16th November is boat count week, please ensure you are all stood neatly by your boat so that British Waterways can see you tug that forelock.
Mr and Mrs Smith look on with bemusement at yet another attempt to root out the hippie boatie scum
Every year BW count all the boats on the system by walking the canal, this year there is an extra twist to the exercise. They will leave on each and every boat between Devizes and Bath a copy of the local ‘consultation’ on the mooring proposals for the Limpley Stoke Valley.
Given that these proposals could make it impossible for you to live the way you have chosen to means that it is vitally important that you respond to this consultation which is said to be of 6 weeks duration.
We will give you good notice of the closing dates and expect local discussion and meetings to co-ordinate our collective response. Remember that the last moorings consultation had 8% of its responses from this area and may even have made a difference.
To get a flavour of what these proposals entail, read the post we have already published about the ‘consultation’ as presented to everyone else except those that it affects during the summer.
MINUTES OF THE MEETING HELD AT BATHAMPTON VILLAGE HALL ON 28 AUGUST
Maps of proposed mooring restrictions
1 Bathampton Folly Footbridge to Candy’s Bridge 19 Aug 2009
2 Bathampton Candy’s Bridge to white gate (start of permanent moorings) 19 Aug 2009
3 Bathampton White gate (Kennet Side) to winding hole 19 Aug 2009
4 Bathampton & Claverton Winding hole to Hardings Bridge 19 Aug 2009
5 Claverton Hardings Bridge to narrowing in canal 19 Aug 2009
6 Claverton covering the 300 metres south of narrowing in canal 19 Aug 2009
7 Claverton from end of permanent moorings to 500 metres from Dundas Bridge
8 Claverton from end of 14 Day zone to Dundas Bridge
We have not seen the consultation, our friend at BW tells us it is still in draft, but the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust have been told that it’s a done deal.
Watch this space.
Tags: British Waterways, mooring, mooring policy, Moorings Consultation
One of the opportunties that boat count week has offerred in the past is that in order to get it done BW have in past years emptied Watford and their other offices in order to have enough bodies on the ground to actually achieve the count in a week. In past years this has even involved directors being given a couple of days out on the topwath counting boats.
I don’t suppose Simon Salem will be let out this year, and if he is, I doubt he’ll be asked to go and count boats on the Western end of the K+A? đŸ˜‰
Shame – if he and others spent more time on the towpath talking to individual boaters, he might actually understand his customers a bit better and finally realise that his job might be a bit easier and less traumatic if he worked with us not against us – we live in hope!
Still look at it as a potential opportinity to have a calm, polite please, but frank moan to BW face to face. Some of the most revealing and productive conversations I have are with more junior staff at BW who usually seem to have a good deal more common sense than some of their masters. On occasion it has been known to have a positive impact.