Starbucks, in its distinctive white castellated lock cottage at the top of Camden Locks, used to have information on the canals. There were leaflets from BW, leaflets about the waterbuses, Jasons, Walkers’ etc. Now the Regents Network has pointed out that Starbucks has a obligation to provide canal related information.
Certainly I’ve been monitoring Starbucks over the past two months, as I was interested to see if their ‘refurbishment’ would remove the canal element further. I dont see that there has been much refurbishment of the cafe! But leaflets on the canal havent featured in the cafe for ages.
Related news item: Ham & High News
I see this week Narrowboat World uploaded a picture of the floods at County Lock in Reading, except they said it was Blake’s Lock. Took a day before the mistake was noticed and corrected accordingly. (PS its no good looking at their website, the picture now featuring is that of a unlicensed boat near Maffers…)
‘Three days updates’ is the current norm for updates on that website as I write. I just wish they were more resolute in their dedication to update regularly. To be fair I do in fact remember there was a period when no updates were being done, and they mentioned that it was due to illness.
As well as the improvements BW are doing to the section between Roydon and Hunsdon, a new walkway at Parndon is being installed. Whilst I have not yet been up there this year, I presume its the weir walkway at the lock which is being replaced or supplemented by the new walkway. Here’s a link to the Waterscape Item
No need to coment on this latest change made today in the number of NBW updates!
No sooner than I discuss NBW’s rather less frequent updates, that I find during the course of today, they have in fact reduced their updates to just three a week!
Its even less of a “All the latest most of the time…”
“All the latest most of the time—nothing comes near…Just a single click for any of the FOUR days updates”
Narrow Boat World’s claims seem to me a bit spurious. What does it mean to say “most of the time?” Before it was “all of the time” but I expect they dropped that because they couldnt keep that committment. In the past week its been updated only three times, which is what I expect they mean by ‘most’ of the time! Shouldnt it be some of the time eh?
Town Hall bosses at Tower Hamlets have “have slammed the 2012 Olympics planners over their “lack of commitment” in using the Bow Back Rivers for the transportation of construction materials for the Games site. See the East London Advertiser
The Canalways/Waterways Access Project website has been revamped and given a new look, with cross-browser compatibility (hopefully!) Its been tested on 5 different browsers and given a much simpler interface, and was uploaded to the server today.
See CanalwaysWAP
In the Express and Star comes this report of swans’ deaths from oil being dumped into the canal. Its a tragedy and its still common for people to dump oil into the canal.
In the New Year I discovered a massive oil slick in Little Venice, gallons and gallons of oil had been dumped into the canal, it was disgustingly thick, and my suspicions was a boater had done it (I actually suspect who but they denied it) It being a bank holiday there was not much I could do, and as BW were off on holiday there was no way I could get BW to contact the EA.
Its not the only time gallons of oil has been dumped at Little Venice. Its a regular occurrence in fact. I was with BW one day when we discovered a slick from a boat. Actually BW called the EA to sort the problem, but apart from that did nothing of any sort against the offender. I thought it was illegal to dump oil in the canal?
Thats another thing, BW’s ‘emergency procedures’ are still not disability compliant so I was (and still am) of course effectively barred from raising the alarm on this and many other canal related issues.
I see that Andrew at Granny Buttons has been saying that people should walk the Bow Backs before they are closed, following a Waterscape email of 19th June. The news was actually announced much earlier; in fact time enough for the St Pancras Cruising Club to make an extra special trip round the Bow Back Rivers Loop from its annual Three Mills gathering. And as one can see, I announced the news of the Bow Backs closure in my previous posting.
