magpie patrick

We're planning to visit in August. Ness (for that is my partner's name!) Has never been and its over 40 years since I last saw the canal. I was sad (but not entirely surprised) to find that Scot II is no longer operating trips from Inverness. I also recall a very impressive boat called "Gatelifter" that was designed for exactly that task - lifting lock gates.

Dating these things is difficult, and it's interesting that Maillard observed this in 1795. From memory there aren't that many with a pronounced slant, and the ones I particularly remember are on the HNC at Diggle, although from memory a couple of other HNC locks (Uppermill?) also some Trent & Mersey locks. That said those look like they're falling over, but some may have a much less pronounced slope.

Been clearing out the loft at the ancestral Castle and found this. Of particular personal interest as the first boat holidays I recall were on Joanna, although I recall Magpie the Elder saying many years later that the family used to squeeze five onto one of the others, with me and @1st ade sharing one berth head to toe: we'd be about 2 and 5 at the time. I'm aware others are also interested in the history of leisure boating and hire boats. And finally - some customers must have been quite ambitious in their cruising plans judging by this paragraph!

That makes sense on the basis that MC money was capped at 50%* (HLF could be up to 75%) and EP was the bulk of the match funding, so with £12,840,000 from other sources MC would be capped at the same amount *unless you were proposing a fancy dome in Greenwich, in which case the sky was the limit! Pasted out of XL, a quick analysis of the Frankael list - red is navigable remainder waterway now Some of the BCN length have now been transferred out of BW/CRT, and some isn't navigable. but I haven't corrected the figure Canal Notes Status Length (km) Ashton Now cruiseway BCN Except NML, B&F and to Delph Not all navigable, some now transferred 122* B&T Not connected 23 Caldon Now cruiseway Chesterfield Transferred out of CRT (Part) Cromford Not navigable Erewash Part Cruiseway GUC closed branches Transferred out of CRT (Part) Grantham Not navigable HNC Grant aided restoration 27 K&A Now cruiseway Lancaster Not navigable Leeds and Liverpool West of Aintree only 17 MBBC Not navigable Mon & Brec Now cruiseway Nottingham Not navigable Oxford Old loops Not navigable Peak Forest Now cruiseway Pocklington Part navigable - not connected St Helens Transferred out of CRT SSYN Sheffield Canal only Now cruiseway Shropshire Union closed branches Transferred our of CRT Swansea Not navigable F&C Scotland Monkland Scotland Union Scotland

Total funding for the Rochdale was £24 million or thereabouts, around half from the Millenium Commission, the rest from EP and local authorities. (Remember when local authorities had money?) I think the HNC was of the order of £30 million From which you have to remove those that aren't navigable, or are now cruiseway, or in some cases no longer belong to BW/CRT! (St Helens for example) Edited to add - I will do that at some ppoint but don't have time at the moment

Further to this, Remainder waterways that are navigable BCN other than the New Main Line, the "branch to Black Delph" (connecting with the Stourbridge) and the B&F (all of which are Cruiseway) Chesterfield Canal west of Morse Lock (which is a restored scheme but I've no idea how it was funded) Ripon Canal between Bell Furrows Lock and Ripon (again, a restoration since the act) Wendover Branch Erewash north of Tamworth Road Bridge Leeds and Liverpool west of Aintree* Bridgwater and Taunton *This is an interesting one, as whilst it wasn't restored as part of the Liverpool Link, the value of the link depends on this length of canal - where that leaves the funding contract issue would keep the lawyers busy I suspect The Peak Forest and Ashton were upgraded to Cruiseway but a drafting error listed this as from lock 1 at Marple, and thus on a technicality the Marple flight were not upgraded! This error may have been corrected This list isn't definitive - one problem of course is that the act doesn't list remainder waterways - they are "the remainder" of waterways that aren't on the other two lists

Off the top of my head the Northern BCN is remainder and navigable, there are probably others. There aren't that many of them though. Most of the expensive canals with big structures are cruiseways.

Yes, although its some years ago Grants are normally part of a package, as they match fund each other, so if the project involves land purchase then the grant will be based on land purchase, typically grants where land purchase is required a binding for far longer than if only works are required. For Droitwich and Cotswold the term was 80 years - this was HLF funding (Cotswold isn't CRT of course) I seem to recall (but it is now 25 years since I did the work) that Rochdale and Huddersfield were 125 years this was EP funding. Rochdale also got MIllenium Funding which may only have been 80 years (I don't know - not my department on that canal) but because of the package approach to funding CRT can't argue that the bit they're closing wasn't EP funded. Usually the local authority (restoration groups don't have the capacity to handle multi-million pound projects) except Droitwich where it was BW, although curiously they didn't "own" the canal until it was finished. The scheme could not be transferred without such an agreement, but for everything except the Cotswolds BW were signatories to the grant, even the Rochdale as they were signing the contract to manage it (the canal was leased to the Waterways Trust who were absorbed into CRT anyway). Grant contracts are complex documents - I've been on both sides arguing about them. They are full of clauses and have very little wriggle room. None of the waterways is now cruiseway. It's not an agreed payback, it's a penalty for breach of contract

Let me help you here - I'm one of the folks who works on the grant funding - in the case of two canals (Cotswold & Droitwich) I was the guy handling the money for HLF, and two more (Rochdale and Huddersfield) I had a responsibility for seeing that the restoration was in accordance with the grant terms, which in turn depended on who had given the grant - I was part of a team monitoring for English Partnerships and had to scratch my head very hard when upon abolition of EP the scheme was handed to NWRDA but without enough budget to finish the job. That's one of the reasons the shallows through Miles Platting (?) was only partially excavated - me (and others) deciding that so long as a navigable corridor was created that "would do" for fulfilling the grant purposes. Grants ALWAYS have a term limitation, as in, the grant contract has a stipulation that the grant purpose must be maintained for a given period once the works are complete. If land purchase is involved in the project, it's usually 80 years. The only way to wriggle out of this would be to argue that, say, navigation wasn't the purpose of the grant but arose as a result of the grant works that are otherwise being maintained - such an approach is unlikely to succeed. The alternative is to pay the grant back - this is on a sliding scale but may also be index linked, so closing a canal 25 years into a grant funded term of 80 years might mean paying 55/80ths back but that would be adjusted for inflation... inflation since 2000 is approx 80%, so closing a canal restored with a grant, before the grant term expires, can be pretty expensive. BW tried to stop running trips into Standedge Tunnel as they were losing money, but the boats etc were grant funded (this time 30 years) and repaying the grant would cost more than they were losing.

So someone wrote Shearwater C on the back of a photo and this has been interpreted as Shearwater Canal perhaps? There is a Shearwater near me in Frome, it is a lake about as wide as that in the picture - however it's the water supply for Longleat (or at least it was) and it's doubtful anything bigger than a sailing dinghy has ever set sail on it!

Have they got "Shearwater " from scrawled handwriting on the back of the photo? If so could it be Stainforth? Or a place starting with S and around 10 letters long?