Retirement with No Problem: Not had a rant for a while....

Moored Audlem, Shropshire Union Canal

We should be in Chester now, but with the bad accident that Meg had a week ago to the day we have had to rest her from the towpath and from stress. We did move down the Audlem flight of locks yesterday, but she had to stay inside in the back cabin on the floor. She was really upset, shaking, worrying and wondering why she was being treated so badly.. best we just hold still until she is able to run the towpath again for sure..

Given me a chance to take a look at other things going on apart from our cruising. Breaches are becoming an expensive problem.. Shebdon Embankment was closed through the holiday period from August right through until November closing off the popular 4 counties ring.. Now the Caldon canal has a breach at Leek.. and even worse the Llangollen Canal sprung a leak AGAIN yesterday near Bettisfield.. Pic from BBC

Bettisfield, Llangollen Canal

“Phil Jones, a councillor for Bettisfield Council said he thought badgers may have been responsible for the breach as they had been digging their setts in the embankment for "quite some time."

I say AGAIN, because the same thing happened in 2004, according to the BBC…

“Badgers have been blamed for the collapse of a 40 metre stretch of embankment on the Llangollen Canal”

BW were pile driving yesterday when the breach occurred.. I have to wonder why an assessment was not done first. Badger setts should be monitored more strictly on these embankments, we have seen plenty on the cuttings here on the Shroppie and wonder if they won’t bring all the soil down closing yet more canal.

Can’t these badgers be moved to a suitable site? It’s not that BW are totally unaware of them they just don’t seem to be monitoring them. Let’s face it, each time there is a breach it is costing BW up to half a million pounds to fix, plus there is the compensation.. yesterday’s breach flooded a house and drowned a car, farmers are non too happy having their land flooded all because of badgers.

So why not have your say about it.. and Have Your Say on Inland Waterways in Wales.. except you can’t travel by boat to anywhere where you can have your say.. Doh!!..

“Members of the public are invited to have their say on Wales’s inland water when the Sustainability Committee Chair goes on the road this week.

The National Assembly for Wales bus will be visiting Betws-y-Coed, Wrexham, Carmarthen and Merthyr Tydfil on Friday 20 November and Saturday 21.”

VAT goes back up to 17.5% on 1^st January, and BW say that if your licence is due at the end of December you have to pay for the renewal before 23^rd of that month to qualify for the 15%, any monies received after that will be at 17.5%.. That is except for Gold Licence users who will have a window of between 23^rd and 31^st to get the money in. Licence fees are the same for next year, but will be going up sometime in 2010, along with some new rules… sheeeesh new rules, new rules.. One of them being £7.50 extra if you pay by credit card..