Granny Buttons

First bill comes in for my dry dock work

I've had the bill in for the slipway work.  At least, I've had the main bit:

Spray-washing, scraping and bottom-blacking:  £583. 
Repainting  the tunnel bands:  £70.50
Repainting the bow area (what I call the bowcheek):  £170.

The slipway/blacking works out at £9.72 per foot (a jump of 17% from the £8.22 per foot 18 months ago, itself a leap of 25% over the previous bill).  But you grow accustomed to the good work of a boatyard and I'm happy with the work and I'll swallow hard and pay the bill.  I mean, I wouldn't dream of doing the work myself.  It's good to have someone else to blame when things go wrong.

There's still the bill to come for the new stern gear fitted by Diesel Dave and Fraser, and the full engine service by Ed, who's also had to fit a new starter battery apparently.   

I'm returning to Streethay on Friday night and will have the bad news about the eventual cost on Saturday (I don't expect them to be owing me money!), but good news about the condition of Granny Buttons, I trust.

Historic Edinburgh canalside church earmarked for demolition.

Fight to save St Kentigern's Church from wrecking ball - The Scotsman

Heritage chiefs are battling to save a historic canalside church earmarked for demolition.  Developers want to tear down St Kentigern's Church to create a modern building with a bar, restaurant and private flats. But Edinburgh heritage watchdog the Cockburn Association has called for Historic Scotland and the council to step in to save the church.  It is demanding that a Building Preservation Notice be served by the council, as a first step to having Historic Scotland granting it listed status.

... Association director David McDonald said: "Apart from the building's appealing scale and aesthetics, it is also one of very few buildings of historic interest on this section of the Union Canal. ... Potential uses we envisage could include a cafe, restaurant, nursery, office or even a residential unit."  The former Episcopalian church is surrounded by the on-going development of Fountainbridge and the Union Canal.... Built in 1897, it was designed by John More Dick Peddie, a prolific Scottish architect working at the end of the 19th century and the designer of the striking Caledonian Hilton building.

Under plans submitted by Vincent Crolla of Edinburgh Letting Solutions on South Clerk Street, and architects James Clydesdale and Associates, a three-storey building, featuring a bar and restaurant on the ground floor and 18 flats on the floors above, would be built where the church currently stands.

Yorkshire Forward grant £75,000 to Chesterfield Canal Partnership

Grant boosts hopes of Chesterfield canal revival - Yorkshire Post

The Norwood Tunnel section of the 46-mile Chesterfield Canal will be the final stretch of the waterway to remain unrestored when a project to renovate a stretch between Staveley and Killamarsh is completed by Derbyshire County Council later this month. The Chesterfield Canal Partnership has been given £75,000 by regeneration agency Yorkshire Forward and it will pay for a study to establish the best way to renovate the Killamarsh to Kiveton Park section. That section includes the 2,880-yard Norwood Tunnel, beneath the former Kiveton Park colliery site, which collapsed in 1907 and has always been regarded as the major obstacle to reopening the full canal. .

Dragon's Den, Square Mile and me

When I heard about the Dragon's Den TV programme ten days ago, I tore a strip off one of the contestants (or at least off his PR girl).  The contestant was Dominic Killinger of Square Mile International, and his PR girl had told me to phone the company direct if I wanted more PR information.  (They are mostly girls in PR; Granny works in the business and knows) 

Later Dominic himself posted a comment on Granny Buttons and said that wasn't 'the normal course of business' for his company, before ending with the normal response for a business like that.

I've said ad nauseam that I don't have a TV at home, but I was in front of a TV at the gym tonight, on the running machines, and Dragon's Den came on, and what could I do but watch it?  And it was fascinating! 

Convoy on the Ashby Canal

Moore 2 Life and No Problem are making an interesting case study at the moment.  Cruising in convoy on the Ashby Canal, and posting frequently.  And they say they intend to stay there for the winter.  Tha'll be even more interesting - the same stretch of water looked at from two different blogs, two different directions, as the two main cruising bloggers (Snecklifter doesn't quite count as a blogger) leapfrog each other until spring.

Wish I could do it like they do it, but Granny is still at Streethay, being overhauled and awaiting my return next week, and knowing me I'd still find it hard to write about my cruising.  Plus, it's so bucolic on the Ashby, so truly rural, that I'd not find a place to link up my computer.

Montgomery Canal plans aired

Tourism hope for £12m canal plan - BBC News

Restoring missing canal link 'would bring tourism and jobs flooding in' - Western Mail

An ambitious plan worth £12m to restore a missing link of an historic Welsh canal could inject £550,000 annually into the economy of a Mid Wales town, it has been claimed. Newtown would benefit from a huge tourism boost and new jobs if the Montgomery Canal was restored in the town, says a new report for Powys Council. An aqueduct would be built over the River Severn and the town's golf club could be redeveloped and used to provide a mooring basin for canal boats, connecting the 35-mile Montgomery Canal to the waterways network in England

The mother of all business barges at Canary Wharf

Decision time for boat bids - The Wharf
Tomorrow (Wed Nov 30th) Tower Hamlets Council meets to decide on the mother of all fixed moorings, when it considers planning permission by Aquiva Developments (foregone conclusion, I suspect) for a 560ft long 'yacht' to be moored at Canary Wharf (planning permission application here).   

Forget yacht, this is pretty much an ocean-going liner, two-thirds the size of Titanic.  Or consider it as yet another Canary Wharf tower.  Seen that way, it'll be the fourth or fifth-highest in Docklands, but on its side instead of sticking upright.  And it's eighteen feet wider than Granny Buttons is long, and taller too. 

But really it's an ocean non-going liner; it won't actually go anywhere, and it will be tied to Thames Quay by a cat's-cradle of mooring posts, piers and cables.   It will have, says The Wharf:

...181 rooms, two restaurants, bars, a ballroom, business function rooms, a health spa, a gym, floating shops and an executive lounge with an outdoor feature jacuzzi. If given the go-ahead it will be the third such scheme approved in the dock in the past five years, the last being a previous Aquiva scheme for a smaller yacht next to Price-Waterhouse-Coopers' building. It has the backing of British Waterways, which owns the berth, and the council's planning department.

The BCN fleet's lit up!

Granny has finally mastered how to put up 'Photo Albums' on this blog. I've had them before, but with no great coherence or organisation.   And here, a week on, are six dozen of my favourite photographs from the 2005 Birmingham Canal Boat Light Parade.

They've still not got captions, so unless you recognise yourself they might need a bit of explaining.   I started wandering canalside about 3pm and tried to photograph as many boats as I could, cajoling the most cooperative of them to pose by their boats before they'd finished decorating them.  Luckily the eventual winner (Omega 2, aka Noah's Ark) was one of the most willing teams, so it was great to bookend the whole series with 'before' and 'after' pics of their team.

Many thanks to everyone involved.  I hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as I did.  If you see yourself here and would like a copy of the pic in high-resolution by email, you are welcome.  Just email me.

Canalside residents to pay dredging costs

Waterway residents to pay dredging tab - Daytona Beach News-Journal
Want your local canal to be better-dredged?  Now here's an idea from America to set cat 'twixt pigeons: make the people who live alongside the canal help to pay for it: 

The $282,500 project to dredge and stabilize the Venezia neighborhood canal will be funded by a county Port Authority grant and assessments paid by 41 Quay Assisi residents, fronting the canal, according to the city's Economic Development coordinator, Shannon Lewis. The residents will pay a maximum of $4,400 each in assessments, she said, based on dredging an estimated 3,500 cubic yards of material from the canal mouth.

BMF responds to BW PDQ

The British Marine Federation has quickly issued a full statement in response/rebuttal (complaint?) to the most recent British Waterways Statements on Marina and Moorings Policy.  The BMF is not happy:

BMF would like to be able to reassure its members that BW is competing fairly in the marinas and moorings market. We are unable to do so.

Ouch. Just as well that I'm planning to take Granny down the Anglian (EA) waters in the new year.  I'm a boater, but not a very political one and I tend to accept my lot and behave and pay up.  I've never joined a union, have resisted joining some of the more political organisations such as NABO or RBOA, and am probably descended from a long line of butlers. 

What's this argument's about?   The summary, as I understand it, is that over the last few years BW has got into the marinas and moorings business and is developing it into a thriving sideline (if not frontline).  Because of its heft and clout it can call on resources not available to private operators (represented here by the BMF), and outmanouvre, outbid, outprice, outeverything them. 

And the BMF, the waterways businessmen's 'union' (which is another one I've not joined) is crying foul. The business mantra nowadays is 'competition'; they want to see more of it. 

Perhaps.  But somewhere down the line I can't help feeling this is a bit like César Ritz and Mr W.H. Smith complaining about the Great Western Railway getting into the station-development business.

Gosh, I suspect the canal builders of two centuries ago would have thought both BW and the BMF a bunch of gentlemanly milquetoasts.  There are many hair-raising stories about the activities of the early canal builders, investors, operators and users; stories of how they fought, formed & broke alliances, and generally machiavellied each other towards bankruptcy. But it's way past my bedtime and you'll have to supply the links yourself. 

Aqueduct's big bicentenary party

Pontycylletelltesllystegogogoch Aqueduct's big bicentenary party - BBC Wales

A major celebration is planned to mark the bicentenary of one of the world's highest navigable aqueducts. Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in Wrexham was built by engineer Thomas Telford and opened in 1805 - the year Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar.  On Saturday, a number of events are being staged to mark the anniversary, including the re-enactment of a Napoleonic battle.

This only reached the BBC website this morning (Sat), the day of the event.   See also Western Mail, Wrexham Evening Leader and Shropshire Star ; also connected with my post yesterday.  However, if you really want to see a 'Napoleonic battle' just wait until I ask FDUK why they dared to leave the Grand Union for the Canal du Midi, the dastardly turncoats!   

'New Golden Age for canals'

Restoration will unlock new golden age for canals - Daily Telegraph
British Waterways is to restore dozens of crumbling historic buildings and other structures in preparation for what it calls "the second golden age" of the canal system, it was announced yesterday. The authority pledged to repair every single listed property in its ownership classified by heritage bodies as being "at risk" - a total of 80 - by the end of 2008 in a programme costing at least £4 million.

Is this warmed-over news?  I've not seen a press release and there's nothing here that takes me quite by surprise.

Proposed canalside windfarm in Birmingham

Birmingham's first wind farm canalside at Warwick Bar - Birmingham Post

Birmingham's first wind farm could be built in Digbeth if proposals for a sustainable mixed-use development on the historic Warwick Bar site go ahead.  Concept designs by Birmingham architects Kinetic AIU, revealed last night as winners of a competition to master-plan the site, include 11 wind turbines - ten along the canalside and another incorporated into a tall building which would greet train passengers arriving from London ... Warwick Bar is probably the most important surviving Victorian industrial canalside location in the city ... The scheme could also make a start on liberating the River Rea from the brick culvert which has constrained it for over a century. On one side the wall would be replaced by a stepped series of grassed terraces designed to accommodate flooding.

Time Lapse

Back in 2001 during the BCN 24hr Challenge, I stuck a webcam on the front of Granny Buttons and recorded the whole of the trip at 1 frame a second.  It was a bit rough and ready, but played back at full speed it was fascinating experience - the BCN at 40mph or so.  A bit jerky, but riveting stuff.  You saw the Birmingham canals in a new light (and a new darkness as the sun set). 

I've still got the CD, but editing all those videos to a form I could upload here is beyond me.  Volunteers?

I've mentioned before about the potential for time-lapse canal videos.  A few weeks ago Paul Balmer came along with me from Fazeley to Birmingham and practiced with the concept, but Paul's done it much more professionally.   He's still experimenting with the best combination of recording and playback speed, and indeed (see picture) the best positioning of the camera, and results are still under wraps, but the results I can say are more impressive than my primitive efforts.

Up on the Huddersfield Canal in Uppermill, Nick Watts tried much the same using CanalCam, looking out of his bedroom window over the canal.  Here's the time-lapse.  He has quite a sweet little associated blog, full of character and charm, but early entries on the webcam seem to have given way to local colour, autumnal oimand dog-walks.

But the whole idea of canal timelapse is shown to near-perfection by this image of a week in the life of the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal - all compressed into 11 minutes.  A bit grainy, but fascinating!