quintessentially British pastime, and what better way than to take comedy from the cultural celebrations of this summer's Olympic and Paralympic Games in London, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe than on a canal boat?"
Not those
Since Thomas was persuaded to include Google adverts to help pay for the cost of publishing narrowboatworld, I have often been amazed at how the adverts coincide with the articles on view.
But the one yesterday I completely miss-read, and nearly choked on my coffee when the advert announced Bollards Direct. But yes, it was bollards, and was obviously tied to an article including our type of bollards.
Dashed clever—what?
Makes sense
Not allowed to answer dear Adrian's missive on why lock gates should be left open, but thought David Davis summed it up well when he thought it should be left to the navigation authority. That at least makes sense.
But why the extreme concern I wonder?
Prove something?
I know of many boaters who have their own little idiosyncrasies at working locks, and prefer to get on with it, as we too prefer to be left alone.
Just cannot understand this urge by British Waterways, or whatever it calls itself at the moment, in foisting volunteers at locks that haven't had a locky in living memory.
Unless of course it is trying to con the government that it is providing work for volunteers—even though they are completely unnecessary, and from all accounts, a bit of an encumbrance...
A poll
I was most interested in the poll by the Broads Authority on what boaters thought of its performance.
I know our Thomas is lax to include polls, as they usually gum up the works with so many responding, but one with the simple question, substituting British Waterways for the Broads Authority— Is British Waterways doing a good job of managing its waterways—would rather tell it like it is. Go for it!
Victor Swift
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