Sunday services at the IWA National Festival

Usually at the IWA festivals the Boaters' Christian Fellowship organises two services on the Sunday. One, at 0800, is a short communion service intended for boaters, campers and site staff; the other, often at 1030, is for members of the public too.

This year the BCF was sidelined, to an extent, by the churches in Watford. They had arranged for their annual open-air combined service to coincide with the festival. Fencing was moved so as to make the trailer stage temporarily part of the "outside" space, meaning that the public didn't have to pay to go to church (though they were encouraged to buy tickets for the festival afterwards).


I estimated that 500 people attended the open-air service, most of whom, presumably, were from the Watford churches.


Before that, though, and a much quieter affair, was the communion service in the Food Court. Even this seemed to have little BCF involvement as it was led by two Waterways Chaplains.


Perhaps things will be back to "normal" next year.

Regarding the festival itself, though, I hope the IWA will do some serious thinking about what went wrong this year. Numbers were down, exhibitors must have been disappointed, and many boaters have been expressing their feelings in the blogosphere. Despite the gorgeous weather there just wasn't the buzz of past Nationals. As others have said, nice though Cassiobury Park was, the festival site was too far detached from its raison d'être - the waterway and boats. The Crick boat show seems to have supplanted the IWA National Festival as the main large-scale event of the year. All it needs is some obscure competitions with no advance publicity, such as "best child's drawing of a boat", and the takeover will be complete.

Anglers have priority at visitor moorings - BW

On reading through Waterscape's Waterway Wanderers scheme, which I posted about yesterday, I discovered this nugget buried away in the fishing rules:

"Where visitor moorings are not signed as to whether fishing is permitted, its is assumed that during the boating season those wishing to moor have priority, at other times access will be on a first come first served basis."

Well, I don't know about you, but for me there is no such thing as a "boating season". I like to boat at any time of year. For me the "boating season", if there is one, is any time the water is liquid.

These "rules" suggest that boaters can be prevented from tying up at visitor moorings because an angler has got there first, and "bagged" the spot.

But hang on a minute, who built the canals, and for what purpose? Did fishermen come along in the eighteenth century and decide they wanted some new long thin fishing grounds? And did people such as Josiah Wedgwood then turn up and say, "Hmm. These fishing waters seem to connect potteries, limekilns and coalfields. I wonder if I could float some boats along them to transport some goods."?

What absolute rot! The canals were built for boats, and anglers came along afterwards. Boats should always have priority at moorings. Now I'm all in favour of living in harmony with others, and anglers have as much right to enjoy their fishing hobby as we do our boating one. But come on, BW! Don't lose touch with your raison d'être: to maintain the waterways for boating.

Isn't there enough towpath, away from designated visitor moorings, for fishing from?

Oh, and if this rule is to be enforced, we need a definition of the "boating season". May I suggest: "All times when the waterway in question is not iced over, nor closed owing to insufficient depth of water, blockage or maintenance work."

(rant over)

In a comment on yesterday's post Brian of NB Harnser wondered if the new Waterway Wanderers scheme meant that fishing was no longer allowed from one's boat. I don't know the rules about this; perhaps someone could advise.

photo from waterscape.com