We carry secaters and garden shears. Garden shears cost only £3 for a cheapo pair. Apart from cutting the grass at mooring sites we choose the kit is very useful at bridgeholes and lock entrances where BW seem to thing any cutting of brambles and other dangers to us boaters is nothing to do with them. We chatted to one contract group who told us BW specified that they must only cut the towpath side at bridges as the BW management wanted to encourage the plants on the offside and did not want them trimmed! The contractors thought it weird to have everything around the bridge on the towpath side neatly trimmed while just a few feet away brambles and nettles were left to grow when a few seconds cutting by them would keep everything neat. I can think of one waterway being restored that is expessly forbidden hire bases in the plan...
--- On Mon, 3/8/09, Neil Arlidge <[email protected]> wrote: From: Neil Arlidge <[email protected]> Subject: [canals-list] Re: Which waterway(s) to close first? To: [email protected] Date: Monday, 3 August, 2009, 12:06 PM Steve Haywood wrote: > 2009/8/3 Mack, David > david.m...@sdgworld .net > >> >> I think it more likely we will see more deferred maintenance and a >> slow general decline. When something significant fails there will be >> an extended stoppage until more funds can be found, just as was the >> case in the 1980s with Blisworth and Netherton Tunnels, Anderton >> Lift etc. The next Mon & Brec or Stourbridge breach might not be >> fixed so quickly. >> > And is this such a bad thing? Perhaps a tighter budget may lead to BW > cutting obviously nonsense expenditure like signage and extra mooring > points. Perhaps it might lead them to review non-necessary > expenditure like the veg pledge. In your dreams? :-) > Towpath walkers should expect what > they find in the countryside and boaters should carry sickles for > mooring, the same as they once did. I now carry a pair of secaters. Nice time on Saturday and Sunday pruning the Hanwell Flight > The towpaths have never been so > good; maybe a year or two of decline would discourage some of the > more unsavoury elements that are using them. And as for general > maintenance, maybe a period of decline would restore some of the old > values of boating when boaters had to use ingenuity if they came > across a lock that was out of action, or a stretch that appeared > unpassably shallow. Perhaps it would be no bad thing if the new breed > of floating cottage boater were made to realise it isn't all easy > going.... > > Discuss > > Steve Sounds like you need to go to Ireland. Must go, got a new Irish waterway to (re) discover...this time the Maigue, off the Shannon Estuary up to Adare...if we dare! ps there are obvious candidates for the first three waterways to close...just think, the most expensive to maintain, keep full of water, hardly any boats moored, only one hire boat base.... -- Neil Arlidge NB Erne-west TNC...Going far west... http://www.tuesdayn ightclub. co.uk/tour. html [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
