 Tony Blews' UK Waterways Ranking Site (UKWRS) records the hits on sites registered with UKWRS and publishes a score for the number of hits in the previous seven days.
I've been recording the scores from UKWRS each day for around 14 months and we can look back to see how sites have changed over the year - and compare how they are doing compared to last year.
| There are just seven sites which have been in the top 20 every day during 2010. Many others have been and gone during the year as scores fluctuate with, for example, Captain Ahab’s Watery Tales making just one appearance in the top 20 (on 23rd January).
Let's have a look at those seven sites and how they changed during the year, and compared to last year.
| Jim Shead’s Waterways Information
A wealth of information covering almost anything waterways you can think of. |  | Just Canals – Forums
A consistent performer with a peak during the snow in January when, perhaps, people were "working at home". |  | Pennine Waterways
Describing themselves as - Canals of the South Pennines - UK canal information, history, photographs, virtual cruise |  | Granny Buttons
Andrew Denny's own private thoughts and ignorance about the canals and waterways. (And no-one else's, except as quoted.) |  | CanalPlanAC – Canal Route Planner
An interactive guide to the inland waterways of Europe, it plans journeys, calculates the length (distance, number of locks, time taken etc) of your trip and shows gazetteer information on places along the way (pubs, shops and museums).
A remarkable year on year improvement with scores mored than doubled. |  | Canal Cuttings
Information and features about canals, navigable rivers and their usage.
Joined the UKWRS site just as I started logging the data. |  | Waterway Routes – DVDs and Maps of Canals and Waterways
Our own, wonderful, site showing a healthy year on year improvement. |  | I have scores for all sites on UKWRS since November 2009 so please let me know if you would like to see the scores for your site. | |
Posted on Friday, 31 December 2010 at 23:59 Comments (4)
Category(s): News , UKWRS
Thank you to all our customers, friends and family for your support throughout the year.
We've had lots of fun producing DVDs and posting them out before Christmas. I do hope they've all arrived - nobody has said they haven't, despite all the snow.
We've enjoyed meeting you all too, while we were out cruising and filming, at exhibitions, or elsewhere. |  |
Posted on Friday, 24 December 2010 at 22:22 Comments (0)
Category(s): News
The new aqueduct across the Selly Oak bypass has been open for boats since the beginning of December although, with the canals being completely frozen since then I don't think any boats have been across yet.
Boats had been diverted into a temporary channel while the aqueduct was constructed bu that has now gone and the excavators are busy removing the earth so the aqueduct will no longer appear to be at ground level. |  | A viaduct has been constructed to take the adjacent railway line over the new road too. That's on the other side of the railway and it will be slid sideways into position during a Christmas closure of the railway.
Once that's in place the earth will be excavated under both to allow the new road through. Then it will become clear just how high the aqueduct and viaduct are. |  | I wonder when the first boats will cross the aqueduct. It wont matter if they come from both direction as it's nice to see the viaduct is wide enough for them to pass without slowing any more than they normally would to pass an oncoming boat. |  |
We cruised home from the IWA National Festival at Beale Park along the River Thames and north along the Oxford Canal. It was a lovely cruise and we took lots of photos as we went.
At long last I've sorted through the photos and the information and added these to our website. You can now see these here:
> Route Information
> Photo Gallery
Follow the arrows in the right margin of the photos for a virtual cruise along the Oxford Canal, or the other canals featured in the photo galleries. |  |
During the summer I was asked about updating a map of the Witham Navigable Drains for the IWA Lincolnshire Branch. Their members had done the hard work of determining the local information and they already had a map with outdated information. Unfortunately the map was in a format which could not be updated.
Working with the IWA members I updated the map and now have a new master which can easily be updated in the future. The IWA have an up to date map for their branch and for visitors to the drains to accompany the other information the branch can provide.
Clicking on the thumbnail will show a larger map or you can see a much larger Witham Navigable Drains Map.
I was very pleased with the feedback from the IWA. "Many thanks for your help in producing such a good quality map for us to promote the Witham Navigable Drains." |  |
Hopefully most of you will be surprised to find we're back as you won't have known we've been gone.
Regrettably some of you will have noticed our website was missing, or at least had problems accessing it.
For a few days we've been the subject of a denial of service (DOS) attack. That's when some malicious person requests so much information from our website and sends so many emails targeted at it, the server grinds to a halt.
We don't think it was targeted at us directly, but at one of the other users who shares the same server at our ISP. The ISP have been most helpful in managing the problem and moving us between servers but it will have meant a poor service from us for a little while.
It was made worse because one of the pair of drives in the RAID array (that's where our data is stored on two hard drives to guard against failure) gave up at the same time, possibly triggered by the exceptional workload from the DOS attack. The drive was hot-swapped by the ISP staff within minutes but it then took several hours to rebuild the new drive with a copy of the data from the remaining good one which made it even slower.
The good news is that we believe everything is back to normal now and I'm not aware of any data being lost. If you have had problems placing an order then please try again. If you are still finding problems, or you've placed an order that we haven't acknowledged, then please let us know.
We know we've missed quite a lot of visitors because our web stats and scores on the UK Waterways ranking site have dropped unusually low. Hopefully we're scoring normally again now. |  |
Posted on Thursday, 2 December 2010 at 21:35 Comments (0)
Category(s): News
Many people have registered their website with Tony Blews' UK Waterways Ranking Site and benefit from a little fun and entertainment watching their scores go up and down. It's unfortunate that at least one person has rewarded Tony's efforts with threat of legal action instead of the praise that most people give it.
The rules are quite clear and aim to give a level playing field - if you don't like the rules you don't have to join - if you can see opportunities for improvement then make sensible suggestions. |  | Each site is allocated a unique ID number when it is registered. Tony's own UK Waterways Ranking site is number 1, with another of Tony's other sites, Google Earth Canal Maps having number 2. Granny Buttons has number 3.
There are about 130 active sites, with the latest addition being Narrowboat Ceramics which is number 224. Some of the other numbers are simply inactive sites, or where the owner has withdrawn from ranking system. |  | Some are registrations from sites which have nothing to do with waterways - you'll have to imagine what services they might be offering - and they have been blocked from using the site.
The graphs show how the scores have varied during the year for the first three sites to be registered.
I now have over 12 months data, with daily scores saved since 8th November 2009 so let me know if you would like to see your scores (or those for someone else) featured in a future blog. |  |
Posted on Wednesday, 1 December 2010 at 23:58 Comments (0)
Category(s): UKWRS
The Worcester & Birmingham Canal is now closed at the Selly Oak Aqueduct for two weeks while they connect the new aqueduct.
Starting on Monday morning they had put temporary earth dams across the canal at each end of the site and they were busy pumping water out of the canal. They had used netting to chase the fish down to one end of the site and had just finished removing them when I arrived.
Talking to the site supervisor they plan to reinstate the embankment to join up with the concrete of the aqueduct, line it with puddle clay, fill it with water and remove the earth dams to reopen the canal. |  | When I asked how long they would leave the aqueduct and new alignment filled with water to check for leaks before removing the earth dams he looked blank and said they hadn't though of doing that.
It will probably be fine, but the residents of Selly Oak will not appreciate the contents of one of the longest pounds in the country being emptied from the aqueduct if the seal isn't perfect.
As I'll show in the next blog, the stop gates installed at the next bridge towards Birmingham, as a precaution against problems here, have been taken out of use by another project to there's no way they can be shut quickly. That's a shame since it's the time they are most likely to be needed quickly. |  |
Almost 12 months ago I blogged about the new aqueduct being constructed at Selly Oak.
The work is for a new road being constructed at Selly Oak which will pass under the canal on a new aqueduct and under the adjacent railway on a new viaduct.
For the past year boaters have used a temporary channel to the side while a new aqueduct was constructed on the original straight alignment. It's almost ready now and it will soon be filled with water and used by boats. |  | The railway viaduct has been constructed alongside the railway and will be slid into place when the line is closed for several days around Christmas.
When it's all finished next year and the grass and shrubs start to grow it will look much greener and less like a building site and boats and trains will be passing through normally as if nothing has happened.
There's more information on the Birse Civils Selly Oak Aqueduct web site. |  |  |  |
Canal Voyagers Hotel Boats have featured several times in our blog and here they are again.
Neil & Corinne, the owner operators, have just launched their 2011 brochure with hundreds of copies going into the post last week. This year there's a difference.
As an experiment, we've produced a promotional video and some of the envelopes contain a DVD for potential guests to view at home. For those unfamiliar with canal boats, particularly those from overseas, it's very difficult to describe a Hotel Boat holiday on the canals in a printed brochure.
You can read more about them and see the contents of the DVD here. There's an introduction to Hotel Boats and a description of their 2011 cruises.
These are 4-star Hotel Boats so you can travel in luxury. Which cruise will you choose? |  |  |  |
Posted on Sunday, 14 November 2010 at 20:42 Comments (0)
Category(s): Uncategorized
Becks DVDs, supplier of many specialist DVDs, now stocks most of our Popular and Combined DVDs.
If you are looking for an alternative mail order supplier, or purchasing other DVDs for Christmas then you might find all you are looking for in one place.
You can still buy the full range from our own web pages, and from The Canal Shop Company. |  |
Posted on Saturday, 13 November 2010 at 20:58 Comments (0)
Category(s): News
 When we are out cruising we carry stocks of our DVDs on board so we can send out the orders each day. Once we moor up in the afternoon I can download the orders, pack them in a Jiffy bag and find a local post box. Orders placed during the evening are usually packed and posted before we leave the following morning.
In the summer, while we were moored at Atherstone, an order arrived during the evening and I spotted it was for an address in Atherstone, just a few minutes walk away.
I grabbed a DVD from our stock and a torch from the shelf, and headed up the towpath. One very surprised customer found me standing outside his door to deliver his DVD personally just 20 minutes after he ordered it.
He was so impressed with our service he wrote to Waterways World and his letter appears on page 102 of the December 2010 issue. He has kindly given me permission to reproduce his letter here. | Fantastic Service
Reading through September's WW, I noticed a review of a new DVD of the Warwickshire Ring by Waterway Routes. Since I am lucky enough to live on this route by the Coventry Canal, I though it would be a nice idea to get a copy. I made an online purchase about 9pm and about 20 minutes later I heard my doorbell ring. I was wondering who it could be at that time of night and when I got to the door I saw a man with a torch and he shouted through the door "you just ordered a DVD". I was gobsmacked - how could this be?
It turned out, that by sheer coincidence, the Waterway Routes boat just happened to be moored up overnight a short way up the cut from my cottage. Isn't it great how the wonders of technology combined with a transport system dating back centuries can achieve such a feat? Because the DVD was delivered by hand, I was also refunded electronically the amount I had paid for postage.
Thank you Paul Balmer of Waterway Routes, that's what I call service!
Stuart Etheridge, Atherstone. |
Posted on Friday, 12 November 2010 at 12:01 Comments (0)
Category(s): Coventry
Posted on Tuesday, 9 November 2010 at 18:25 Comments (4)
Category(s): News
The summer has passed and we’re well into autumn with the leaves turning golden brown on the trees and falling rapidly.
Boaters habits change, with few taking holidays and looking for information about cruising.
The UK Waterways Site Ranking has scores which I’ve recorded for nearly 12 months to see how these change over time. Some sites provide information about canals and cruising and these show a distinct climb during the summer and decline during the autumn. |  | Others sites, typically the blogs of continuous cruisers, provide year round entertainment and these show much less seasonal variation.
These first graph shows seasonal changes for leading examples the "information" type of sites, while the second shows leading examples of the "blogging types of sites. |  |
Posted on Sunday, 31 October 2010 at 22:01 Comments (0)
Category(s): UKWRS
| The blog has been rather quiet recently while I put my efforts into the updated website which went live this afternoon.
The format is very different, but most of the content is the same, simply transferred from old to new.
The new format is easier to update and maintain and I can start adding additional content as soon as I’m sure everything is working.
Browse around the site and please tell me if you spot anything which isn’t working, or if you have any suggestions for further improvements.
The old pages are still there, so don’t worry if you’ve linked to them. Eventually I’ll put in redirects to the new pages and phase the old ones out.
I’m keeping the blog in the old style for a little while, until I’m sure the new format is working, then I plan to convert that too. |
Posted on Wednesday, 27 October 2010 at 17:02 Comments (0)
Category(s): News
News is spreading rapidly that we can draw maps for websites, brochures and magazines.
The November 2010 issue of Canals Rivers + Boats Magazine includes the first of a five part series written by blogger David Scowcroft. Each part is accompanied by a map we’ve draw to show the route. Look at page 35 for the first example.
It looks good in print, but feedback is always welcomed if you can see opportunities to make it even better.
On page 85 you can see our advert for our great range of Canal DVDs. We also show the maps we draw for other canal organisations.
There’s several examples of canal maps on our website but please remember these are only examples and we can draw almost anything you like in the way of maps and cruising routes – as long as you can describe what you’d like.
Just ask us for whatever you’d like. |  |
Our Canal DVDs make great ideas for Christmas Presents, but please remember to order in time.
The Post Office publish latest recommended posting dates for Christmas and you need to order from us by these dates:
UK: Monday 20th December
Europe: Thursday 9th December
USA/Canada: Thursday 9th December
Rest of World: Sunday 5th December
If you order from us after these dates we will still post the order promptly, but is unlikely to arrive in time for Christmas. The earlier you order, the more certain you can be of arrival in time for Christmas. |  |
Posted on Tuesday, 5 October 2010 at 08:47 Comments (1)
Category(s): News
In last month’s blog about the UK Waterways Site Ranking scores I promised a mention of the latest Forum to be logged on the site after things had settled down.
I was waiting until Tony Blews has clarified the rules for using the site to ensure a level playing field in comparing the Forums.
Tony also added a new category for Forums which has three members and here they are |  | The first graph shows the JustCanals Forum, the first to appear on the UKWRS site. There was a peak in January, when it snowed a lot a people were "working at home" but otherwise it’s an unremarkable year.
The second graph shows a new forum created for Ex Ownerships members. This is the newest to be added to the UKWRS site. Its title limits the potential membership and time will tell where it settles down. |  | The final graph shows the Canal World Forum. Initially at a low level then, following an upgrade of the site, a dramatic peak going off the scale and causing Tony to clarify the UKWRS rules.
Falling quickly into line with the new rules this site has settled down to become the highest scoring site.
Remembering that these Forums are the combined publishing resources of all their members it’s unfair to compare them directly with sites like Jim Shead’s, created by one person. |  |
Posted on Thursday, 30 September 2010 at 23:59 Comments (1)
Category(s): UKWRS
Passing Ansty Today, as we headed northwards filming the Oxford Canal, a familiar looking boat approached and the steerer shouted "Hello Paul".
It was Gypsy Rover’s new owner, taking over from Derek & Dot who are still managing a little cruising with help from their friends.
We didn’t stop, as we were filming in the limited sunshine. Hopefully we can meet again later. |  |
We’re heading back to Birmingham, filming the Oxford Canal as we head northwards, when the weather permits.
Sunshine is forecast for tomorrow so we are hoping to make it to Banbury where we can exchange crews at the station. Andrew and Megan can head back north and Susan can join us for the next leg of the cruise.
And we can visit the shops for more supplies. | |
Posted on Tuesday, 14 September 2010 at 22:08 Comments (0)
Category(s): Oxford
There’s two graphs to study this month.
Heth, from Takey Tezey, which isn’t a spelling mistake, left a comment a few days ago and, as with anyone who comments or asks, there’s a chance to see your own scores.
Tekey Tezey has shown a confident rise in support during the last nine moths. I hope they can keep it up. It’s always harder to attract visitors to a site in the winter. |  | Last month I mentioned the Canal Shop Company entering the site. Now we can show a month’s progress and that looks good too.
If you’ve looked at Tony’s UK Waterways Site Ranking recently you will have seen a change at the top.
I’ve been recording this and have exchanged a few emails with Tony. I’ll comment next month when the position is clearer. |  |
Posted on Friday, 3 September 2010 at 12:55 Comments (1)
Category(s): UKWRS
I travelled home on the train yesterday afternoon and packed the car with all the material for our stand during the evening.
This morning saw a trouble free drive to Beale Park and we were unloading our boxes by 10 o’clock and stacking them in the marquee.
Most of our setting up was done by lunchtime when we retired to our boat for a quick sandwich and a coffee. |  | We finished the stand this afternoon and watched everyone else working on theirs.
If you are coming to the IWA National Festival then please come and say hello to us. We are at stand A2 in the Premier Marquee, just inside the left hand entrance doors.
Our Waterway Routes narrowboat is moored outside on berth N2B, that’s just to the north of the entrance if you miss us during the day. |  |
We’ve made it to Beale Park for the IWA 2010 National Festival. With the strong winds that have been blowing and the recent heavy rain it is good to see all the marquees nearly finished and the site progressing well.
Boaters are starting to gather and the official mooring spaces come into effect from tomorrow when there will be a shuffling of boats to get everyone into their correct place. Come and see us at berth N2B if you get a chance. - that’s just north of the entrance to the lake and the second boat out from the bank.
|  |  |  | I have a little shuffling to do with a return home by train to collect the car with the exhibition stand and boxes of DVDs, ready to set this up during Friday.
Look our for our stand, A2, in the Premier Marquee. next to the left hand entrance door.
Please say hello, and introduce yourselves – we’re looking forward to meeting you. |  |
Getting ready to leave this morning we were passed by bloggers Chas and Anne on Moore2Life as they headed into Banbury.
I walked into Banbury and was rewarded with the opportunity to meet Bones, aboard her boat Bones. It was great to meet another blogger and have the opportunity to chat, however briefly. |  |  |  | We’re heading into Thrupp tomorrow, then onto the Thames on Sunday as we head to Beale Park where we have a stand at the IWA exhibition for the bank holiday weekend. |  |
Posted on Friday, 20 August 2010 at 21:39 Comments (2)
Category(s): Bloggers , Oxford
Bridge 189 on the Oxford Canal has been missing for several years, awaiting repairs. The abutments have recently been repaired and today was the day for lifting the new bridge into place.
The crowds gathered from the waiting boats - note the pampered pooch sitting on its owners chair.
The crane arrived and lifted the deck into place first and the fit was checked. It was lifted out again for minor adjustment, then replaced. |  |  |  | Aligning the teeth at the pivot was a little tricky but lots of hands soon made light work of the task and the platform was in place and correctly aligned.
The first of the balance beams was lifted into place and large bolts used to fasten it there.
The workboat was used as a working platform to access the bolts underneath to make sure they were tight.
Suddenly it was starting to look like a proper bridge. |  |  |  | Then the second was lifted into place and bolted into position and it was time to test the balance.
The beams had deliberately been manufactured a little too long and the chainsaw was used to make the final adjustments.
The press were getting bored by then so two proud craftsmen who had made the bridge stood for photos and answered their questions. They fitted the handrails and finished their work after a short lunch break. |  |  |  | We talk about "hanging" lock gates but what’s the correct term for fitting a bridge? Any suggestions? | |
Posted on Thursday, 19 August 2010 at 22:02 Comments (0)
Category(s): Oxford
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