Arthur Marshall

It's odd though, how few CRT employees you now meet on the system. Almost everyone doing anything practical is either a volunteer or employed by someone else, and the latter have more of an incentive to let things break than to keep them going (or at least their employers do. I suspect most of the blokes doing the job still have some pride in their work, apart from the grass cutters). I do think that that has had a deleterious effect over the years, while the CRT highly paid bods manage the PR and collect their dosh. Can't say it bothers me that much, mostly because I can't do owt about it.

It's much the same problem that we have with both national and local government. You have people doing extremely well paid jobs that are supposed to be directed at making life better for the people using their services, but for some almost unimaginable reason, all the available money gets spent on administration, ie running the business, and not on providing the services the business is ostensibly for. I think it's one of either Peter's or Parkinson's laws. So CRT will happily (and, to their paymansters, justifiably) spend money on a rebranding, on signs, on a Friends scheme that loses money, cycle paths, arrangements with other bodies to cheer up the towpath, and on all sort of other ethical schemes. all of which let them tick the right boxes on the application forms for their next job running another charity that spends most of its income on itself. Councils, for example, pay their chief execs huge salaries while not mending potholes or collecting rubbish, while closing libraries and tips. Ours actually pays even more to a consultant sitting in as a temp exec after the last one buggered off to another similar job elsewhere after making a pigs ear of this one. It will always be harder to do a rather boring job properly - keeping the canals open in our case - than to focus on public relations rather than real work. But the latter is much less hassle, earns you lots of money and, after all, you don't care much about the canals, anyway. Almost all British management works on that principle, which is one reason why almost every successful apparently British company is now foreign owned.

Canals are largely self levelling by design , so you rarely get floods. They do go dry occasionally, though. Rivers are unpredictable things. I'd have though that for a leisure boat that's going to be left unattended for long periods, a canal marina would be safer.

CRT run the ones at Bosley, I think. And, of course , the ones at Llangollen. So there's plenty of precedent. I nearly bought one of the cottages on the t&m by Northwich, but CRT wouldn't confirm they'd let me moor outside it. A year later, I went past, the new owner was moored there.

There are private moorings on the towpath outside houses. Not many, but there certainly are a few, several on the T&M near Northwich, one on the lower Macc. A marina somewhere I forget bought a chunk of towpath off CRT that had been available for anyone and privatised it. Might be worth chatting to whoever owns the land opposite your house, too. And CRT run plenty of towpath moorings themselves. Best negotiate with CRT.

Look it up, or read one of the thousands of times this has been explained on here since the glorious days of Nigel Moore. I'm slightly amazed there is still such ignorance about. I can only assume it's deliberate. CCers do have mooring rights (and therefore limitations) by law that home moorers don't. The T&Cs contradict this by imposing the same conditions on home moorers. If you want to make a fuss (dunno why anyone would), you'll have to take CRT to court. As I said (you do appear to have trouble with comprehension, so I'll say it again) CRT says the "clock" resets every time someone returns to their home mooring, so they can stay (by concession, because a home moorer has no right under the various Acts to stay anywhere off their mooring except overnight) another two weeks in the same place as before without a problem. Asking CRT for an explanation isn't a problem. If only you could understand English you'd have seen that's exactly what I did. Trying to claim "rights" you don't qualify for might land you in trouble, while being grateful for the latitude kindly given by CRT, won't. I apologise for the longwindedness of my reply, but I've tried to cover everything to avoid another response arising from someone who either can't be bothered to read a post properly or who deliberately misunderstands in order to pick a quarrel.

Only if you want to bother going to court. The T&Cs you accept with your licence state we all have to follow the same cruising rules. Nowt to do with Herberts, the law gives non-home moorers the right to stay 14 days. Home moorers have no such right to stay moored anywhere for any length of time not otherwise stated, probably on a blue sign; it's a concession for the sake of simplicity and possibly even fairness that the rule is applied to us too. Rocking the boat (to coin a phrase) is likely, as usual, to have unforeseen consequences.

Me too. Couple of days in Congleton or through the Harecastle to Westport Lake, then home. When I moored at Stoak near Ellesmere Port, I used to trundle down to Chester for a few days every couple of weeks. Beat trying to park the car. Then a few times a year I get out for longer.

I wrote to CRT when the T&C changes came in, and they confirmed that, as they put it, the clock gets reset every time you go back to your home mooring, so it's perfectly possible to return to the same pub every weekend, or spend time in other areas close to home regularly. It's only common sense, really, as most home moorers can only go short distances most of the time. Whether you could go and stay in the same spot for a fortnight, nip home for a night, and repeat endlessly without CRT getting stroppy is moot, however (not that the OP wants to do that, anyway), as the statutory right for 14 days in a place is only for those without a home mooring.

Well, that's my point of view what I posted. It's an opinion, just like yours. I don't mind pushback, though I'd prefer a reasoned argument why my opinions are wrong instead of just yet another statement that your opinion is different, understandably. It's just that I think you need to be aware that what satisfied the board in the past may not always do so in the future. Anyway, I didn't mean to butt in again. Got some music to learn. Really leaves the thread, this time. If you want the last word, you're welcome.

Unfortunately, while CRT doesn't give a toss about what boat is on my mooring, or precisely where it is, the farmer does. But as you don't pay mooring fees to CRT anyway, you'd have no right to it anyway A bit of logic, please. It's a shame you don't read what I wrote before you sling accusations of disrespect about, nor actually try to take issue with any point I made, rather than trying to shift the argument to one you could win. I think someone mentiones straw men. I did note that on another thread one of our members says they've just been on a cruise. They probably stayed on it continuously - if they hadn't, it would have been several cruises, like yours. Trying to argue that you've navigated continuously enough not to require a home mooring throughout a year by moving sometimes, leaving the boat and going elsewhere, then returning to chug a bit more is pure nonsense. Every single boater does exactly that unless they never, ever, leave their mooring. As I've said repeatedly, I'm just trying to get to grips with the reasons for the changing attitudes of CRT. In everyone's favourite line, some of my best friends are continuous cruisers, sometimes compliant, sometimes not. That's their business not mine. Our opinions don't matter much and I'm sure you no more resent home moorers (especially as you've been one) than I do genuine cruisers, dumpers, bridge hoppers or those just wanting a roof over their heads. I'll be interested to see where this debate goes, if anywhere, but I'll now politely doff my cap and leave this thread.

I certainly don't have a jaundiced view of boaters without a home mooring. Nor do I have the chip on the shoulder that most BWAHM do (if you prefer the term to CC, as I'm sure yiu do, for obvious reasons). However, doing a staggered series of little chunks of trips during a year, still does not, in my view, qualify as 'bona fide navigation throughout a period". It's no different to what I do and probably a lot less travel, and I certainly don't . It may be "bona fide navigation through several periods with big gaps between", which really isn't the same thing at all. Just because you've got away with it for years, still doesn't make it so, unfortunately. I therefore pay mooring fees to CRT which, while technically are attached to my home mooring, in fact aren't as they are the same wherever I choose to moor, whether on the Shroppie, the upper Macc or the lower. So one leisure boater pays a grand to CRT in addition to their licence, and another doesn't. Perhaps you can now see why CRT have started levelling the playing field?. It is, if course, unfair to those who are actually navigating throught the year, but that's collateral damage caused by those who are gaming the system, either by hiccupping along or illegally residing. You can understand why CRT have got fed up with both. I have no beef with anyone who manipulates the rules to their advantage, it's what we all do. It's academic, it doesn't impinge on my boating at all very much, certainly not enough to bother me. There's certainly nothing personal in it, or I wouldn't have some of the friends I do. What does irritate slightly is the squeals of outrage from some of the gamers when they get gamed back. Luckily, neither of our opinions cut much ice with CRT, who will just do what they do and we'll put up with it. I still think someone who leaves a hundred grand's worth of investment unattended in a public place for weeks on end is a bit weird - it stresses me out leaving mine to go to the shops - but then, we all are, a bit , or we wouldn't do it at all.

It is arguable that there is no "requirement". It was certainly the understanding of the original concession. As to "realistic need", it's just that, in fact, you can't be on a cruise without being on the boat, and to justify not having a home mooring you have to be on a cruise. It's no good just trotting out "it ain't so cos I don't like it" or "but then I can't do what I want ". Just explain, in simple terms, how you can be on a continuous cruise by moving your boat a couple of miles once a fortnight while spending the rest of time half a country away in a house. You may have to redefine the words "continuous" and "cruise". Perhaps you've booked a two week holiday on a cruise ship, boarded it on Monday , nipped home on Wednesday for a couple of weeks, flown out and joined it somewhere along the route for another weekend, flown home again, and actually finished your cruise with P&O two months later? You may find the company object. To say there is no need to be physically present during what is claimed to be a single journey is, I'm afraid, either daft or magical thinking. If they are really doing separate journeys, then, however inconvenient they may find it, that person aint a continuous cruiser. They're a leisure boater, just like me, except one of us is ripping off the system by not paying online mooring fees. Which has, for a while, been acceptable to CRT. It may not be for much longer. . .

I expect that to be the logical result of the CC surcharge - that anyone claiming to continuously cruise will have to confirm that they live aboard full time. It's not possible to do it otherwise, however much some people would like to bend the spirit of the law. You can't be continuously cruising while sitting a hundred miles away in a house with your feet up. It's a separate matter from the squatting residential boats, of course, and I admit I'm only interested in it as an intellectual puzzle. I'm not going to get upset about anyone on a boat unless they set their dog on me. I'd rather there were squatting and dumped boats than none.