Thames license for the Duck Punt

[dylanwinter]

When I posted here the other week asking about places to launch my Duck Punt horror was expressed at the idea that I was not planning on buying a license

under pressure from you chaps I bought my license for £37

and this is what I got for it



it looks like most of my £37 went towards a load of old tosh

It is hardly likely to encourage me to do the decent thing and make a contribution towards maintaining our waterways

and if my son wants to try the duck punt on the Thames then we will have to fork out another £37

this is nonsense chaps

Dylan

 

[BarryH]

Sorry Mr Winter, this is where I have to take issue. As a keen kayaker and member of the BCU, your getting a lot more than a load of "old tosh" for your money. Your looking at the membership purely from the Licence point of view.

If you read your Welcome Pack gumph, you'll see that you also get basic 3rd party insurance included. Granted its not the best and is the most basic insurance, but its included none the less.
You'll also see that your membership card can be used to gain discounts at a number of retail outlets, both canoe/kayak related and others that are not, ie Halfrauds. That should help keeping the donk in the Slug serviced.
There is also the staff you can call on for free help and advice, such as access officers who will be able to tell you that the Water Baliff on a certain stretch of water is talking a load of old codswallop.

They sort out the Olympic stuff and the training too, and without all the elite'ist snobbery rubbish I got from the RYA.

You also get a few thousand miles of waterways to blow along.....all for 30 odd quid, and your moaning! Your a hard man to please! Ok the mag isn't brilliant unless your into the hardcore sport side of things, but hey how much more do you want for 37 quid. The BCU have done more for me than the RYA ever did.

As far as buying another licence, if you "display" your membership card on your tub, then I think you'll find that Lockies and the EA guys won't bat and eyelid.

Rant Over....not that it was much of one. I'm normally a very placid laidback sort of chap.

 

[TrueBlue]

Dylan, must be a slow news day.

You'll need the TP insurance when you crash into me at high speed and sink my boat.
Fine, there's a whole load of bumph, but that's probably paid for by the advertising - and keeps the circulation number up.

ALL I get from the EA for my launch licence (costing me 15 times your fee) is a 4" x 4" piece of paper with a bit of self adhesive plastic that's too small to keep the water out......


You need to get out a bit more

 

[Deefor]

When I had my Canadian canoe, I thought the BCU licence was very good value as it saved me buying an extra licence for the Norfolk Broads and other waterways.

 

[dylanwinter]

I agree

I agree with a lot of what you say.....

I am very happy to contribute towards the upkeep of our waterways

I love the water and I pay licences and harbour dues all the time.

£37 is great value for all that water - provided you use it enough

so far I have done three days - £12 a day. I hope to do more - but pretty soon I shall be using the punt on the estuaries.

I repeat.... I am very happy to make a contribution towards the upkeep of the resources I am enjoying.

However,

I object to the way this money is used.

I paid my broads license with joy - the money went to the broads.

If its all the same to the governement I would much rather all my money went into paying the wages etc of the blokes who are out with diggers and machetes maintaining the waterways than going towards all these other things

An insurance policy that is worse than the one I already have I don't want an insurance policy that is hardly worth the paper it is written on - I am sure that ten minutes into the claim process you would be coming to me to pay for the repairs to your paintwork rather than to the canoe union

But we both know that such an incident is really unlikely - if it was at all likely for a canoeist to encounter a third party claim then they would not be giving away an insurance policy.

As for contributing towards our Olympic effort I have no interest in supporting blokes who want to slalom down expensive environmentally insane pumped man made water playgrounds.


I don't want to be buying a full lb of paper that is of no interest to me - and I also doubt that it is of much interest to the the other people who ocassionally canoe or kayak along the upper reaches of the thames or the Aylesbury canal

- I could be wrong though - but I have been a hack for many years - the writing was truly terrible - below a school essay level.

I do know that the planet would be a slightly better place if this utterly useless pile of paper had not been printed with tosh before being sent to me - before being put in the re-cycling bin.

Finally - and for me this is the clincher. We have unprecedented levels of youth unemployment in this country at the moment. The tentacles of our amazing waterway system run right into and through the city centres. I don't know about you blokes but my first boat was a canoe - and the first time I used it was on the Canal at King's Cross

and I am sure that for lots of other people of my age too - no-one came and asked us for a license. If you got hold of an old canoe everything else was free. That is the same today. Ebay means that second hand canoes are being almost given away.

You could travel along quiet backwaters, you could stop along the way, maybe a bit of wild camping. Now you have to have a license before you can have any fun on the water.

To me £37 is nothing (I still hate to see it being chucked around willy nilly though) . Should my son want to have a go on my Duck Punt we are supposed to fork out another £37 for him to have a license.

Another £37 - another envelope of expensive paperwork destined for the bin when the money should be going towards the costs of maintaining the rivers.

Money wasted

let me ask you chaps

what proprotion of my £37 will go towards maintaining the system as opposed to our olympic effort, primnting paper, running offices to administer the organisation that collects this tax.

I agree I should be paying towards the costs of repairing the damage I am doing to the system by using it - however, I am probably doing less damage than the people walking along the banks

if you make anyone who uses a canoe have a license shouldn't every other user of the resource have to pay - maybe including the walkers who do such untold damage to the footpaths and river banks.

Please feel free to disagree

discussion is a wonderful thing

Dylan

PS does anyone know which is the best kayak forum in the Uk

 

[teddington_lock]

Why do you have to pay another £37 ?

The Annual Unpowered Licence , that i advised you to buy is to licence the boat for a year on the Thames , not you.

Did you not buy an Annual Unpowered ?

EDIT . ..... i see you bought a BCU licence. If you want to contribute towards the upkeep of the Thames , you should have bought an Annual Unpowered , not a BCU

 

[Mirror Painter]

OH!

Does that mean the recent, video recorded voyages were illicit?


(sorry Dylan).

Why do you have to pay another £37 ?

The Annual Unpowered Licence , that i advised you to buy is to licence the boat for a year on the Thames , not you.

Did you not buy an Annual Unpowered ?

EDIT . ..... i see you bought a BCU licence. If you want to contribute towards the upkeep of the Thames , you should have bought an Annual Unpowered , not a BCU

 

[dylanwinter]

The license

Why do you have to pay another £37 ?

The Annual Unpowered Licence , that i advised you to buy is to licence the boat for a year on the Thames , not you.

Did you not buy an Annual Unpowered ?

EDIT . ..... i see you bought a BCU licence. If you want to contribute towards the upkeep of the Thames , you should have bought an Annual Unpowered , not a BCU

A Thames license would have been on the boat - not me

so that would have allowed my son to use the boat on the thames - but I could not use it on the canal.

the only way to get a canal license (I believe) is through the £37 to the Canoe England Quango

Of course I could have bought a Canoe England license and a Thames License as well - but that would be taking altruism a bit far.

The Thames would have better off if I had stuck a £5 note in an envelope and sent it to EA than to give £37 to the Quango

The canoe England license is in effect a poll tax because it is on me not on my vessel. It licenses me to use a punt or canoe.

I am supposed to hang it around my neck and not put it on the boat.

The Canoe England license also covers me to use a canoe on the canals and the broads and lots of other rivers.

It would be great to know how the £37 is divvied up - first towards the upkeep of the river system and then how it is spread between the rivers, canals, broads etc

 

[BarryH]

Well if you didn't want all that other stuff why did you join the BCU? If you wanted all your money to go to the up keep of the water ways then you should purchse a licence/permit for each one you use.

The BCU is not a government dept. It is to canoeing/kayaki ng what the RYA is to sailing.

 

[teddington_lock]

The Thames would have been better off if you had bought an unpowered visitors licence for £6 or whatever it is ( can't remember off the top of my head )

Seems you have tried to be a bit clever with what licence you bought.

 

[dylanwinter]

Two reasons

The Thames would have been better off if you had bought an unpowered visitors licence for £6 or whatever it is ( can't remember off the top of my head )

Seems you have tried to be a bit clever with what licence you bought.

I would still have had to join the Quango to use the boat on the Grand union or the Aylesbury canal

I am not saying that the £37 is not a good deal for all the pleasure it will allow me to have -

But I do think that wanting my taxes to be used sensibly is no bad thing.

Two magazines and a lot of shiny scraps of paper when all I wanted was the card and a simple list of the reivers I am allowed to use it on.

I could, of course have paid my £37 for the canal - which also covers me for the rivers - and then also found a lock-keeper to give him my £6 for the day ticket because I want to pay twice

But that would asking for altruism beyond my abilities to deliver - and a waste of good sailing time

it does seem to me that the Thames did not benefit that much from my £37 and meaningless pile of ex[pensive paperwork

It wouold be alright if the license fee had been used for maintaining the waterways

my guess is that not much of it goes towards the costs of maintaining the system. It is a poll tax for a quango

but maybe that is a good thing - creates lots of jobs I suppose

Dylan

 

[BarryH]

Please wind neck in a tad. The BCU is not a quango, its not even a Government body. Strikes me your a hard man to please. You want to use all the waterways yet you want them for a pittance.

In this day and age if you want to use anything you have to pay, its that simple. I too remember the days of just doing as I pleased without a care in the world. Sadly its not like that anymore.
I would like to see the amount I pay to use the public highways go towards their upkeep, but that doesn't happen either!
Theres two ways of looking at this. You either pay for a BCU membership, that gives you access to rivers, that no one built, that have been where they are for centuries and the canals that were built 100's of years ago and would be in a state or ruin if it were not for the leisure user, and its your choice wether to use them or not OR you pay for each and every waterway you use, either on a yearly or adhoc basis.

If you look at the 500 odd grammes of paper you were sent, I'm sure, that it was printed on recycled paper, apart from the mag Go Kayaking. Thats a freebie give away from the publisher in the hope you would carry on buying it.

If you go to the member area of BCU website you can request a copy of their audited accounts. You will see where the money goes.

 

[ianc1200]

Seriously Dylan, I think you've got this wrong. You could have had a licence for the Thames, or for much the same a licence which covers you for most rivers and canals. Whilst the magazine is not hugely entertaining, the money goes to a body which encourages canoeing, organises basic courses for youngsters etc. Canoe England is a really worthy organisation doing good things for a water based sport.

 

[dylanwinter]

It is not the price

Please wind neck in a tad. The BCU is not a quango, its not even a Government body. Strikes me your a hard man to please. You want to use all the waterways yet you want them for a pittance.

In this day and age if you want to use anything you have to pay, its that simple. I too remember the days of just doing as I pleased without a care in the world. Sadly its not like that anymore.
I would like to see the amount I pay to use the public highways go towards their upkeep, but that doesn't happen either!
Theres two ways of looking at this. You either pay for a BCU membership, that gives you access to rivers, that no one built, that have been where they are for centuries and the canals that were built 100's of years ago and would be in a state or ruin if it were not for the leisure user, and its your choice wether to use them or not OR you pay for each and every waterway you use, either on a yearly or adhoc basis.

If you look at the 500 odd grammes of paper you were sent, I'm sure, that it was printed on recycled paper, apart from the mag Go Kayaking. Thats a freebie give away from the publisher in the hope you would carry on buying it.

If you go to the member area of BCU website you can request a copy of their audited accounts. You will see where the money goes.

perhaps I am an unreasonable man in that I would hope that the money I paid would be used to maintain the waterways I was using

instead it has been diverted into the UK Olympic squad, insurance I don't need, a glossy magzine I don't want and this fine list of pdfs.


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It now turns out that I could have bought a 30 day license from British Waterways for £28.50 which might turn out to be a better deal as long as I don't bust the 30 days.

I have no idea how they stop you from doing more than 30 days.

It just seems that I have been manoevered into coughing up £37 to a licensing authority (in this case called Canoe England) for them to chuck around.

Interesting subject that cuts right to who controls the countryside

but it does make me feel all warm inside that I am helping all those Olympic canoeists and pdf makers

Dylan

 

[BarryH]

Sadly that is the state of affairs in this day and age. I work for myself and have reams of official rubbish that I have to comply with just to make a living. I blame the the Claim and Gain culture we live in. Everyone is out to make a buck and everyone needs to cover their backsides and comply with this and that.

I still can't help thinking that you went into this with eyes shut. You obviously went onto the BCU/Canoe England website, to either download the membership form or join up. Surely there you would have been able to read what the BCU was all about.

As far as "Up keep" of rivers go. Rivers used to look after themselves for millions of years before man came along. So does the money go towards the up keep of rivers or does it get spent on putting measures in place so the lucky few who live by them don't have a waterlogged lawn and ruined carpets everytime it rains heavily.

 

[ianc1200]

Another thing which may be closer to your interests is the Canoe England campaign to open up access to all waterways for kayaking, something opposed by landowners & fishermen.

If you train kids to canoe you've got to have all the safeguards in place which I think some of those documents relate to.

My local canoe club here in Henley trains up loads of kids, many go on to rowing, quite a few into dinghy sailing. They have a whole load of different kayaks/Canadians. However, as yet, no duck punts. I've been thinking about seeing what interest there is for building one or two. Perhaps it might even feature in a future article in the Canoe England magazine.

 

[dylanwinter]

blimey

Sadly that is the state of affairs in this day and age. I work for myself and have reams of official rubbish that I have to comply with just to make a living. I blame the the Claim and Gain culture we live in. Everyone is out to make a buck and everyone needs to cover their backsides and comply with this and that.

I still can't help thinking that you went into this with eyes shut. You obviously went onto the BCU/Canoe England website, to either download the membership form or join up. Surely there you would have been able to read what the BCU was all about.

As far as "Up keep" of rivers go. Rivers used to look after themselves for millions of years before man came along. So does the money go towards the up keep of rivers or does it get spent on putting measures in place so the lucky few who live by them don't have a waterlogged lawn and ruined carpets everytime it rains heavily.

now who is the cynical one - but I am sure that most of the money is spent on keeping the river valleys from flooding and protecting people's houses. The canal system certainly needs a lot of work.

As for going in with my eyes open

I looked at both the BW site and the canoe site and I thought that a ticket that covers me for as many days as I like is a better deal than 30 days covering fewer locations.

I did spend spend some time on the Canoe England website and read some of their truly terrible magazine

one of the lead news items - top left of the page is how Canoe Englan is proud to have signed up to the governement initiative on homophobia and transphobia.

It is a long time since I ran a news desk but using that as a lead news story is a pretty sorry stab at journalism.

The big cheese's editorial is all about what a mild winter we are having. These are small things.... but it does feel like a self sustaining bureacracy

it like a visit to Golga Frincham

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/golgafrincham.shtml

there - I feel better now and as long the roads are not too icy I am planning to take the punt for a paddle on port meadow. I shall have my lovely orange card on a peice of string around my over extended neck

Dylan

 

[oldgit]

and the icing on the cake

You get to use all of the infinately superior Medway with all its posh newly installed canoe and fish passes plus even the odd bit of the Teise and Beult .

Only thing missing,like on the Thames,is the howl of 200 ton jets 500ft 24/7 above you and the thunder of the UK busiest 8 lane roads just across the fields.Still you cannot have everything

 

[BarryH]

there - I feel better now and as long the roads are not too icy I am planning to take the punt for a paddle on port meadow. I shall have my lovely orange card on a peice of string around my over extended neck

Dylan

Bad news I'm afraid. Global warming has played merry hell with our temperate climate. Its snowing like billyo here in Surrey, and we're on the edge of it.......

That means Oxfordshire will be getting plastered with the stuff. I'd convert the duck punt into a sailing sledge if I were you.

 

[dylanwinter]

beautiful

I took the slug all the way to the top of the Medway navigation

I had four very serene days - I motored up and then drifted back using the paddle and stream

It was wonderul. I sleep very well when the boat is tucked away along a wooded river bank. Nothing like it.

I did film the whole thing and will eventually get around to making the film - but the salty boys who watch KTL are not that interested in what lies beyond the first lock

which is a terribly narrow minded view I think

Dylan