Announcements - Canal and River Trust and SNOW!

Thursday, 06 October 2011 18:27

But only snow in Scotland and not on the Thames  - so the weather man announced - Phew!

We had a few jobs to do today and we actually moved and waited for another announcement .....

It was a very quick trip up to Caversham Boat Services on Fry's Island as we had booked in for a full service with Marcus, their engineer. He did our last one and we were pleased with the result!

John was waiting for the announcement about the New Waterways Charity  - the new name and logo was due today. The BW Staff were to be told first and then the general public, which includes boaters of course! See the article on NABO website for all the details

Hmm - the new name, Canals and River Trust, reflects the future ambitions of the charity to incorporate the management of River Thames navigation into its remit. The EA would retain the water management bit. 

The new logo has the same style as the current one - unsurprisingly as it has been produced by the same company (for free - but, good PR!). But don't forget CaRT (CRT) does not own the swans but it does own the bridges as depicted on the old logo . Our waterways were built primarily as navigations, not nature reserves and need enough money to keep them open for navigation.

We need water - good news that Chasewater Reservoir  on the BCN is ready to fill

We need dredging - in other places than the Olympic regions. This dredger was working on the National Trust's Wey Navigations

We need the assets to be in good condition - apart from their heritage value

Boaters boating help make waterways attractive places to be and in our experience that is what towpath walkers like to see, whatever their age.

The Transition Trustees of CaRT (their acronym is CRT, better than "putting the CaRT before the horse" - sorry)  have put out a Progress Report today too - read it here.

So now we wait for April 2012 when BW ceases to exist and to see how it is all going to work in practice.