David: Summer of extremities
IN THE last five months we have visited every canal and river terminus south of Oxford, except Slough—there are limits. I can therefore give a fairly upbeat assessment of the state of the system in the South of England.
An assessment for the navigation authorities concerned—that is Canal & River Trust, Environment Agency, National Trust, Basingstoke Canal Authority and Bristol Harbour Authority.
With one exception, which I will come back to, it's been pretty good. We suffered no hold-ups due to emergency stoppages (we missed the Devizes one by 24 hours) and apart from the odd broken paddle on CaRT waters all the kit was working as it should.
We received little help from the much vaunted volunteers, except on Hanwell Flight, where it was very welcome, and on the Thames, where volunteers seem to have largely replaced the paid summer assistant lock keepers. Mind you, one lock keeper told me that he didn't want volunteers, as they needed so much 'baby-minding' that they weren't worth having.
On the upper Thames some of the locks are displaying notices soliciting boater assistance with (manual) locks. (See picture)
The big exception
The exception to the rosy view of things is bankside vegetation and encroachment on the actual navigation. The main offenders are the EA on the upper Thames and CaRT almost everywhere. I exempt the Basingstoke from criticism, since it is miracle enough to be able to cruise it at all and the Wey (National Trust) was pretty good.
All the way down the K&A and on our return trip up the Oxford the vegetation has been allowed to grow thickly from the towpath side, so it is virtually impossible to get off the boat, let alone moor except in the limited number of places where cutting has taken place. In some places the vegetation and reed growth reduce the width of the canal to less than 7ft.
I am beginning to suspect that this is a deliberate policy, in order to concentrate mooring at a few locations which can be supervised. This is especially apparent on the Oxford, which until a few years ago was kept fully mown to the towpath edge. The K&A has clearly not been so treated for a lot longer. If this is the policy, then it doesn't work, since on the K&A the continuous moorers are virtually nose-to-tail from Foxhangers to Bath and have no difficulty in mooring in a jungle.
The short-sighted nature of this policy is shown by what has happened on the Thames. In the late nineteenth century it was possible to bow-haul a rowing skiff from the towpath—read Three Men in a Boat; they kept doing it—at some point in the 20th century the Thames Conservancy ceased keeping the edge clear and as result mature trees have colonised the bank, seriously limiting the navigable width and often dropping large branches to obstruct the river.
On the Thames below Oxford the river is usually wide enough (at the moment) for this not to be a serious problem, but on the narrower upper river there are places where it is no wider than a canal (see pictures). On the much narrower canals offside tree growth is already a major problem, and once they really get going on the towpath side this policy of not cutting will close them in a few years—I already get the impression that stoppages caused by fallen trees are becoming more common. It is high time CaRT said what their policy really is on this—at the moment it seems to be no more than ignoring the issue and hoping it will go away.
New mooring restrictions
Coming past Thrupp we saw the notices relating to the new mooring restrictions there, which generally I favour, and had I wanted to there was room to stop. One aspect of the notices puzzled me—whereas the old ones talked of 48 hours, the new ones say '2 days. I know how long 48 hours is, but how long is '2 days'?—it could mean that you arrive one evening, stay the following day and the one after, and leave on the third morning. I think an element of ambiguity has been introduced here and it matters, since the overstaying penalty is an immediate £25 per day, which I think is too steep; it should be £5 for the first day or so, which is the practice at official EA moorings on the Thames.
David Hymers