Coryton

I'm somewhat disappointed not to see anything on this in the urgent boating news section of the BA web site. If they have information they only put on their Facebook page then at the least on the web site they should warn you to look on Facebook. Assuming you have an account.

So is anybody going out in this weather today? It really does seem quite breezy. I was hoping this morning the forecast would have changed for the better but it doesn't seem to have.

So is it still closed to boats, I wonder? Before it re-opened to trains they did swing it a few times, but maybe they are afraid that if they do it again something will go ping? It was happily showing one red flag all the time it was misbehaving - but perhaps they had better things to do than mess with flags. The electronic display said there was a fault with the bridge.

Probably while we were off the boat n Reedham.

Spoke too soon. One just crossed Somerleyton bridge.

No sign of trains yet along the new cut...

We came down from Loddon and moored in Reedham at around 11 I think. A train came across, then the bridge opened, then it shut almost all the way. The tracks were nearly lined up. Network Rail staff turned up and fiddled with it, then it swung a few times. The last I saw a few minutes ago was it closed across the river with the sign saying it would open on request. No sign of trains though.

No. It broke. I spoke to one of the Network Rail staff. It is now open to river traffic.

Reedham swing bridge appears to have just got itself into a state where it won't swing and trains can't use it either. Two network rail vans full of people have just arrived...

Having looked out of the window while crossing the swing bridges on the Ipswich to Norwich via Lowestoft train today (don't ask), the track on and off the bridges seemed to just have a simple gap between them - there didn't seem to be any overlapping.

If it's not, it certainly should be.

Something I dislike in the US in the summer is the way I have to carry a jumper around to put on when I go indoors because the air conditioning is usually set to such an excessive level. I had a battle with the cleaners in a hotel in Hawaii once. I'd come back to the room in the evening and set it to a pleasant temperature. I'd go out to work the next day, then when I got back it would be set to Arctic again.

There will no doubt be a reason for the requirement...not necessarily a good one though. I do not think the gap in normal operation can be 10 cm though. A train wheel would drop a long way at a gap like that. I've never seen anything approaching that size gap on the railways. 10 mm maybe, if taken at very low speed?

Although I suspect the number of people who have actually been fined for that can be counted on the fingers of one foot. I passed a KFC drive through this week. The stop line for the ordering place was put so that even a single car there was blocking the zebra crossing for non-car users. I would hope nobody would be in trouble for stopping there.

I went to Italy in the spring a few years back. The weather was wonderful there compared to home. We were walking round in shorts and T shirts. Everyone else was wearing their coats.

Yes got binoculars ready to pack. On Lough Erne binoculars came with the boat - pretty much essential for reading numbers on markers so you can check where you are on the chart and make sure you're not heading for the rocks. As I mentioned elsewhere, bridges weren't much of an issue there. They did come with height gauges, but they were b****r all use because nobody told us what the air draught of the boat was.

So I'd gathered - but my point still stands, as at the time I was just going by what the hire company said. Also, it's not my boat and if Herbert Woods want it to stay on one side of some of the bridges then that's their decision. I can see that with arched bridges there's scope for the inexperienced to come a cropper even if in principle the boat should go through. I might ask about bridges in the handover though. 'd like to think that (more by luck than judgement) we've made a good choice of boat. All those syndicate owners can't be wrong...

When choosing a boat to hire, I made a trade-off between navigable bridges and other features I wanted. I could have hired one that would do a few more bridges and might do Potter, but for me it wasn't worth it to lose things that I wanted in the boat, like a fly bridge.

Well you need to use the pilot anyway, and I imagine it would be a bit too obvious if you tried to go through on your own....

The HW web site is pretty clear on the matter, listing which bridges each boat should do and making it clear that none of their boats can be guaranteed to do Potter Heigham. Although they seem to be a bit on the conservative side if the list of what their Diamond 43's will go under is typical.

Normally high temperatures result in precautionary speed restrictions (and therefore some trains being cancelled) rather than rails actually buckling and lines being closed. We'll see what happens today. But they would presumably have to decide which way to have the bridge early enough in the day for it to be still moveable, by which time they wouldn't know if trains will have to be cancelled completely. It has been said that it's impossible to lay track to cope with the extreme weather we occasionally experience in the UK, which I have never understood because in some parts of the world with railways the extreme temperatures we get in summer and winter are quite normal.

Why not a sheet bend?

Sounds like one method of doing a clove hitch. Yes I can do one of those. Not very difficult, and not far off what I would probably have done if I hadn't had any information. I did find a video showing the "correct" way to tie a boat up on the Broads, which turned out to be a clove hitch. It started by dismissing a beginner's effort as "a few turns and a twist", which looked as if it just needed another half hitch to be perfectly servicable. Ah that will keep me occupied for a while. I was amused by a recent episode of "Death in Paradise" where the detective had decided to get a boat. He was briefly seen consulting a rather tatty copy of Ashley's Book of Knots.

https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/94445-the-one-the-only-dalmuir-drop-lock/

They do, but handling cash has costs too.