Victor: Coming home to roost

THERE is very little doubt that the Cart chickens are well and truly coming home to roost.

For no one can possibly deny that the waterways are falling apart, and anyone taking the trouble to look deeper cannot fail to notice that it is the lack of maintenance that is the problem. In days of yore there were many summers much drier than the current one, yet do you think for one moment the canals ran dry as they are allowed to now?

Can you imagine dear Joshua Wedgwood and his manufacturing cohorts of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the mine owners over many counties putting up with the closures of today? 

Or even the canal owners losing their income.  No way José.

For they kept the canals open, and knowing of the possibly of dry summers made sure there were not the leaking lock gates so prevalent of today.  There would be no breaches where banks were allowed to crumble away, no undetected culverts collapsing—both instances at present closing waterways. For all were regularly inspected by lengthmen, so scorned by the present regime.

How so unlike today, when the people left in charge of our waterways are more concerned about damsel flies, water rats and the like. Simply love erecting a plethora of signs even ones for the ducks to read, complete with their own special routes on the towpaths, and so on and so on. And don't let's forget the latest lunacy of building a fence around a vast reservoir as an otter has been seen that might eat Cart's poor little creatures—as in fact nature intended.  All taking vast sums of money from what it is supposed to be there for—maintaining the waterways.

Just think in the olden days when an heavily laden boat was pulled by a horse into a lock, with no reversing engine to stop it, yet the gates stood up to being banged, time and time again.  Nowadays, modern narrowboats with the 'brakes' of a reversing engine get the blame for damaging these same gates, that really are so worn out, poorly maintained or incorrectly installed they give way at just a nudge, so the boater gets the blame.

And the locks. Most leak, and leak badly, with precious water running away down overflows, so a few weeks of dry weather and waterway after waterway is restricted or closed, with 'no money for maintenance' is the cry from Cart, whilst six new executive directors are employed—and no one seems to know what for!

At present making one each for each closed waterway! 

It takes some believing

All those waterways unnavigable yet Cart has the sheer audacity to celebrate its self generated 'Waterways Alive Awards'.

This surely must rate as 'the con of the year' as the awards go for peculiar things, that have nothing to do with the waterways but nature, unwanted buildings and the like.

One award does have something to do with the waterways however, that gives some idea of their value, with one for the Marple Flight—at present closed!

I like it

I really did like the comment from our old friend Orph Mable of Oxley Marine. who pointed out that if a lock is in bad repair it will break—something that those at Cart do not seem to be able to recognise.

In bad repair, as he mentioned by so much money being spend elsewhere on such daft things.

Where will we go?

We are of course now rather worried where we will be able to cruise come our September outing?  For the last two we were caught in stoppages, and just missed the 'closed indefinitely' Leicester Section last September.

After this ludicrous year of stoppages I can see many more boaters leaving the waterways and it is not doing any favours for the hire companies.

It was in 1992 that we hired a narrowboat on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal having a jolly time, but neither hire companies or hirers will be having such a jolly time this year with the lock flights closed.

And all signs point to it getting worse.

Victor Swift