Hello and welcome to edition 2 of the CtC newsletter. Christmas is nearly upon us but I still have a slate of videos in production throughout the festive period - details below. It's been a busy month for news and I've lots of recommendations for you too. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope you have a splendid December and are all prepared for the new year to roll into place.

PS I've tried to use a larger font this time round, following feedback from the first edition; do let me know if this has worked and if it's now a suitable size!

Cheers

David

The Canal & River Trust, the main body that overseas canals in England & Wales, held its Annual Public Meeting this month. A live stream of the event can be viewed online at https://ow.ly/nuyB50Q4TxW including questions taken from boaters.

Applicable mostly to operators of commercial vessels on the canals and rivers (such as hireboats, tour craft and so on), a new guidance page about legal requirements for inland waterways has been released by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Find out more at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/inland-waterways-and-categorisation-of-waters

Some splendid news for the folk restoring sections of the Swansea Canal in south Wales, with the award of almost a million pounds (from the Government, no less! Crikey) for a project to restore 120 metres of canal and a lock which have been buried since the 1970s. It seems like an awful lot of money for such a short stretch but it will have been carefully justified in order to get the cash. See https://x.com/swanseacanal/status/1724176759770190305

And finally, there is an ongoing campaign to persude the UK Government of the benefits of the canals with the hope of a rethink of the decision to cut the CRT's funding from 2027 onwards. As part of this campaign, a fleet of boaters took their craft along the Thames to float outside Parliament in protest. My friends Amy and Wes of the YouTube channel "Boat Time" were in the armada and made this film of the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zCNOaHqU6E

In case you missed any notifications from YouTube, here are links to the latest three videos on the channel including my new boat purchase, a members' boat club; and historic narrowboats which you get the chance to operate.

Obviously there will be lots of "Twiggy" content coming during 2024 and that includes an initial tour of the boat early in December, pointing out the condition of various items and what I hope to do about them. No doubt you will have plenty of suggestions and I welcome any useful tips or advice.

I am going on my first ever cruise holiday this month and after asking if Patrons would be interested in a video of the trip, the replies were universally positive so just before Christmas I will put out a vlog of the experience, good or bad.

On Christmas Day itself, I will do the usual quick "thank you for the support" message to viewers; last year I appended a bit of cookery onto the end to make the video more substantial, and I'll do the same again this time around but not cookery! Stay tuned to see what's in store...

Other than that I have been waiting for the water level on the River Severn to drop so that I can continue the trip on Twiggy - Stourport was never going to be the final destination as I have a mooring planned elsewhere. Unfortunately, a recent spate of storms have brought so much rain that until this week, the river remained in "condition red, do not proceed" and so my plans for the boat have changed somewhat. Now I'm intending to buy a trailer and bring the boat out of the water for the Spring, not least because it seems my refurbishment and repairs may be more extensive than envisioned originally.

I've had several people start watching Cruising the Cut right from the start recently; they've been leaving comments on my early videos to that effect. Since it's over eight years since I started the channel, I'm going to suggest my very first video as one to watch if you haven't seen it before (or even if you have - look how young I was!). This was the beginning of the entire saga, as I bought my narrowboat and prepared to live aboard.

Click here to see my origin story!  https://youtu.be/W3yX6EC5CDQ

I am not generally a fan of travel vlogs; I find them often poorly-filmed with the camera being waved around madly giving unwatchable footage, bad audio and really very little structure or storytelling.

However, I've recently begun watching "Romana & Ewan" who really do create some very interesting and watchable videos. You'll note they did a couple of cruise ship vlogs which is why YouTube suggested them but I've also been enjoying their general travel videos around the world too.

Not only do they show the places they're visiting very well but they offer some properly useful travel tips based on their experience too. Considering the effort they're putting in, they have remarkably few subscribers and views so I humbly suggest giving them a go.

See www.youtube.com/@romanaandewan/

Following last month's newsletter, I had a query from Randy Burke of California, USA: "How is sewage dumping from wastewater/water companies affecting the canals?"

Fortunately, the answer is not at all, to all intents and purposes. Water in the canals is largely static; there is no flow other than the small volume used whenever a lock is emptied. As such there is absolutely no discharge of black water into the canals by water companies whatsoever since that discharge wouldn't flow away. That said, if a river was to overflow into a canal and that river had discharge then obviously the canal would be contaminated but this is thankfully rare.

Please do feel free to send any correspondence for the newsletter to newsletter@cruisingthecut.co.uk

Twitter ('X' if you must) gets a lot of grief for being a hotbed of vitriolic hatred these days and in many cases rightly so - but if you switch the feed to "Following" rather than "For You" (so that you only see Tweets from people you've chosen to view) then it's a much more pleasant experience.

One of those people I commend to your Follow list is narrowboater Barry Silverman who is very active and skilful with his camera, photographing the wildlife around his marina. He really does capture some splendid images, everything from swans to Kingfishers.

Have a look at www.twitter.com/Baztheboat

Don't forget: you can follow me on social media, for example to chat directly ("Twitter / X") or see pictures from the canals (Instagram) etc. Click on the buttons below:-

Just prior to signing off, may I say I'm delighted by the 99.999% positive response to my recent purchase of Twiggy, the fibreglass cabin cruiser. True, it's not a narrowboat and with no shower aboard it will not be suitable for anything more than a couple of days cruising. However I hope, once renovations are complete, to have some enjoyable outings to locations that I never reached in my narrowboat (or indeed, would be logistically unable to reach, such as some canal sections that are not connected to the main network). Stand by during 2024!

Thanks for reading and for tuning in.

Cheerio

David