Railway rails on the canal system

On our walk along the Stratford-on-Avon Canal I noticed that the small replica mileposts installed by SONACS, the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal Society, were often accompanied by upended lengths of rail. These are, I assume, the remnants of the original mileposts as erected by the Great Western Railway, which took over the canal in 1865. As I had my GPS device with me I looked about me at the quarter miles, and spotted more rails hidden in the undergrowth.

The Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, which we walked a couple of years ago, has many similar pieces of rail, used there to denote the company's boundary.

This is the view from above...


... and from the side. This one is by the Nant Monasgin aqueduct.


And this is at Llangynidr top lock:


Railway rails are used on many canals at water level as reinforcement or protection on the approaches to bridge holes. I've just spent the last hour searching through my photos, but I can't find any examples.

(There must be a more elegant term than "railway rails" but I can't think what it is.)

A rainy walk along the Stratford Canal

From Crick last Sunday we drove to Birmingham to stay with Ally and Ben for three days. I repaired most of the garage roof (missed a bit of worn roofing felt in the centre - it'll have to wait until our next visit) and trimmed the hedge; Jan did general gardening and outside tidying. On Tuesday, in a break from our labours, we walked the quarter of a mile to the Stratford Canal, and then walked another seven miles to Hockley Heath, where Ally picked us up after work.

It was an excellent walk, despite the on/off rain. The towpath was mostly in a good state, being really muddy only just west of Hockley Heath, where, conveniently, there was a parallel road we could use to bypass the mud.

The photo above shows a boat passing under Bridge 6. A little further on, and four days later, was where Adam of Debdale was conducting a boat test for Canal Boat magazine.

For my records here's Jan in the front garden ...


... and I know it's not pretty, but here's one of my patches on the garage roof. The bricks are there to try to hold down the edges of the felt so they stick well!

Paul plots a Waterway Route through ranking data

I discovered today that Paul Balmer of Waterway Routes has produced graphs plotting the ups and downs of the fortunes of some waterways websites as ranked by Tony Blews.

(Paul, I hope you don't mind me reproducing an example here: to the right is a smaller version of the graph below.)

Clicking on either graph will take you to Paul's website, and more graphs

As you can see, the graphs cover the time from November 2009 to March 2010, and show how the hit counts vary over that four month period. If you can pick out the coloured line you're interested in, you can easily tell how it's doing compared to the rest. Paul has made several other graphs, some of which have fewer lines and are thus easier to read.

It's all very impressive, and would be even more so if Paul could do a "real time" graph, and where you could choose which website(s) to follow. But that could be a lot of work.

When I started this post I was going to say that it knocks my weekly snapshot of Tony's chart into a cocked hat, but now I'm not sure. If you tried to display all 110 (currently) UK waterways websites listed by Tony Blews the graph would be almost unreadable. Unless, as I say, Paul could come up with a way of filtering the information you wanted.

I met Paul at his stand at Crick (again, I've borrowed an image from your blog, Paul - hope that's OK), and talked about timelapse filming. His "bowcam" films are made by speeding up real time footage from a camera recording onto a hard drive (or was it onto memory card?). My efforts at timelapse have mostly been using a camera set to capture images at fixed intervals, of 30 seconds or so. The advantage of speeding up real time footage, as Paul does, is that you can slow down for interesting bits, and zoom along where there are no locks, junctions or other notable features.

Top Thirty, 2010 week 23

Here is the UK Waterways Site Ranking as it stood at 0915 on Sunday 6th June 2010. This is taken, with permission, from Tony Blews's UK Waterways Ranking Site.

Two new entries in the top thirty this week: Canal World Discussion Forums and CutConnect, and two re-entries: NBNorthernPride and Narrowboat Debdale.


1 Jim Shead's Waterways Information (=)

2 JustCanals.com - Forums (+1)

3 Pennine Waterways (-1)

4 Granny Buttons (=)

5 CanalCuttings.co.uk (=)

6 CanalPlanAC (=)

7 boatshare (=)

8 Retirement with No Problem (=)

9 Towpath Treks (=)

10 Jannock Website (+1)

11 Waterway Routes (+4)

12 Trafalgar Marine Services (=)

13 UKCanals Network (-3)

14 Narrowboat.co.uk (-1)

15 Narrowboat Gypsy Rover (+8)

16 Water Explorer (+2)

17 WB Takey Tezey (=)

18 nb Epiphany (-2)

19 Chertsey (+5)

20 Derwent6 (+2)

21 Google Earth Canal Maps (-7)

22 Canal World Discussion Forums (-)

23 Canal Photos (-4)

24 CutConnect - keeping boaters in touch (-)

25 Baddie the Pirate (+2)

26 Narrowboat Bones (-6)

27 nb Lucky Duck (-6)

28 NBNorthernPride (-)

29 CanalBoatingHolidays (-4)

30 Narrowboat Debdale (-)

The figures in parentheses denote the number of places moved since the previous chart; (-) denotes new entry or re-entry into the top thirty; (=) denotes no change.

There are 110 entries altogether; Halfie is at number 44.

Look what the Viking brought to Crick

Sue said, "Come and look round our new boat." So we did. Built by Viking Canal Boats it must be one of the cheapest ways to get a fully fitted new narrowboat: the "from" price is £55,000.

Proudly standing at the stern was the Polish man who built it. I asked him if he'd done the steelwork, he said yes. And the fitting out? Yes. I didn't ask him about the painting, but he probably did that too.


One surprise inside was the Aga in the galley; another was the dinette/study, devoid of any furniture.


Here's Sue talking to Jan. Sue's first cruise on her new boat - she's calling it Spring Water, I think - would be from Crick, immediately after the show.


According to the website all these Polish boats have a dragon's head at the bow, a sort of scaled down (and scaly at the same time) figurehead.


Another curiosity is what appears to be a storage bracket, welded to the roof, for the anchor.


How annoying it would be to find that the only thing preventing you from getting under that low bridge was a piece of metalwork which probably shouldn't have been there in the first place!


It appears to be remarkable value for the price, though. (But I wouldn't have chosen that colour scheme!)

Four-legged boat Inner State at Crick

Few who went to this year's show at Crick can have failed to notice the Lady Lydia, a blue steam launch serenely gliding everywhere except on water.


Lady Lydia is one incarnation of Inner State street theatre company ("strictly no juggling or fancy stuff"). Judging from their website I feel that their talents were being underused here.

Snow at Crick?

Well, despite appearances, no, not snow.


Hawthorn blossom was being driven off the, er, hawthorn, coating boats and canal at Crick on Sunday with the white stuff.

Castles and roses at Crick 2010

We arrived back home this afternoon after visiting our daughter and son-in-law in Birmingham. On the way there, on Sunday, we stopped off at the Crick boat show. We had intended to get there in time for the service taken by members of the Boaters' Christian Fellowship, but I'd underestimated the time it would take to get there from the wilds of Norfolk. We walked in to hear, "Let's finish by saying the words of the grace." Oops. We'd missed it.

Oh well, we said hello to friends, and were encouraged to visit boats Ki-Wi and Pilgrim's Progress for a cup of tea later on.


The first photograph I took was of some of the stunning output of a canal artist, who was painting traditional-style castles and roses decoration on all sorts of things. Unfortunately I didn't make a note of the name of the artist, but looking through the list of exhibitors, the entry "Sue's Roses & Castles" rings a bell.


Is this Sue (seated)?

A search for "Sue's Roses & Castles" merely returns the entry from the exhibitors' list I'd consulted in the first place!