Granny Buttons

Why don't they pay people to click on the links?

Gulp.  This isn't a waterways-related post, but it is a Google's New Clothes post. 

Google Adwords has been emerging as a tremendous advertising opportunity for quite a few waterways businesses.  But Seth Godin writes: 

My friend Steve thinks there's a bit of a house of cards over at Google. If your cost-per-click doesn't match your yield, perhaps it's because there are thousands of people getting paid to click on your links. 

My favorite smart 11 year old had the same question. "Why don't they just pay people to click the links?" he wants to know. 

Link: Google Search: earn rupees clicking ads.

Daily Telegraph writes about Castle Mill boatyard

The Oxford boatyard development story reached the Daily Telegraph today.  Philip Pullman is again used as the story focus:

The author Philip Pullman yesterday condemned the "soulless, bland and corporate" plan that would turn a part of Oxford from which he drew inspiration into a "ditch imprisoned between brick walls".

Initially I was calling it the Alchemy boatyard.  Guess I ought to start calling the property itself Castle Mill and the business 'Alchemy Boats'. 

Castle Mill boatyard is, in the author's fictional world, home to the gyptians, a group of boat people who befriend Lyra Belacqua, the main character in the books. 

He joined other protesters against the scheme when they gathered at the yard last week. British Waterways set a deadline of last Friday for Steve Goodlad, who runs Alchemy Boats, to close his business building and repairing craft. Mr Pullman said the proposal to replace a "lively, enchanting, vibrant" area with 46 flats, a piazza and restaurant was "iniquitous".

What a pity they didn't get the original Lyra canal boat down for the demo.

British Waterways said [Steve Goodlad] took on his lease knowing that the yard was to close and had remained at the site beyond an extended deadline.  Mr Pullman said: "It is ridiculous to insist on him going when the proposal does not even have planning permission.

I think the protesters have a good point.  The last three miles of the Oxford Canal into the city itself is a long thread of 'Good Life-style' liveaboard boats, but the cut itself peters out into narrow dead-end, with just a narrow side lock quietly permitting access out to the River Thames.

With this development there'd be even less 'ending' to the canal in a proper sense of boatyard with full facilities.   There's been idle talk of a 'grand design' reinstating the old car park at the end of the canal into a new canal basin, but BW & Bellway's plans seem to have little or none of this grand design element. 

43 Things - living on a narrowboat

Clever aspirational self-help site 43 Things encourages you to set goals and work towards them.  Three people on the site want to live on a narrowboat.   I was intrigued that one of them is San Franciscan Thomas Beutel. 

A slightly more pressing goal for him is to visit Minnesota.  So vast is the US that when he reaches Minnesota he'll be a quarter of the way to the UK already.  I suppose he'll work his way over here eventually.  Perhaps he can build a sea-going narrowboat to help him get here.   

Paul Kingsnorth blogs on Oxford boatyard

Paul Kingsnorth (who is a bit of a knee-jerk activist lefty), blogged on Thursday about the Oxford Castle Mill boatyard.  As you might expect, he's pro-David, anti-Goliath

Guardian reports on Conservative sell-off plan of BW property

The Guardian on Saturday ran a story on the canal/waterways angle to the Conservatives' plan to sell off £424million of the British Waterway property portfolio.   

What took them so long to report on the canal angle of this story?   I wrote about it last July, and I was only parroting what other waterways users were saying before me.  Maybe none of us remembered to nag the newspapers' transport correspondents, who can always be relied on to target the transport angle of a general story.   Memo to self - must write to local Conservative MP and ask him to tell shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin that it's a daft idea. 

Tell you what, though.  I think Oliver Letwin's got a lovely head of black hair.  He's close to my age, and I'm insanely jealous.  Maybe that bouffant loft insulation is overheating his brain.  Perhaps Conservatives with interests in waterways, such as Michael Fabricant or Angus Ross can have a discreet word with him.  Hopefully they've already discreetly dropped the idea.

Incidentally, the current party slogan is "Less talk, more action".  I note that if you type the slogan into the party website search box, it reports "Sorry, no results were found".

Yorkshire Post optimistic about the Driffield Navigation

With a headline of 'End in sight for canal project', The Yorkshire Post reported on Friday about the restoration of the Driffield Navigation.

The Driffield is one of those 'discrete' waterways, linked to fierce tidal waters, and that require nerves, preparation and (sometimes) booking to visit.  Other examples include the Lancaster Canal and the Chesterfield Canal.  I've only been to the last so far, but can understand the taut nerves and advance planning required to visit these out-of-the-way waterways. 

Good for the Driffield society for getting great news coverage, although I'm not sure it's truly breaking news.  The Driffield has been slowly building news for some time.  But this sort of news is often 'breaking' for most people who live within walking distance of these 'under-reconstruction' waterways.  It's always worthwhile for waterways societies to feed the story to their regional news papers again and again, and eventually, at one point, they will catch fire and burn.  As it did at Yorkshire Post on Friday.

Bishops Stortford to ... Bishops Stortford - again

Still at Bishops Stortford.  Pleasant day pottering about.  Gloriously sunny.  Down to South Mill Lock, turn around and back again.  Hmmm, this is developing into a habit.  Little more reason for cruising than simply charging up the (dying) batteries and warming the water.  Deep frosts predicted this week, so I'm glad I filled up with heating oil for the coming week.

Bookcrossing

The Independent on Sunday today writes about Bookcrossing .  I came across a Bookcrossing book at Lock 26E near Slaithwaite on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal last June.  I wonder if I was the first ever to find one on the canals?

Bishops Stortford to ... Bishops Stortford

Going nowhere this weekend, on 14 day visitor moorings.  I drove over to Lee Valley Marina at Stanstead Abbots and collected ten gallons of red diesel for my Kabola diesel heater.  At 42p a litre I'm starting to choke at the expense of keeping Granny Buttons warm.   Then I cruised down to South Mill Lock, turned around below the lock, and cruised back to where I started. 

It turns out that Hallingbury Marina, the only one on the Stort that sells diesel and offers pumpouts, isn't open at weekends Oct-March!  The guy on Zuma says that a few years ago he used to manage the Marina and was always open at the weekends, even in winter.  Considering that the present manager lives on the site alongside the office in his own narrowboat, it's hard to understand why he's so disinclined to be available, even by appointment, for a boater. 

I've discovered Shield Batteries, thanks to a tip from Julian Tether of Parglena, and Brian of Harnser.  Thanks, boys!  I paid them (Shield, not the boys) a visit and costed up my new batteries.   Says Julian:

You happen to be in the best place possible to need new batteries. Call Shield batteries in Bishops Stortford on 01279 652067 and ask to speak to Neil ... I am sure he will give you a good deal.

I have been using them for a while now and find them a good company to deal with and I have no hesitation in recommending them. They are one of the few small companies left that still build their own batteries on site.

About £53 for each 110ah cabin battery, and £49 for a 95ah starter battery.  Rather less than I feared.

Oxford boatyard story in Scotsman

Steve Goodlad of the Castle Mill (Alchemy) Boatyard in Jericho, Oxford, managed to get ink in the Scotsman this morning:

The reporter used Philip Pullman to give the story 'legs':

Author Philip Pullman today condemned a plan to scrap a boatyard which inspired passages of the bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy.  Castle Mill boatyard in Jericho, Oxford, is, in Pullman’s fictional world, home to the gyptians, a group of boat people who live on the water and befriend Lyra Belacqua, the main character in the books.

Pullman is quoted as saying:

“To destroy this boatyard would be like pulling at a thread to tidy up an old pullover, and then the whole thing unravels,” he said.

“What is going on seems iniquitous – that something so interesting and useful and curious and socially beneficial should be wiped out in the interests of making everywhere the same."

The reply from BW is more workaday, less taut with emotion.  "Significant public benefit” is the line:

[The plan] “will bring a new vibrancy to the area and open up access to the waterside at Jericho for all ... Our plans retain essential boating facilities, provide an attractive environment to live, work and spend leisure time in and will generate best value for the taxpayer by bringing money back into the waterways for their upkeep for the benefit of all.”

The Scotsmans says Oxford City Council turned down the last set of plans from BW & Bellway last year, and the two developers will stand together in appeal at a public enquiry next month.

Canalside land goes - in Stone, in Oxford

Lindy Foster Weinreb draws my attention (and thus now yours) to the Crown St Wharf canalside development in Stone, Staffordshire. 

In an article "Crown Street Wharf Development …a double whammy!"  a local community news site explores the implications of BW's plan to sell off land adjacent to the Canal Cruising Company's historic boatyard (where Cressy - the lost Mary Rose of the waterways movement - was broken up).

British Waterways (BW) is losing money and DEFRA have instructed it to realise as much as possible from its major asset - canal side land. And the easiest way to do that is to sell it for housing. This site would have a value of at least £1 million.

BW claim they are committed to the long term viability of the canal industry and so don't want to do anything to jeopardise the future of the canal-based businesses. That is probably the case with the Crown Street Wharf. But the fact is, that at the moment, there is no alternative scheme on BW's table, other than a simple sale to Persimmon Homes to build 24 apartments.

This is an echo of the proposed closure and sale of the Alchemy/Castle Mill boatyard in Oxford, where BW are ever closer to cutting a deal with Bellway Homes for turning the site into a residential court.  I meant to write more about that, but time and health are conspiring against me.   

Surprisingly, my own Granny Buttons link above seems to be the most prominent of all the news on the Oxford development.  I'm not sure why, unless it's that no one else is blogging this story.   But you can read boatyard manager  Steve Goodlad's update of the situation here. (Word doc)

I've found a piece in the local community newspaper Jericho Echo from last September but little else.  Even the Oxford Mail last covered this story no more recently than last August, according to its archives.

As Oxford goes, so will Stone, I guess.  I don't know the full details of these stories.  I simply wonder why the press - local, national and waterways - isn't covering them. 

There's a 'save Castle Mill Boatyard' site on www.portmeadow.org - and that's about it.  Incidentally, it's talking of a rally there this Friday morning. 

I meet the first person who's read 'Granny Buttons' before he's seen Granny Buttons

On Saturday I met a cyclist on the towpath who stopped with a flash of recognition and said he's read this site before and remembered the name.  This is the first time I've been recognised thus!   Tonight I learned that he's already blogged that meeting.  He didn't mention he had his own blog when we chatted.

'Raging Canal' writes about Erie Canal

Raging Canal is a blogger writing about the Erie Canal in NY State, and a darn good and informative one too.  He's been going for several months, but I only discovered him tonight because he discovered me first (via Technorati), and let me know.   If you want to know about this canal, it's a good source of information.

"An unofficial blog for news, views, events and links about the Erie Canal and the New York State Canal System."

Interestingly, he chooses to stay pseudonymous, a bit like like Victor Swift.  Tom, look at RC and imagine your 'Victor' publishing in the same format - I'd like that.  Mind you, RC isn't controversial or deliberately provocative - simply informative.

BBC Holiday 2005 canal programme today

Don't forget the BBC One TV Holiday 2005 programme tonight (Monday Feb 21st) at 7pm.  It's the one featuring Rowland Rivron and family taking Harrison Ford and Calista Flock-Wallpaper's canal boat on the Llangollen canal. The half-hour programme fits three holidays in its running time, so they'll have to describe a week's holiday - complete with side-excursions - in well under ten minutes. 

It won't take them long to do a 'Hello-style' walkthrough of the 50ft boat, of course - Through the Keyhole this is not!  But with side trips to Oswestry's farmer's market and other local attractions, they'll have to do a timelapse video of the voyage itself to fit it all in.