A quick update

It's amazing how quickly news travels round the system and talk about Chinese whispers! First of all many thanks for all those friends who have contacted me to hope I am over my ordeal and that my leg is mending - to put the record straight, I have not or did not break my leg/knee when the Bolinder kicked back as was asked of me from a couple of sources, it was just badly bruised as I stated in my blog after a few hours rest I kicked her over and we got back home. We had a little sally out with Minnow last week end, only up to the boat turn at Handsacre and back and enjoyed a couple of hours Bolinder boating in glorious sun shine and good company. One of the things to come from this trip however was an E mail to a British Waterways manager (10th Oct) regarding the illegal infilling of this winding hole. I have copied the e mail here for your perusal, its contents are quite self explanatory:-

Dear Mr Davies,

please forgive me if you are not the right person to whom I should be sending this E mail, but if not I hope you will be able to forward it's contents to the right department.

I am the owner of a historic narrow boat and have been involved in the canals for almost half a century and it really makes me angry when people try and do just what they want to irrespective of the effects on others. At 70 foot in length it is very limited as to the places/winding holes where it is possible to comfortably turn such a craft round. On the Trent and Mersey canal, Just below Handsacre Crown Bridge No 58 there exists one such winding hole and on passing it a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the private property whose rear garden surrounds the winding hole, were building a wooden garden shed/summerhouse right on the point of the winding hole at garden

height about four foot above canal level, also that in front of it they have built a wooden decking platform that actually extended right over the point of the winding hole the supporting legs for the decking being driven into the edge of the canal making turning of a seventy foot boat very dangerous and at risk of the bows hitting the legs of the decking causing it to collapse and in danger of injury to both the boat turning and anybody on or in the said building. That was bad enough, but today (Sunday 10 th Oct) we went up to this winding hole with our boat and they are now in the process of infilling the corner of the winding hole, as can be seen in the attached photo's, using a small 'JCB' type digger with loose rubble/dirt. The effect of this is that now with a 70 foot boat you have to position your bows 20 foot either side of what was the centre of the

winding hole and this makes the process of turning very difficult. As well as the health and safety considerations, and the inconvenience to boat users, I always understood that local canal by

laws stated 'the throwing of refuse, dead or alive, into the navigation is strictly forbidden and offenders will be prosecuted.' as well as the fact that I understood that British Waterways actually owned about a yard of the land surrounding any of their canals, including private gardens. If these people are allowed to get away with this, then I feel it will only be a matter of time before all canal sided property owners will start extending their gardens by infilling of the canals at will. As this winding hole is only a short distance from British Waterways depot at Fradley Junction it would be easy to despatch someone quite quickly to stop further infilling taking place I look forward to you response/reply.

Yours sincerely

Mr M J Edge

I received an E mail back the next day stating :-

Hi Mr Edge,

Thank you for highlighting this problem. Unfortunately the Trent and Mersey Canal no longer lies within West Midlands waterway. Following a restructure last year the Trent & Mersey at Handsacre comes under the jurisdiction of Central Shires waterway, under the management of my colleague Darren Green. I have therefore passed your email on to Darren, and I am sure he will be in touch in due course.

Regards - Dean

As to date I have not heard anything else so I will see. Below are a couple of the photo's I sent, taken on mobile phone so quite poor quality but good enough to see what's been done.

On the left f this photo can bee seen the steel piles which then disappear underneath the unfilled rubble

Anyway that my update so until next time, unless your the legs to a summer house then :

I'll bang 'em about

Blossom.