Busy like bees Chair, Stella Ridgway, attended the last CRT Council meeting February was glorious: unseasonably warm and sunny, and both the birds and trees were slightly confused; an early spring followed by (in Manchester) a month’s rain in two days. There were flood warnings for a lot of rivers and hearing the flood alarms […]

Capturing knowledge Chair, Stella Ridgway, is concerned that CRT’s redundancies will result in experience being lost. Happy New Year, although tinged with sadness as we report the death of our Vice Chair, Paul Howland. He will be sadly missed by all who knew him; his knowledge was always welcome and his advice given freely and […]

A Challenging Year. Stella Ridgway reviews the last twelve months. My thanks go to this year’s Council members for their support and especially to Mark, Mike and Paul for attending meetings and covering for me. This year has been challenging for boaters in the North, with the North West being virtually cut off from the […]

Getting to know you Stella Ridgway looks back over five years of engagement with CRT. As the CRT Annual General Meeting is coming up, I thought I would reflect on the last year and, indeed, the five years since I started attending these AGMs. The Trust started out with Richard Parry going to boaters’ forums, […]

If only the trust would listen Stella Ridgeway responds to the letter to boaters from Richard Parry Why is it boaters feel so disenfranchised by CRT? Why is it that CRT staff, who are paid to enrol people on the towpath as Friends, now don’t bother to approach boaters? The constant PR push over the […]

Can you hear us? Stella Ridgway is looking forward to meaningful discussions with CRT, rather than just being fed information. CRT was in its infancy when we moved onto our boat. You may remember Richard Parry held road-shows and regular meetings with boating organisations, and seemed to genuinely want to listen to boater’s views. Admittedly, […]

In the Chair Beasts and Breaches Well winter seems like it is really cross, it keeps storming out and then storming back in shouting “and another thing”. We have six inches of snow again, although we are not iced in this time. Last week was fun going for water, with frozen snow on top of […]

Stella Ridgway gets ready for winter As another year ends and Christmas approaches, the summer boaters are busy winterising their boats, liveaboards are eyeing places to get free wood and ensuring that they have organised a coal delivery from their local coal-boat. We are lucky to have fortnightly coal-boat runs; please support your coal-boats – […]

Getting to know you Stella Ridgway is concerned about the disconnect between boaters and local communities. In the July issue, I expressed a desire that the sun we had in June would be extended, but we have had one of the worst Augusts on record for cloud, rain and cold weather. We have had our […]

In the Chair Stella Ridgway is enjoying the summer   I hope you have all been enjoying the lovely weather; we got some painting done, although the disadvantage was that the paint was drying as we put it on. I do hope that wasn’t all of our summer ‒ we so deserve a decent summer […]