Top Thirty, 2013 week 20

There's a message from Tony Blews below this week's chart ...

Here is the UK Waterways Site Ranking (top thirty places) as it stood at 2020 on Sunday 12th May 2013. This is taken, with permission, from Tony Blews's UK Waterways Ranking Site.


1 Canal World Discussion Forums (=)

2 CanalPlanAC (=)

3 Pennine Waterways (=)

4 Jim Shead's Waterways Information (=)

5 Living on a Narrowboat (+1)

6 Water Explorer (-1)

7 Retirement with No Problem (=)

8 UKCanals Network (=)

9 Waterway Routes (=)

10 boatshare (+3)

11 Towpath Treks (=)

12 nb Epiphany (-2)

13 nb Waiouru (-1)

14 Canal Shop Company (=)

15 BCBM Ltd (+1)

16 Captain Ahab's Watery Tales (-1)

17 Narrowboat Dreaming .... Parisien Star (+1)

18 Baddie the Pirate (+1)

19 Rock n Roll (+3)

20 Narrowboat Briar Rose (+3)

21 Milburn Boats Ltd (=)

22 Narrowboat Chance (-2)

23 boatrent (+3)

24 NB The Manly Ferry (-7)

25 NABO (-)

26 M. B. Willow (+6)

27 Boats and Canals Forum (+2)

28 Contented Souls (-)

29 boats and cruising (+1)

30 Skippy's Random Ramblings (-5)

31 Halfie (=)

32 Seyella's Journey (-5)

33 'Eileen Inlanding' (+1)

34 Tony Clayton's Canal Photographs (-)

35 Herbie (-)



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

There are 106 entries, up from 94 last week.

Tony Blews has asked me to remind all users of the UK Waterways Ranking System to update their websites to use the ukwrs.co.uk address instead of the coobeastie.co.uk one. The older coobeastie address will cease working half way though May. Thanks.

To update my Blogger blog I logged in to ukwrs.co.uk; clicked on the Manage Site option in the top left of the page; and copied the code from the appropriate box. Then on my blog I clicked on Layout; found the HTML/Javascript "gadget" corresponding to the ranking position; and replaced the code there with the code I'd copied from UKWRS.

Flood in conservatory puts concert at risk

After weeks of rehearsal Jan and I were ready to sing yesterday in our local choral society's concert. We had a short final "topping and tailing" rehearsal with the soloists in the afternoon, from which we returned to the house at about 4 pm.

It had been raining earlier in the day, fortunately missing Jan's school fete. We had plenty of time to get some tea and change our clothes.

BUT...

I noticed that the conservatory floor was wet again. Again? Yes, twice during the snowy weather I had had to mop up some water which had mysteriously appeared on the conservatory floor. I had assumed that it was condensation from the two cast iron rainwater downpipes which come down inside the conservatory (on what used to be an outside wall).

So I set to with cloth and small container, drying off the marble floor tiles. And then it began to rain hard.

Suddenly, with an ominous gurgling sound, water began to gush from a joint in one of the downpipes. Quick! More cloths! Help!! Get the bucket!


The water was coming in faster than I could mop it up. Much faster. Then I thought of using a sponge, and this was much more effective at soaking up the flood.

By the time the rain eased off I had filled two buckets with about four gallons of water - and it had been a short, albeit heavy, shower.

I now had some breathing space in which to consider what to do. But not much breathing space - we had the concert to sing in and we still hadn't had tea. Jan cooked while I arranged towels and other cloths around the pipe to contain any future outpouring, not that it would cope with another heavy shower.


I gobbled down some food while thinking about what to do next. I remembered that I had some gutter sealant somewhere, so I managed to find that and a caulking gun. Amazingly, despite having been partly used, the sealant was still usable (I had tightened the nozzle down onto a piece of polythene over the end of the tube). I just about had time to smear some sealant round the joint before changing and walking briskly to the church where the concert was taking place. I got there just ten minutes before the start.


(The photo shows the joint before I'd put any sealant round it - on the left you might be able to see a gap between the collar and the pipe. Two lengths of pipe join together here)

Thinking about it later I realised that there was almost no chance of the sealant holding the massive head of water which could build up in the downpipe. The downpipe itself was presumably blocked, preventing water reaching the soakaway.

Fortunately when we got home after the concert there had been no more flooding. Today I put more sealant round the joint, and had a minor brainwave about what to do. As there are two downpipes in parallel, just three feet apart, I could block the faulty one at the top to prevent water coming down. I would just have to hope that the other downpipe could cope with the extra load until I come up with a better solution. I put a ladder up and inserted a four inch length of old plastic downpipe into the junction with the guttering. This should allow water to flow past it but not down the downpipe.

It rained after I did this this afternoon, and, so far, it appear to be working.


The concert, by the way, went very well. We sang Stainer's Crucifixion; Handel's Hallelujah Chorus and Zadok the Priest; Rutter's A Clare Benediction; Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus; and Elgar's Ave Verum. We had two good soloists, a bass and a tenor; and the organ was played magnificently by the organist of Norwich Cathedral.

When 3 mph is faster than driving

Easter Cruise day 5, 5th April 2013, Barton-under-Needwood

I don't know why, but it brings a perverse kind of pleasure when one overtakes a whole queue of traffic while cruising at three miles per hour on a boat.


This was the A38 at Barton-under-Needwood at half-past ten in the morning. This section of the Trent and Mersey north east of Wychnor is usually blighted by traffic noise. Not today.


I hate to think what rush hour is like.

Just after the canal starts diverging from the road is this lovely old accommodation bridge.


The towpath changes side here, so, presumably for cheapness, there is no towpath under the bridge.

Alrewas Mill and the River Trent

Easter Cruise day 5, 5th April 2013

Here is one more picture of Alrewas before moving on: the Mill on the River Trent.


Lots of new housing has crept up on the mill, and I see that someone has hidden an old red phone box behind their garage.

I think I forgot to mention the meal we had the previous night: just along the towpath was the Jaipur Cottage Indian Restaurant. It was very good. Jan had one of her best curries there - it had the word Darjeeling in the name but we can't now remember what it was exactly. The wine was very good value, and I really enjoyed my curry. Jan was given a rose as we left: we stuck it in a beer bottle on the boat and it lasted well after we got home more than a week later.

In the morning we quickly found ourselves locking down onto the river section. All calm today. The photo is looking back to the lock.


The towpath is carried on several bridges over bits and pieces of Trent.


Despite the sunshine there was still a cold wind, and we hadn't seen the last of the snow. Photographic evidence will come later.

Security in Alrewas

On our little walk in Alrewas on 4th April we came across a shop bristling with security features.


AES Radionic Security Systems has made the shop itself the shop window for their products. I count at least four cameras, three PIR activated lights and three burglar alarm bell boxes. The front door and windows have bars and window break detectors.

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to break in?

Alrewas

Easter Cruise day 4, 4th April 2013

At Alrewas we said goodbye to David, Penny and Fergus ...


... as they drove off in their Volvo 480.




It was now just the two of us, and we had a walk round the village. We started with the church.


The Easter Garden looked very floral, and much more spring-like than we were experiencing outside.


We saw lots of fine buildings, including the mill.


This old car fits the scene perfectly.


Coming up tomorrow: A fine curry ... and is this the most secure building in Alrewas? Stay tuned!

Lovely morning cruise to Campbell Park

Before returning to our Easter Cruise on Shadow I'll finish off the more recent Milton Keynes outing on Jubilee.

On Monday Ben had to go to work in Central Milton Keynes, so, as the sun and the birds had woken me anyway, I got up and set off from Giffard Park at 0700. The rest of the crew were all still in bed.

This is the best time of day for cruising. The water was still, the sun was bright, the birds were singing, and I was eating my cereal while steering.


Campbell Park was only a couple of miles away, and we got there in plenty of time for Ben to cycle a mile to work. We found a mooring on the right side for CMK, by a large ornamental pond and a convenient small car park. We would use this to load the car to return home later in the day.

The heron on the far side of the pond remained motionless for so long that I thought it must be a fake. I forgot to look again later to see if it had gone.


We left Jubilee at midday. Ally and Ben took it back to the marina in the evening, having entertained visitors Jenny, Neil and Nye.


A & B enjoyed being away from the confines of the marina for a bit, and Jan and I enjoyed our mini cruise on our own boat!

Grand Junction Canal is no cock and bull story

As part of our visit to Ally and Ben in Milton Keynes this weekend we went to a recommended curry house in Stony Stratford. While there we walked along the high street and saw the two famous coaching inns, the Cock and the Bull.

Stony Stratfordians will be eager to tell you that the phrase "cock and bull story" originates from these two hostelries. In the heyday of the coaching era, so they say, the inns would compete with each other for the most outlandish travellers' tales.

Whether that's true or not, one way the Bull scores over the Cock is that the former can claim to be where the Grand Junction Canal was born.


Thankfully there's no mention of tall stories on the simple and informative plaque.