Wednesday 4 May 2011

Charity Dock - one of the strangest sights on the waterways


A short distance from Hawkesbury Junction on the Coventry Canal is Charity Dock.


This must be one of the strangest sights on the waterways: part boatyard, part scrapyard, part art collection.


You know something's not quite right when diesel purports to be £1.60 per gallon.


When was fuel last sold by the gallon? We seem somehow to have gone metric when it comes to filling up. How did that happen? Did no-one kick up a fuss? (Thankfully we still have imperial measures for beer and distance, although the Environment Agency puts speed limit restriction notices in kilometres per hour. Hey - we must make sure that if there's a coming together of the EA and BW in the future we stick to miles and mph.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I last filled up, I paid the equivalent of £6.08 per gallon.
When I started driving in 1964, it was 4 shillings [20p], but when Mrs H Senior started in 1947, it was 1 shilling [5p]. Now everything is relative of course, but it appears that the cost of
petrol is now 120 times what it was then. On the other hand, The
Times now also costs exactly 120 times what it did then. Then again, in the 1920s, Agatha Christie describes a man who is only 70 as being old. And how many people could afford to run a car then? I wonder what a narrow boat cost then?

H Senior

Graham and Jill Findlay said...

When petrol went up to three bob a gallon, 1963ish, I swore I would give up my mo'bike and never ride again. Sold my last bikes in 2006. But we do love Charity Dock.

Vallypee said...

I'd love to go to Charity Dock...
I remember when I was a student (before I left the UK), petrol went up to 50p a gallon. the outrage was audible across the country. Okay, that was a while ago now. I have trouble thinking in pounds these days, and as for feet and inches, that went out of my thinking after a few years in South Africa.