David: Better or Worse?

THERE has been a lot of debate on narrowboatworld recently about CaRT's claim that the canals are in better shape now than ever before.

Most of the comments have been negative, but then that's the way of the world—people rarely bother to post positive comments. The real problem is that the comments have been necessarily subjective and deployed little specific evidence. Even CaRT's original claim does not seem to have much specific backing.

During the last eight years, since we had the present boat, we have cruised the entire connected system, except the Lancaster. During this time our log records no serious hold up or diversion for reasons of structure failure and only a small number of delays caused by things like paddles out of use or low pounds. For what it's worth, my own impression, based on this experience, is that the system is as good now as it ever has been in the leisure era—and my first cruise was in 1973.

Luck runs out

Obviously, during those eight years we have been lucky and just now it's run out. The gate failure on the Ashton has thrown our plans into disarray and we're still thinking what to do about it. At least the problem was efficiently notified and explained—no cryptic notices on lock beams these days. There was even a picture of the damage, which looks very strange—the bottom corner of a gate seems to been bent over, deforming the paddle opening in the process. It looks too low down for boater damage and an unlikely spot for vandalism, common though that is in that area.

The Exception

One aspect of maintenance which had got a lot better and has recently got worse again (there's no such thing as progress) is vegetation cutting, or rather the lack of it. Some has been done, but it seems to be almost random; on the Trent & Mersey they seem to have cut where there is metal piling but not anywhere else, pictured.

I can see some logic in this, but the main problem with thick vegetation on the towpath side is that it prevents stopping in an emergency and is anyway a short term policy, as without cutting trees will self seed and the towpath side will become as bad as the offside. The offside cutting of a few years ago has now grown back and the same bridges and corners are blind once again.

The Caldon, where we are now, is especially bad and there are too many locations where there is barely a seven foot wide space, especially when boats have permanent moorings on the offside. It would be nice if CaRT could actually say what the vegetation policy now is and why it has deteriorated.

David Hymers