YES, my friends, I have to tell you that there will be no further updates to narrowboatworld this week—our esteemed editor will no longer be with us.
It is not generally known, but one of his pet likes is train travelling, not he will be very quick to tell you in those (his words) dirty, noisy, often freezing and slow steam trains, but mostly the very modern electric powered. Some fast—very fast.
Believe it or believe it not but he is off to Italy—yes, by train—ten of 'em altogether, that should surely satisfy even the most dedicated enthusiast. Here's a picture of one. Rather him than me!
Thin end of the wedge
I see the that Peel, slapping on a charge for us to use its Bridgewater Canal has raised a few comments, but remember, Cart does the same. I just wonder though that it giving a free period will not last very long, it being the thin end of the wedge.
Before too long, once it gets its rather sloppy enforcement in place, it will charge the moment your boat noses onto the canal.
A lot less
There seem to be a lot less Canaltime boats about these days, as I discovered on our recent trip to Leek, but going out of the marina earlier this week I counted seven, no less at base at Sawley, and four of those in the repair yard.
Make of that what you will, but seven hire/share boats sulking at base earning nothing is not too good a business to my mind.
Makes sense
Yes, mind you indeed, with the Trent in flood and no access to the river during the recent heavy downpours, now the waters have receded, still no access to the Trent for the unlucky Canaltime people on to the Trent & Mersey as the one remaining paddle on one set of the flood gates has given up the ghost. so the lock is defunct.
As we reported, a paddle has been out of action for most of the year, but of course nothing done about it until the other broke—methinks it is the new policy to wait until both have packed-up, so that contractors are only employed once, instead of twice, and bugger the poor boaters. Makes sense eh? The picture shows when it wasn't much good as a flood lock.
Not so sure flow
If you rely on a Shurflo water pump on your boat, my advice is to get a spare—but most certainly not another Shurflo. We had been having surging problems for quite a while with ours, even with a new accumulator installed to lessen such effect, but to no avail, so we purchased another Shurflo.
Would you believe that after a couple of months this acted exactly the same, and turning the adjustment screw at the end made not one iota of difference. We suffered the surging all through our last trip, turning off the pump at source to allow a night's sleep, and then purchased another pump, and most certainly not a Shurflo.
We settled for a Jabsco, and seeing them advertised on 'Through the Porthole' at Stenson somewhat at a less price than Midland Chandlers, emailed if there was one in stock could we pick it up on the following Monday. But alas no reply.
As my regular readers will know our own chandlery at Sawley is closed on Tuesdays, but we hurried down a day early and caught it open and hey! presto! the Jabsco was on offer, even less than 'Through the Porthole', that by then we had given up. And it worked perfectly, not a surge in sight, even without the accumulator, though we did include it in the system.
Wants sorting
Boaters who use the Soar from its junction with the Trent know that mooring places are few and far between, it being of course a river. In fact there is only Redhill before you have to go through the locks to reach the top of Kegworth Deep to get a mooring.
To get away from the mad cyclists that have taken over Sawley Cut towpath, we now use the moorings at Redhill as the towpath and fields by the river are completely cyclist free and so ideal for the dog, but alas last Tuesday there was no space whatsoever on the three moorings—those below the flood lock, those above it and that long length around the bend.
But they were certainly not cruising boats that had stayed overnight. Two of the boats had 'for sale' notices on them, two others had still been there two weeks previously, there was an empty work boat and the rest to my mind were refugees from Redhill Marina opposite.
It really needs Cart enforcement boss-man, Paul Griffin, to despatch one of his henchmen to sort it out. For as I mentioned, it is a river, and as such it is impossible to just tie-up anywhere, you have to use the official mooring places, but alas we could not.
Sort it, Paul. We shall be trying again in a couple of weeks—I'll let you know.
Victor Swift