David: Seasonal reflections

THIS year's cruise has finally come to an end after 11 weeks continuous cruising, with different crew combinations, which added to the four weeks of our Spring cruise.

I reckon this puts us in a good position to assess the current condition of the waterways we have seen, mainly those to the north-west of Birmingham. With one exception, which I'll come back to, I reckon they are in as good a condition as any of the last 10 years and infinitely better than they were 30 or even 20 years ago.

We met only a handful of defective paddles, went down the weed-hatch only twice, even though we did a transit of the Stourbridge and Dudley canals, never used the pole to push off from a shoal and were not inconvenienced by 'structure failures' other than the one at Ashton.

The other one we met, at Stourport, actually enabled us to do our only 'new' piece of canal—the broad locks down to the river. There were no water shortages, though that is probably due more to the wet winter than CaRT's efforts, and we had no trouble from bandits—except for the theft of a flower tub in the middle of Birmingham. We even passed a dredger at work on the Ashby.

The exception was the vegetation, usually on both sides of the canal. I have already moaned about this at some length, so will not go into it again; I was pleased to see that CaRT and the local society are now tackling the Macclesfield, which was the worst one we experienced. What I can't understand is the inconsistency; the Shroppie was immaculate throughout its length, the Staffs and Worcs was fine from Autherley as far as Womborne, then it suddenly became bad, specialising in offside vegetation obscuring bridge-holes.

Stoppage notifications

I wonder if the impression that some people seem to have that the system is deteriorating is partly driven by the new system of online notification of emergency stoppages, which is absolutely excellent, especially when you compare it to what used to happen when the only warning you would get of an emergency stoppage (if you were lucky) was a not very obvious notice displayed on a lock notice board.

All too often the information came by word of mouth from other boaters or simply arriving at the problem. Now every last problem, no matter how trivial, is e-mailed out and can be checked daily if you are so inclined (and equipped). The drawback of this, from CaRT's point of view, is that everyone knows about every stoppage, whereas in the past you usually didn't unless you were cruising in the relevant area or it was so major and long lasting it got into the waterways press.

So the impression is created that there are huge numbers of stoppages inconveniencing large numbers of boaters, whereas in fact the large majority are resolved within 24 hours, many of them being dealt with outside of normal boating hours to reduce inconvenience. I reckon CaRT are doing a pretty good job in reacting to problems—which of these two notices, one from the 1960s and one from this year would you rather see?

Phoning CaRT

Whilst coming up the Staffs and Worcs a couple of weeks ago we passed a powerful fountain of water issuing from the bank behind the towpath. Thinking that there was a possibility that this might damage the bank I decided to ring CaRT.

I phoned 03030404040, which is displayed on many notices, including tunnel safety ones, to be told by a recording that the number was only available in office hours Monday to Friday—it was Saturday. So I rang the emergency number 0800 9991947999 and it was answered and the details taken and I was shortly rung back to be assured that they knew about it, it was a burst water main and no threat to the canal.

Fine—but my mobile, as with many people, is on a contract which includes all calls—except those to 08 numbers, for which you have to pay. This piece of lunacy is obviously not CaRT's fault, but it does seem wrong and indeed counter-productive to have an emergency number which is not for many people free to call. Other organisations have recognised this problem and have an alternative, 01/2/3 number for emergencies. It's time CaRT followed suit—after all, not many people these days are going to phone CaRT in an emergency from a call box.

David Hymers