Gosh, it's a bit hot

28th & 29th May

A bit of a collection of stuff today, as I type this in Market Harborough's Union Wharf, on a very pleasantly warm day.

First off, HMRC. I've had this reply from them:

The intention of the new scheme was for the supplier of fuel to pay to HMRC the duty on the fuel declared as being used for propulsion by the user of the private pleasure craft. In the normal course of events we would have expected Kate Boats Warwick Ltd to collect the duty based on your 30/70 declaration.

It is not clear from your email whether the insistence on using a 60/40 split was due to the supplier not believing your declaration or whether his accounting system was unable to cope with your declared usage. Unfortunately as far as HMRC is concerned our prime concern is that all revenue collected by a supplier is paid to the department and since we have no reason to question that, and since the supplier did make it clear to you what he intended to do, I do not believe that you have any recourse other than using a different supplier for future purchases.

There is no machinery for recovering any element of this duty from HMRC.

In simpler terms: "Tough luck, shove off." I had a chat about it with Ivor Caplan of RBOA at Crick, but he seemed quite uninterested in the issue, and said that RBOA has no plans to keep an up to date webpage of suppliers who do or do not allow boaters to declare their own split of propulsion versus domestic use. I must say I'm disappointed in this response (from RBOA, the one from HMRC surprises me not at all.)

If only Nabo's website would work from my internet connection, I'd be tempted to give up on RBOA and change my allegiance. I'll see if I can put together a comprehensive list of websites giving useful advice on this topic and add it to my web page of favourite and unpopular boatyards and marinas.

Yesterday we had a good day's boating on a cloudy but warm morning. We saw a quail on the towpath, which I think is a first for us.

We stopped between bridges 56 and 57, just short of Lubenham Lodge. It's quiet there, and there's a good view across the valley. In the afternoon, we walked on to Foxton, picking up a geocache on the way, then carried on down the flight and found another (at cost of some nettling) on the towpath leading towards Market Harborough. En route, we saw a grass snake swimming in the restored top arm of the lift.

We stopped at the top of the locks on the way back to eat a delicious ice cream apiece, then ambled back to the boat for cups of tea and a quiet afternoon. I did a post on the Building Sanity Again blog about stuff we'd decided after Crick, and we had drinks and dinner sitting outside.

Truly, summer has arrived.

Today, this was confirmed by a gloriously sunny morning. We set off at eight, arriving at the top of Foxton half an hour later. We went down the first two locks, then waited in a queue for a Canaltime to come up the lower five and pull over into the passing place.

Then we all set off down, emerging from the bottom lock at half nine. There was a substantial queue waiting to go up, but I managed to slide through them all without contact and go through the new swing bridge, which is now in action.

By twelve we'd got to Market Harborough, found a mooring in the basin, hooked up the electricity and paid the very reasonable £5.50 per night for mooring with shoreline.

We've been down into town this afternoon to start restocking the stuff we used whilst at Crick. Elanor is coming over tomorrow with our postal voting papers, and on Sunday we'll be off again, heading north for Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, Newark, Lincoln and Boston.

I think that constitutes a "genuine journey around a substantial part of the system".