Nothing amended or re-written

I HAVE written a number of articles for narrowboatworld, covering the whole spectrum of what we experienced whilst cruising for six months this year. And at no time were my articles amended or re-written in any way shape or form, writes Peter Ponting.

May I first agree with Tom Crossley. He is the messenger. As I see it (and we are mere novices, having only spent 22 years boating on the canal system) The officials who run the system (ex British Waterways now CaRT) appear to not like boaters.

Whingers

According to the hierarchy, we are nothing but whingers, complaining about every little thing we can. That is not true. I personally pay £2,100 a year mooring fees, £900 license fee and £300 Insurance. Add an annual service £150, plus pump outs, diesel, coal, electricity etc, and we are soon up to £4,000 a year. And, we haven't left the marina yet.

There are 280 boats in our marina. Now lets be liberal and reduce that figure to say £3,000 per boat. That is £840,000 going into the system annually.

That is one marina.

Breaking down

We are based on the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal which is 16 miles long. We have three pump-out facilities and five water points plus a shower facility at Saul junction. The bridges which are manned are continually breaking down. You have to use large fenders to stop the rivets scratching your boat.

At Slimbridge it is difficult to moor on the 48 hour mooring because of continuous moorers. At the tall ships festival in Gloucester Docks this year, boats became grounded because of lack of dredging. The canal is also closed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from November to March, due to the bridges not being manned.

So can I ask CaRT, am I getting value for money?

Frustrated

Can you now understand why people become frustrated with the canal system and the people who run it?

This year we met Americans, Australians, Chinese, Norwegians, Swedish and many European people, all using our canal system to have a relaxing holiday.

Why do the committee of CaRT not understand that the canal system in this country is unique worldwide.

It is not the whinging boaters of this system that are the problem. It is the people who run it, who do not listen to the people putting money into it, creating jobs, buying from small shops on the network, reporting problems, helping whenever they can.

So good for narrowboatworld. Let us be persecuted. But at least we can say, 'I told you so'.