Tuesday 18 January 2011

Name & Shame

Look who we passed today. Once again moored on a water point - I'm beginning to suspect that these guys are professional water point moorers. They spent a good 3 weeks on the only waterpoint that was (now and again) available to all the stranded boaters in Central Birmingham. I spoke to them about it and their response was that they had been stranded by ice for 3 weeks. I pointed out that so had everyone else, but that "everyone else" hadn't moored up on the waterpoint. They muttered something about being sorry, but they clearly weren't that sorry as here they are again on the North Stratford - neatly moored on the waterpoint. I would have had another conversation but couldn't see any sign of them. Grrrrrrrrrrr!
The boys love these rough fields - full of delicious smells and lovely fox poo to roll in
 The boatyard finished with us around lunchtime so we trundled down to the winding point beyond Shirley lift bridge and had a lovely 2 hour cruise in the sunshine whilst Sarah made up our bill.
 The light and colour today was fabulous.
 So, the bill is paid (groan) and we're now pointing in the right direction ready to do a bit of logging in the morning and re-trace our steps to Birmingham for a trip down the Staffs & Worcs - there aren't that many cruising options in this area at the moment.
We had a knock on the side this evening - it was the local constabulary making sure that we were aware that the adjacent golf course made it easy for local villains to "nick & run", so could we double check that everything was well locked down. Now that's service.

3 comments:

  1. I hope you reported each instance of the boat moored on the water point to BW with a photo if possible.

    They will act when they know of problems, but if nobody tells them they won't know and they won't do anything and the boater will keep doing it.

    They also keep a log of the problem reports for each boat and will act more forcibly if there are several reports from several different boaters.

    It's not too late to report if you haven't already.

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  2. Have a heart - they are in dire straits!

    Drought threatens to kill off nomads' way of life - Telegraph17 Mar 2006... forces nomads to give up roaming and settle near permanent water. ... only way to survive is to keep moving from watering hole to water point, ...
    www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Drought-threatens-to-kill-off-nomads-way-of-life. html

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  3. Hi Paul, I didn't know that. I hadn't reported it, but I will now that I've seen them do it again.

    Nice one Lesley; hang onto that photo you took of them on the B'ham waterpoint. I'll give'em dire straits...

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