Richard Fairhurst

And now sold for over £1m to Crafted Boats (aka Pinders): https://www.banburyguardian.co.uk/news/people/large-canal-marina-on-six-acre-site-near-banbury-sells-early-for-more-than-ps1million-4512364

CRT/BW have always struggled with dimension information. In the early 00s (or late 90s?) Paul Wagstaffe at BW worked with HNBOC on a document which is still the definitive ground-truthed list of what can fit where. Unfortunately it’s been reworked and replaced numerous times since. I think there’s traditionally a confusion between “what fits though the structures”, “what are we prepared to support operationally this week”, and (most exasperatingly) “what is some half-remembered figure we saw somewhere once or copied down from an old Nicholsons”. The early 00s document was unusual in that it was very rigorously “what fits” and explained each individual pinch point.

Not coined, but popularised. You can find "narrowboat" in various pre-WW publications of the 60s and 70s.

Both aqueducts (or rather, all 1.5 aqueducts…) are accessible, but the Teme aqueduct was of course half blown up in WW2 and the Rea aqueduct is slowly collapsing. Putnall Fields Tunnel still exists but is on private land. Several very obvious earthworks along the route - you can find them with an OS map and satellite imagery, though they’re not necessarily the most videogenic!

Not aware of any. It’s an interesting question because the canals are nominally under the Waterways Infrastructure Trust AIUI, and CRT just (“just”!) manages them. So in theory one model would be for the WIT to retain ownership of a canal but give it to another organisation to manage. (Is the Kensington Canal another waterway that was transferred out of the management of BW? That one’s always intrigued me.)

That's certainly true of the Rochdale. @magpie patrick has posted previously that the "certain length of time" was in the region of 80 years: The Rochdale is the single canal I'd be most worried about, to be honest. It only takes the Calder Valley to flood one more time and the navigation will be closed. With only one holiday hirebase (currently up for sale) and very low boat traffic, it's not going to be top of the list to fix. I don't know, but I would guess the Millennium Commission grant agreement included a force majeure clause that CRT could try and invoke in case of major flooding - "sorry, we'd love to fix it, but our Government grant has been slashed and we have no money...".

My recollection of the Rochdale issue is that the Horse Boating Society was primarily objecting to resurfacing with tarmac in the urban areas around Rochdale itself, as part of Sustrans' Connect2 programme c. 2012. And sure, there's a heritage issue there. The Rochdale towpath wasn't originally tarmac. But nor did it have brick-faced concrete bridges, the M60 crossing over it, chain pubs alongside, and so on. The canals aren't frozen in aspic from 1800 or 1850 or 1900 or 1950 or any other arbitrary cut-off date; they are ever changing. I've not done the maths to work out how many people live within a few miles of the Rochdale in urban Manchester. The Manchester conurbation has a population of approaching 3 million so "well into six figures" seems like a safe guess. The Rochdale through Manchester pre-restoration was grim. Not grimy in the sense that Farmers Bridge, say, used to be; not interesting industrial traces in the way that parts of the MB&B still are. Just grim. Cascaded locks, a broken-down towpath and a shallowed channel. The £24m Millennium-funded restoration was (like the original K&A project) a bare-bones "let's get this canal open" operation, but left much to be done, not least towpath works. If it's a choice between resurfacing the towpath so that many more of the six-figure number who live nearby can make better use of it, or keeping it as it is for the benefit of a single horse-boater who might use it once every five years, I don't have any hesitation to say which side I fall. That isn't to say that all such works should be automatically welcomed. I don't really see the point of tarmacing both sides of the New Main Line towpath either. But the Rochdale towpath is about as cut-and-dried a case as it gets IMO.

Absolutely. We did Hatton through to Napton last week and you can basically work them like narrow locks. Easier, in fact, as you don't have to cross to the other side to open/close the mitred gate – you can just stay on the towpath side. The Ham-Baker gear could be easier to wind (as everyone says it was once), and the locks with wooden balance beams rather than metal ones feel heavy and unbalanced. Hatton paddles will drop slowly down without a windlass as designed, but some of the others now just spin out of control unless you wind them down. But maintenance aside, the design is brilliant. Sorry to see that Ham-Baker finally went under last year, though it looks like parts of the company have been bought out: https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/westmidlands/news/2069594-fifty-jobs-preserved-through-sale-of-ham-baker-businesses

I really need to finish off my iOS canal map app (and do an Android port)! A live tracking feature wouldn't be too hard to implement and would be a lot of fun for events like the Challenge. Remind me.

I remember being at similar meetings, about improvements to the Rochdale towpath in urban Manchester in particular, and the Horse Boating Society kicking off about how their needs were being ignored. Someone then asked exactly how many horse boaters there were and how often they boated the Rochdale…

Hopped off Song of the Waterways at Ryders Green to get the train for a holiday on my own boat. Rest of the crew heading to Tipton via Brades probably. The Rushall closure and our enforced rerouting to W&E there and back makes that the least locky Challenge I’ve ever done! Delighted to have ticked off a few stretches I’ve never boated (Cannock Extension and Anglesey). On balance we decided not to pick up the chest freezer from the W&E which would have been a very creditable entrant for the Trolley Trophy.

It's a bit more than "might", I'm afraid. w3w's accounts for 2021 show a loss of £43m. Turnover fell from 2020 to 2021. The accounts state: "The success of the business is dependent on the development, conversion and retention of a pipeline of commercial contracts to take the business cash flow positive and profitable." [my emphasis] So yes. Charging is exactly what they plan to do. Google/Gmail and Facebook/WhatsApp have profitable business models. So far, w3w doesn't.

The river pontoon moorings at Stourport are lovely if you can find a space - we’ve often moored there and sat on the deck eating fish and chips. There’s a vicious outflow pipe from the basins though…

Bear in mind that you'll need to plan day 3 around the opening times on the Severn. Bevere and Holt locks are currently on part-time operation: one hour on, two hours off. The easiest plan is to go through Bevere at 11, so you'll get to the Wharf just after midday (current permitting). You can then either have a quick lunch and go up through Holt Lock just before it closes at 1.30, or a leisurely lunch for when it reopens at 3.30. It's then another hour and a bit up to the top lock on the river, Lincomb, which closes at 6. One alternative would be to have a long Day 2 doing the Droitwich Canals; drop down through Bevere just before it closes at 6pm; moor at the excellent Camp House Inn overnight (cash only!); and then you'll be ready to go back up through Bevere in the 8am-9am slot. Unfortunately there aren't any good moorings above Bevere (nor any way to cross the river by foot), otherwise I'd have suggested you stay upstream of the lock and just walk down to the Camp. Agreed. If the river's being well behaved then I don't have any qualms about picking crew up from the landing and turning there and then. But if it's running faster then I'd usually go down to the lock cut. You'll sometimes find CRT volunteers at the canal locks here - the ideal is that they close the gates for you, so your crew can get back on in the lock. On occasion we've managed to inveigle gongoozlers to do it too!

When we passed through Bevere last week, after having waited for an hour above the two final Droitwich locks at Hawford, there were two keepers operating the lock. Which seems strange.