The charity making life better by water
Making life better by water
Dredge & veg, cathedral of the canals, Crick Boat Show and mindless criminality (and more!) all in latest edition.
Damian
You may remember that, last month, we included an update on the dredging work taking place. One of the projects on the ‘to do list’ was on the Ashby Canal.
Well, earlier this week, I paid it a visit and met our dredging guru, Peter Birch, to learn more:
After watching that you may be wondering why Peter mentions that our dredging budget is a little reduced. While it is lower than some previous years, mainly due to the mandatory work on our reservoirs, we are still able to carry on with our constant surveys and better target the dredging we do to benefit the biggest number of boaters possible.
Peter also mentions What 3 Words in the video – if you haven’t heard of it you should definitely check it out! It enables you to share your location down to a three-metre squared area. It’s already widely in use with emergency services.
As you’d imagine, managing waterside flora is a year-round balancing act. Our approach is to prevent vegetation growth from impeding navigation or the use of towpaths. At the same time, we want to maintain the ecological, landscape and heritage benefits that trees, flowers and historic hedges bring to the waterways. Each year our charity invests around £7 million managing the vegetation along the canal network. In terms of expenditure, it’s second only to our major engineering programme.
Around 50% of what we spend goes on towpath and navigation channel maintenance - cutting grass and making sure trees, hedges and reeds don't impede navigation or the towpath. The other half of the vegetation budget is spent on things you may not necessarily notice such as regularly clearing vegetation from tunnels, culverts and bridges to extend their lifespan and reduce the need for costly repairs.
At this time of year as winter stoppages come to an end, one of the main vegetation control tasks is to prepare for the upcoming increase in boating that happens at Easter (or earlier if we get lucky with the weather).
This is exactly what area operations manager, Chris Pike, and his wonderful team of staff and volunteers, have been doing on a stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal near Nantwich.
I could go on to add that much preparation went into the project including site surveys, accessibility assessments and so on but I won’t as these before-and-after pictures really are worth a thousand words:
Offside vegetation clearance on the Shroppie - before (1)
As you may know, we’ve been working on proposals for a major refurbishment of Anderton Boat Lift & Visitor Centre, supported by a development grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to bring forward the initial plans.
Since the grant was awarded in 2022 external factors including inflation, particularly in the construction sector, have placed additional pressures on the plans for the project. The cost of the works required, primarily to the refurbishment of the Boat Lift, have increased and there have also been some necessary changes to the scope of the project.
So we are currently in discussions with the Heritage Fund regarding the next steps. The work that has been completed so far will remain relevant, all statutory consents obtained continue to be valid, and donations received will support ongoing maintenance of the Boat Lift.
It is anticipated that there will be a 12-18 month delay to the start of the main works, subject to a successful grant application which we will submit in due course. Once the current stoppage is complete – specialist engineers are continuing their detailed assessment in accordance with statutory requirements – it will mean that the Anderton Boat Lift & Visitor Centre will operate as usual during the 2025 and 2026 visitor seasons including the programme of exciting events we have over the coming months as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Boat Lift.
We hope that a successful grant application will allow work on the Lift and Visitor Centre to start in early 2027. Any planned stoppages affecting the Boat Lift will be communicated well in advance, and we will be working closely with our contractors to minimise disruption to boating whenever possible.
With over 2,000 miles of canals and rivers, a list of all the things we’ve been doing over the last fortnight to keep navigations open would be unfeasibly long to collate, but a scan of our stoppage notifications shows that we’ve…
| Description | In the last fortnight | Since we started reporting (12 July 2024) |
| Carried out lock repairs (repairing quoins and brickwork) & gate replacements | 7 | 158 |
| Conducted/facilitated bridge inspections | 5 | 202 |
| Repaired bridges | 4 | 76 |
| Repaired pump out stations | 4 | 41 |
| Fixed (or in the process of fixing) embankments | 4 | 41 |
| Repaired Elsans | 3 | 31 |
| Removed wind-blown trees that were impeding navigation | 2 | 183 |
| Fixed lock paddles | 1 | 36 |
| Fixed customer service facilities (such as toilets) | 1 | 30 |
| Repaired sluices | 1 | 18 |
| Carried out boater safety activities (such as placing buoys around hazards etc.) | 1 | 23 |
| Carried out dive survey/repair | 1 | 27 |
| Pollution incident | 1 | 2 |
The above list doesn’t include any work conducted purely on towpaths, water management (which there’s always a lot of!), major reservoir projects and so on – it’s just a flavour of what we’ve been doing to help boaters keep moving on the cut!
Advance tickets for the country’s biggest inland waterway festival are now on sale. By buying tickets for the 2025 Crick Boat Show now, sponsored by Haven Knox-Johnston, you can save 10 per cent on the entry price.
The event, which takes place at Crick Marina, near Daventry in Northamptonshire, will be held across the late May Bank Holiday Weekend 24-26 May 2025, with an exclusive Trade & Preview Day on Friday 23 May.
The Show is organised by Waterways World in association with us and Crick Waterside and Marina. It is expected to attract over 26,000 visitors.
As well as being the canal world’s biggest marketplace, showcasing the inland waterways industry with over 200 exhibitors, Crick Boat Show offers a fantastic day out with more than 30 new boats to view. There are also used boats, free boat trips, free advice seminars on boat ownership, technical masterclasses, a live music festival sponsored by Aquavista, a beer festival sponsored by LeeSan, and a large variety of food and drink stalls.
Peter Johns, publisher of Waterways World and show director, says: “We’re looking forward to welcoming people to our 2025 Crick Boat Show, to be held over the Whitsun May Bank Holiday weekend. Crick Boat Show is firmly established as the top destination for waterways enthusiasts looking to buy a new boat, upgrade or improve their existing boat, for newcomers wanting to get afloat for the first time and for those seeking a day out by the water.
“Now in its 26th year, the Show hosts the largest display of new inland boats, both narrowboats and wide beams, and for three days it becomes Britain’s largest chandlery when over 200 exhibitors bring together the complete range of equipment and materials for inland boating.
“Our ‘Trade & Preview Day’ is exclusively designed for those who want to speak with boating related exhibitors – from boat builders to equipment suppliers. Friday 23 May offers a maximum of 1,000 pre-booked visitors the opportunity to talk in-depth with these companies and to see the boats before everyone else.
Our national boating manager, Alex Hennessey, adds: “Every year Crick Boat Show, the UK’s biggest inland waterways festival, celebrates Britain’s fantastic network of canals and rivers.
“We look forward to welcoming thousands of visitors to Crick for a fantastic day out by the Grand Union Canal Leicester Line in the Northamptonshire countryside. Visitors to the Canal & River Trust Marquee can discover more about the boating, recreation and wellbeing opportunities our waterways offer today, as well as the work of our national waterways charity to maintain 2,000 miles of canals and rivers in England and Wales.”
For more information and to book tickets, camping pitches and moorings, visit www.crickboatshow.com or call 01283 742970, Monday to Friday 9am to 3pm.
Today, 14 March, marks the end of our winter stoppage programme and we’ve managed to get a mountain of work done. Unfortunately a few projects have been held up by things such as extreme weather (as pictured above), but, rest assured, we are working very hard to complete them all as soon as possible. So, below, you’ll find a list of navigations that have ongoing restrictions that may affect you if you’re planning to get out on the water this weekend:
When restrictions to navigation happen, we get them up on to our website as soon as we can – always best to have a scan before you set off. You can find out how to get stoppage notification alerts on your smartphone in this article.
If you have any questions about a specific closure, or spot an error in our system, please get in touch.
As the old adage ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ was used in the first article, it’s apt that we’ve just enhanced our ‘Contact Us’ form, on our website, to now allow anyone using it to upload a document, including pictures!
It may not sound it but this has been a significant piece of work due to the complexity and security considerations of allowing files to pass into our systems.
The new form now makes it much easier for you to report issues to us, with relevant images and other files documenting the problem, rather than having to send these to us separately as has previously been the case.
This work should also pave the way for some of the base functionality that will be required for the Boating App, which is aiming to enable full fault reporting, and case management, to support the delivery of the Better Boating Plan.
A couple of weeks ago, on 26 Feb we held our second online National Boaters Forum. The topic for this call was ‘Managing the Waterways’ and contained an overview of our licence enforcement and welfare teams. If you didn’t get the chance to join, don’t worry, we recorded it for you.
You can see the full list of regional and national meeting on our website.
We’ve been mentioning ‘Simpler Recycling’ for a while now and, with the start date for the new legislation, drawing nearer, 31 March, we have added a list of frequently asked questions to our website, which also contains an overview of all the information issued so far.
We’ve covered vandalism before, usually where people have fly-tipped or interfered a lock or sluice. The following recent case, shocking as it is, reminds us all that security can’t be taken lightly.
River Canal Rescue says the narrowboat that was broken into, vandalised and scuppered – blocking boats cruising the Hawkesbury junction area of the Oxford Canal – was the worst case of wanton destruction its teams had ever seen.
Our hearts go out to the boat’s distraught owner who visited NB Rosie the week before it was vandalised on the weekend of 15/16 February. Thieves stripped the boat clean and sunk it, not far from its mooring.
A three-man rescue team comprising chief rescue co-ordinator, Pete Barnett, and rescue engineers Andy Spencer and Abbie Pamplin raised the boat on 20 February, after sealing all water ingress points, deploying pumps and emptying her of water until she was buoyant again.
The sheer scale of what they stole is jaw dropping. Upon inspection the following was missing:
RCR advises the reason for the sinking was due to the bilge pump and batteries being stolen and the sea cock pipe being cut and left open, allowing water from the canal to flood the boat. Without mooring ropes, the vessel soon drifted to the middle, causing an obstruction.
The front port side window was also broken and there was damage to the port side bow hull. The rescue team believes this may have been caused by another boater trying to pass the vessel while it was blocking the navigation. A theory supported by a witness.
NB Rosie was towed to Coventry Cruising Club and will be inspected by a surveyor. The Club helped RCR by allowing the rescue team to use its yard for vehicles and equipment, it loaned a mooring rope and provided on-site refreshments.
Rescue manager, Tushka Horton, comments: “In all my 15 years and Pete’s 25 years of undertaking rescues, we have never seen such a violation of somebody’s property: the thieves knew what they were doing and exactly what they wanted. There must have been at least two people to be able to remove certain things – this is such a shocking story and our hearts go out to the owner.”
Visit our dedicated webpage for advice on boat security.
Thanks to those of you who’ve been in touch to share the story behind your boat’s name. This was in response to a request, while revealing the ten most popular names, that we’d love to hear the story behind why you picked that particular name. Please drop me a line to tell me and, ideally, a snapshot of your boat’s name proudly emblazoned on her side and I’ll look to cover some of the more unexpected ones in a future edition.
Last Edited: 14 March 2025
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