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Sunday 6 January 2019

2018 Fixed Costs.

The theme for today's photographs is animals; just to give you something to look at.

This frgo chorus was spotted on a garage near Haskayne on the Leeds and Liverpool on the way to Liverpool.

This was was the stand out piece of the Terracotta Army Exhibition in Liverpool and was a model of the chariot that was placed in the Emperors tomb allong with the soldiers.

This dinner plate sized terrapin/turtle was enjoying the sun up on the Lancaster Canal, and was in the same spot when headed back south too.

Near a place called Bay Horse we saw a field of alpacas. They did look weird having been clipped, but they were very quiet and inquisitive too. 

On the Manchester Ship Canal this pen was ferrying the kids about. Luckily they don't have to worry about the push chair, car seat, changing mat etc. etc!

In the lower reaches of the Manchester Ship Canal were loads of abandoned lock gates. Here, close to Weston Marsh, they we being played on by the local sheep.

The horses were kept very busy with trippers from Llangollen up to the Horseshoe falls. They were  regularly swapped over, but they did look tired at the end of the day. The heat wouldn't help.

We moored a couple of times on the stub of the Weston Branch down on the Montgomery Canal. Macy the cat loved to wander here, with nobody about, and a beautiful warm evening too.

These Canada were in a long line ahead on the Stourbridge Town Arm. It seems like geese and swans often do this as I have seen many juvenile swans on the Humber doing the same.

How cute is that!!?

Near Springwood Marina we moored up for the day and watched a buzzard teaching the chicks how to fly by bring meat down from the nest for them to come to. They make quite a row too.

At ex Pooley Hall Colliery these bullocks were digging in oblivious to the monument that was erected to the memory of the men from the pit that fell in WWI.


FIXED COSTS        2018       2017      2016       2015      2014
C&RT Licence        892-18    892-18   870-42   856-70   833-38
Insurance                 168-89   177-75    212-91   232-64   198-19
RCR Bronze            135-50   142-50    126-00   126-00   126-00
Licence/locks etc     516-00      //          294-00     68-75       //
Pilotage                        //           //              //        190-00       //
BSS Cert.                     //           //          165-00        //           //
TOTAL                 1712-57  1212-43  1668-33  1504-09  1157-87

As can be seen the C&RT Licence seems to have gone up about 7% in 5 years, which in the scheme of things doesn't seem to bad. My insurance with Towergate has come down from a peak in 2015 after we claimed for a bent propeller. It seems that the RCR Bronze cover also varies with claims. I naively thought that it was a fixed price, but claims and no claims bonuses obviously come into play too.

With the great expense of a double transit of the Manchester Ship Canal and the attendant survey and lock accesses I thought that we would be a lot higher than in previous years. To transit the full length of the MSC costs £199, and from Manchester to Ellesmere Port £167, so not a cheap exercise. It is those sort of 'one off' trips that cost money but are well worth doing. I suppose I could justify a little of the extra expense as I would have had to travel from Liverpool up the Leeds and Liverpool, then the Leigh Branch and the Bridgewater to Manchester. That would cost about £60 in diesel I suppose, and that could be knocked off the cost of crossing the Mersey and up the Ship Canal. However it was certainly a big highlight of the year for us.

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