Moorings closed
CaRT has just announced that the Market Harborough Arm is another popular towpath and mooring area to be closed for most of the season! Writes John Coxon.
This now joins two other long-term, summer season closures viz: the section from Great Hayward junction to Bridge 105, that includes the very popular Tixall Wide on the Staffs & Worcs Canal and from Shadehouse Lock to near Kings Bromley Marina on the Trent & Mersey Canal that includes the popular moorings above Shadehouse lock.
Upgrading towpaths
Although boats may pass through these sections, the towpaths are officially closed with no mooring for boaters or any pedestrian access to enable them to lay upgraded paths for their favoured cyclopaths.
It's blatantly obvious to me that CaRT appear to have no respect for their paying boater customers preferring instead to pander to freeloading cyclists?
Why could they not do this work in the winter?
It seems to me they initiate deliberate policies to be as inconvenient to boaters as possible.
Dangerous as possible
It's like their dangerous policy of not cutting the vegetation up to the waters edge. It seems they're saying let's make it as difficult and/or dangerous for boaters as possible so that they might get fed up and leave the waterways!
Not me, like a lot of boaters, I went out and bought a strimmer to trim the vegetation next to my boat when I moor-up to make it safe for me to get on and off and move about.
Even if they have a grant or another organisation is paying for the work, CaRT could still have insisted that it had to be done out of the summer boating season?
Could be done in winter
CaRT are showing a complete lack of common sense if it is not deliberate. The section at Shadehouse Lock for instance could have been scheduled for the same time the T&M is planned to be closed at that location in January and February next year?
This would have caused far less inconvenience to boaters and walkers alike in this area for once.
Do CaRT care about their paying customers...I, for one, do not think so!