Ian Mac

Just seen the new Martin Zero video in which the myth about the depth of Tardebiggie is perpetuated. This lead me into thinking if one measures from ground level to invert level which would be the deepest lock chamber in the Country. I'm going to ignore the MSC for this as having 29ft over the cills is cheating somewhat maybe. I think the deepest lock on the inland system may well be lock 4 on the Ashton canal. This only has a fall of about 4ft but the bottom gates are huge and they are mounted on an up-stand for the bottom cill and the lock invert is even deeper. There are several saddles bracing the chamber walls. Created by mining subsidence caused by the nearby Bradford Pit. Lock 6 and 10 must also be up there as well.

Disagree - Fibreglass is the way to go, and the way we have gone, so far it has been excellent, light, long 6m plus, strong. Had to manufacture a connection of the boat hook and the Pommel on the other end, but neither were rocket science.

I Really enjoy the Home Guard Club in Failsworth above lock 68 I like the Boat & Horse in Chadderton, food is quick and cheerful, can be noisy around here with the motorway and Broadway rd. The Radclyffe at Grimshaw Lane is OK, the beer is better in the Gardeners, over the lights, and its a good deep mooring, the Manchester side of the Lift bridge. Then there is the Minders Arms, a bit of a walk from the footbridge about lock 64, and then under the railway a good local pub. Next up you have the Rose of Lancaster at Mills Hill very similar to the Boat & Horse. good mooring up be the aqueduct below lock 63 The Ship Inn at the top of Slattocks is excellent, it is also well worth the walk up to the Tandle Hill Taven, but check its open first. It is a really good spot to moor at the top of Slattock, there is also a bus service. I have to say the Hopwood arms has always been a disappointment for me. I have always enjoyed the Blue Pits Inn by lock 51, although I have never spent the night here. The Sandbrook just by the motorway tunnel, Rochdale side, is good for a mega breakfast, but poor mooring. The Horse & Jockey by Well I' Th' Lane is a really good Sam Smiths boozer, had several good dinnertime sessions in there! Ridiculously cheap. Unfortunately this is Rochdale Centre and not a place to spend the night, such a shame. The Tophams Taven at Smith bridge is over the level crossing, I've not been in there for years. The Red Lion in Littleborough has always been the attraction, watch the opening hours though, dinner time drinking here can be a bit sparse. The West Summit Inn is OK in my book, well it was 6 months ago when I last went. I like the waggon & Horse in Walsden walk in from around lock 29. Its then a bit of a desert till you get to Tod.

Last time it rained here was 30th March when it put down the huge amount of 0.2mm of rain, the smallest amount I can measure. The total for March was 22.8mm. It did nearly double that in Feb at 44.3mm and January was almost wet at 100.6mm We have actually had some clouds today the 9th April for the first time since the 4th April. Last year, by this time we had had just short of 400mm of rain, which is more typical? I live about 10miles due west of Tod, so expect similar rain patterns. I will be expecting the L&L which has not opened yet to be closing soon. The weather is due to break on Saturday with about 1/2 inch due on Sunday the ground a bit wet! We may have got up to an inch by Good Friday, depends which weather forecast you believe!

This is about allowing the MSC to be used by boaters attempting to escape. As you may all be aware, the way John Whittaker has structured Peel Holdings is Complex, to say the least. I believe it to be over 300 companies within the tree of companies which ultimately are registered to one in the Isle Of Man, where John Whittaker lives. I seem to remember, many entries ago, some said that BCC Bridgewater Canal Company was 11 layers down. Somewhere in that tree of owners of BCC is Peel Ports, they are not sole owned by Peel. I believe that it is this part of the structure which is causing the current delays, and it is they are proving very hard for everyone to negotiate with, including the higher management companies of Peel and BCC.

The thing which now take the time to fix something like this is the huge hike in the cost of labour, relative to the task. One can no longer just hire 40 men and get them to walk in and just dig the culvert out, install a new one and then back fill it, and repair the bank. This is how it would have been done up to 80 years ago. One now has to use machines, to do the work. That means you have to negotiate access for said machines. Put a track in, install all the required H&S and social stuff. That all takes time and depending on how those talks go, these are the thing which can hold the whole process up, as the Trust may need to invoke its power of access, which means going to court, and that really does eat time up. It is a pretty remote spot. Probably only one landowner to talk to, depends on if the farmer is a tenant or owner, and if they have agents. The original culvert may well be a wooden box culvert as used on the L&L. Basically the only safe way of repairing them is to rip them out and install a modern materials pipe, as lining them does not seem to work from the experience of the L&L. As has been pointed out elsewhere it only takes one boater to have moored here and run his boat in gear, moored up, to have started this whole failure process off. You can spot examples of this on the flyby videos on farcebook.

However the B member has formally resigned his position and is no longer a member. THis had to be done as the Office for National statistics would not let DEFRA concess the debt which the Trust hold dfromm being part of the national Debt. The only solution was for the Secretary to resign. from Trusts the annual accounts 22-23 The January meeting was held online and covered a single item, providing Council members with an update on the changes to Trust foundation documents proposed as a result of the ONS public sector classification, including the resignation of the Secretary of State as B member and removal of Secretary of State powers to wind-up or reallocate Trust assets (which have now come into effect from 8 June).

An apocryphal story. The local councillors responsible for Tuel Lane lock restoration were taken and shown the then deepest lock on the system at Bath. On their return, they agreed to the plan for the new lock and tunnel/bridge being built, but on the condition that their lock was the deepest on the system. This was easily achieved by the adjustment of the weir height on lock 2. One has to be careful measuring the drop of a lock, as the level of the pounds can vary significantly. The definition I believe is weir crest to weir crest. Of course, the Rochdale has another claim to fame in that it also has the deepest original lock on the system now. Antonys Lock 77 is now over 15ft deep and has had to have an extra 6ft added to the top of the original structure to compensate for the subsidence from the local coal mining. Question - how many boats have bagged the top four. We have

Before the days of the interweb and social media, we had to rely on snail mail to keep us up to date and word of mouth. So for the 1971 breach NORWESTER the magazine of the IWA north west branch edited by John Greenway was the organ we all waited for. Having done a root though John's archive, I have found two relevant sections - enjoy and learn

As a boater, how do you think the towpath and hedges on the towpath side should be managed? I ask as I am aware that C&RT are attempting to get this "right" and keep on appearing to fail. There seems to be a huge divergence in peoples opinions of how this should be done. One thing to bear in mind is that track management all comes from the same bucket of money, so cutting the grass more equals less dredging. Extreme 1 is the grass should be manicured over the whole towpath to 1mm and be like a top quality bowling green. The hedge should be neat and less than 1m high. Extreme 2 the whole of the towpath should be a totally wild place. A vast plethora of options in-between the two extremes. What is the correct balance and why?

To answer the question of cost to repair of the 1971 Bridgewater breach. The original estimate was £120,000 this is from the PFCS mag at the time. It actually cost £190,000 according to the minutes of the IWA, which also say that the MSC met the cost. However, that is not as I remember it. I believe The Bridgewater trust was created to fund this repair, only that did not come into existence till 1974 after the repair was completed, so at this point I have not found out how it was really funded, or why the MSC had a change of heart and repaired it. Lots of political pressure was applied, Cheshire Country Council were certainly on the case. The MSC's first reaction was to say they were closing the canal, once they had stopped it leaking. Also, I think the aqueduct over the Woodhouse lane was modified at this time, To put the costs into perspective a set of boat narrow gates at the time cost £1, 300 today they cost about £14K. Also consider it would not be repaired using the same method as last time but will probably be fixed liked the Middlewich breach and have a concrete trough built across the whole area, so much more expensive.

Whilst being distracted by other comments in this thread I wondered off and discovered this Judgement made by MRS JUSTICE COX DBE here http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2012/3133.html in it, she deliberates over the right of navigation, see section 13 By virtue of s.105(5) of the Transport Act 1968 any public or private rights of navigation, granted by the enabling legislation which had facilitated the construction and maintenance of the inland waterway network, were abolished. S.105(5) provides, so far as material: "(5) …; and any local enactment passed with respect to any such inland waterway, so far as that enactment – (a) confers any public right of navigation over the waterway; or; (b) imposes any duty to maintain that waterway for the purpose of navigation (including any duty to support, or maintain a supply of, water for the waterway for that purpose) shall cease to have effect." This provision needs to be read together with s.115(1), providing: "(1) In sections 105 and 112 of this Act – (a) references to any right of navigation over a waterway or canal include references to any right to use or keep any vessel or craft on the waterway or canal …" I also seem to remember that there was a test case about the River Derwent navigation, which the IWA was involved in and the case was lost and we stopped attempting to restore the Derwent So I think this implies the right of Navigation on the Bridgewater if it existed has also been removed.

This was the new bridge which was installed over the canal near Astley. Probably Vicars Hall Bridge in 2016. It is a full euro spec bridge, which provides access now a piece of land which Peel own, rather than the old bailey bridge, which gave access to to the top end of Boothtown Tip. Their original proposal to build it was, something like close the canal for a year build the bridge, re-open the canal. So when the protests came, closing the canal for a shorter period seemed like a big win. End of October to the end of Feb.

A few points. Firstly, the Government is no longer the backstop for the C&RT. the Secretary of State resigned his golden share. This happened because the OBR said that the government was no long allowed to concess the debt help by the Trust, as not being part of the National Debt. The Bridgewater breach 1971 repair was done by reclaiming all the materials from the flooded area to rebuild the embankment, a layer of crushed limestone was then placed on top of this and then clay puddle was used. Then a narrow channel was piled This was different to the original construction which relied on tight ground, basically sand with mud mixed together. This explains why the is clay in the flood debris. The 1971 method of repair is not how it would be repaired this time, I suspect. A concrete channel would be created, similar to the way the breach at Middlewich was repaired. The channel could be self-supporting should anything untoward happen to the rebuilt embankment. The whole of the embankment will be treaded to this design, my guess at cost £5M-£10M Contrary to what others are saying, I believe Peel Holding will not sanction the repair, so although the BCC are saying all the right things, when push comes to shove Peel will not provide the funds. Peel Holding's only objective is to make John Whittaker more wealthy. Peel will play the long game here. £10M can be invested in property and make a considerable return, from this they can siphon off some money and pay to have a publicity team there who promise Jam tomorrow. Remember, Peel are very good at fighting the long game. There are lots of examples. There is no return from fixing the canal. It will also cost to close it so they will go down the road, kicking the can with them. The only way it will get fixed is if it starts to hurt John Whittaker wealth. This can only be achieved politically, if the Mayors of the Northwest band together and stop his development of his property portfolio. We have to be careful of what we wish for. Transferring it to the charity C&RT will bring large liabilities, especially as Peel have transferred the maintenance of the Barton tank from the MSC to the BCC, purely as an admin accounting action. Peel will not provide any form of Golden Egg to support the canal, and they will have already stripped the BCC of all its assets. We are up against ruthless professionals here.

I have just seen a boat registration number on the telly. I tried to look it up but it's not on the system. It appears to be a old BW number as it is prefixed with the wavy slug but the number is X C0PP3R the boat is called Dun Nickin' belongs to one Chief Inspector Albert Mackintosh. Well done Nick Park the level detail is just amazing. The date stone on the tunnel is 1851 - anyone any ideas why that date, Netherton was the last tunnel built, starting in 1858 I believe. The other boat is called Accrington Queen No. 45 has a boat registration number of 1951 wonder what the significance of those numbers is. - I get the name