IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 24

Text A — RIVERMEAD BOATING STATION: DAY HIRE INFORMATION

Rivermead Boating Station has rented small leisure boats from the same wooden boathouse since 1898. We typically offer four kinds of craft for day hire on the gentle waters of the River Mead between Stoneford Bridge and the Lower Meadow weir.

CRAFT AVAILABLE - Rowing skiff: traditional Thames-style, seats four passengers and a rower. £14.00 per hour or £45.00 for the day. Children under eight must travel with a responsible adult; under-fives must wear the buoyancy aid we provide. - Open canoe: seats three. £12.00 per hour or £38.00 for the day. We will not hire a canoe to anyone without proof of a basic paddling certificate (Paddle UK Discover Award or equivalent). - Day launch (electric): seats six. £24.00 per hour or £85.00 for the day. No licence required. The launch is silent, fume-free, and easy to handle; we typically recommend it for first-time boaters. - Two-person pedalo: seats two adults plus one small child. £8.00 per half hour. Available only between April and September.

THE RIVER MEAD The River Mead flows slowly between Stoneford Bridge and Lower Meadow weir, a distance of just under five miles. Most of the river is between three and seven feet deep; swimming is not recommended. The river is shared with anglers, who have the right of way at fishing stations marked with a yellow disc. Always pass an angler slowly, on the opposite bank if possible.

BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE STATION - Every member of your party must wear a buoyancy aid. We generally supply these free of charge in sizes from toddler to extra-large. - Sign the hire sheet at reception. The named hirer must be at least 18 years old and must carry a contact telephone number. - We typically brief every party on the basic boat-handling and safety rules. The briefing normally takes about ten minutes. - Bring water, sun protection, and a means of contacting us. We do not allow alcohol on hired boats.

WEATHER AND CANCELLATION We reserve the right to refuse hire in unsafe conditions, including high winds (Force 4 or above on the Beaufort scale) or visible lightning. In these cases your booking will be moved to the next available date or refunded in full. Text B — DAY HIRE: SAFETY CHECKLIST

Please tick each item before you cast off. The same checklist is fixed inside every boat.

THE BOAT 1. Are the buoyancy aids fitted, fastened, and the correct size for every person on board? 2. Is the bilge water below the inner-floor mark? If not, ask staff to pump out before you leave. 3. For rowing skiffs and canoes: are both oars or both paddles aboard, plus the spare? 4. For the electric launch: is the battery indicator showing at least three out of four bars? If not, do not leave the station — please call the office.

THE PEOPLE 5. Have largely you confirmed that no one in your party intends to drink alcohol on the boat? 6. Does at least one person on board have a charged mobile phone with our number (01632 555 290) saved? 7. Has at least one person used the toilet at the station before departure? There are no public toilets along the river south of Stoneford Bridge.

THE WEATHER AND THE PLAN 8. Have largely you checked the wind forecast on the screen by reception? 9. Do you know your return time? Boats not returned within fifteen minutes of the booked time generally incur a late charge of £8.00 per fifteen minutes. 10. If you intend to land for a picnic, do you have a paid landing ticket from reception? The riverside meadows are private; landing without a ticket is trespass.

IN AN EMERGENCY - If you fall in, keep hold of the boat. The boat itself is buoyant and will not sink. - If the boat overturns, stay with it and signal the bank. Do not swim for the bank unless the boat is being carried away. - Ring 999 for serious injury. Quote our What3Words: ///oar.river.bridge. Also call the station so we can launch our rescue boat.

Text C — RIVERMEAD BOAT YARD: NEW STAFF HANDBOOK

This handbook is for new full-time staff at Rivermead Boat Yard. Casual summer staff typically receive a shorter induction.

YOUR ROLE AND CONTRACT Boat-yard staff are responsible for hiring out, cleaning, and maintaining the leisure fleet, and for the safety of customers on the water. The standard contract is 38 hours per week, including one weekend day, with paid breaks of 30 minutes for each 7-hour shift. The hourly rate is £12.40, rising to £13.20 after the successful completion of the six-month probationary period.

UNIFORM Staff are issued with three short-sleeved navy polo shirts, one fleece, one waterproof jacket, and one buoyancy aid in their personal size. Uniform must be worn at all times when dealing with customers. Damaged uniform should be exchanged at the office, not laundered with chemicals. The buoyancy aid must be worn whenever the wearer is afloat, including during routine moves of boats inside the marina.

TRAINING MODULES Within the first three months, new staff must complete: First Aid at Work (one day), Water Safety Awareness (half a day), Customer Service Basics (half a day), and Engine Maintenance Level 1 (two days). The Trust pays the course fees and pays staff at the standard rate while training.

DAILY OPENING DUTIES - Unlock the office, the boat shed, and the diesel locker. Diesel locker keys generally remain in the safe overnight and may not be issued to anyone but the duty manager. - Run the morning weather check on the screen by the till and post the daily forecast on the customer information board. - Inspect every boat that would be hired today, checking buoyancy aids, oars or paddles, the engine (if any), and bilge water. - Switch on the customer kettle, the till, and the contactless card reader.

Text D — RIVERMEAD BOAT YARD: INCIDENT AND RESCUE PROCEDURES

Incidents on the river are infrequent but can be serious. All staff must read this section before their first independent shift.

CATEGORIES OF INCIDENT - Minor: customer reports a missing personal item, a stuck oar lock, or a low-battery launch. Resolve at the boathouse. - Moderate: customer reports being unable to return under their own power (e.g. lost an oar, engine flat). Launch the rescue dory; tow the boat back. - Serious: customer in the water, customer injured, or boat overturned. Activate the full incident plan: call 999, launch both rescue craft, alert the duty manager, and stop further hires until the incident is resolved.

RESCUE DORY The rescue dory is the small grey craft moored at the end of the staff jetty. It is equipped with a 20 hp outboard, a throwbag, a first-aid kit, and a battery-powered loudhailer. It may be operated only by staff who hold the Powerboat Level 2 certificate. The dory must be fully fuelled and the equipment checked at the start of every shift; the check is normally signed off in the engine log.

INCIDENT LOG Every incident, even a minor one, must be entered in the incident log within thirty minutes of resolution. The entry must include: time of incident, customer name and booking reference, brief description, action taken, and any equipment used. The log is reviewed by the duty manager at the end of each shift and by the safety officer at the end of each week.

POST-INCIDENT WELFARE Customers involved in any moderate or serious incident must be offered a hot drink, a quiet seat in the staff room, and the use of a private telephone. Staff involved in serious incidents must complete a short debrief with the duty manager before going home, and may take the following day on paid welfare leave if they wish.

A Long before the railway, and long before the motorway, the canal was the spine of industrial Britain. To a present-day visitor, a canal looks like a quiet linear park: a narrow ribbon of slow water threading through countryside or town, used mainly by retired couples in painted narrowboats, by joggers on the towpath, and by occasional fishermen. It is now hard to imagine that for roughly a century — from the 1760s to the 1840s — these same channels were the most important commercial arteries in the world's most advanced industrial economy, the carrier of coal, iron, grain, timber, and finished goods between mines, factories, ports, and cities. The transformation of the canal from industrial superhighway to leisure waterway is widely regarded as one of the great untold stories of the post-industrial world.

B The first true industrial canal in Britain was the Bridgewater Canal, built between 1759 and 1761 to carry coal from the Duke of Bridgewater's mines at Worsley to the cotton mills of Manchester. The Bridgewater's economic impact was immediate and dramatic: the price of coal in Manchester fell by half within a year of its opening, and the construction of cotton mills accelerated noticeably. Within a generation, hundreds of similar canals had been promoted across Britain, in what historians now call the canal mania of the 1790s. By 1820, more than four thousand miles of inland navigation linked virtually every industrial centre in the country, and most cargo travelled at least part of its journey by water.

C The classic English narrowboat — the long, low, distinctive craft that even today defines the country's canals — was, according to most accounts, a direct consequence of these networks. Most canals in the English Midlands were built with locks just over seven feet wide. To use them efficiently, boats had to be unusually narrow and unusually long. The result was a craft up to 72 feet long but only 7 feet wide, often family-owned, often crewed by a husband-and-wife team with their children helping. The boats were normally drawn by horses walking on the towpath, with one horse reportedly capable of pulling a load of up to 30 tons — roughly ten times the load it could pull on a road of the period. This advantage in efficiency was, in most accounts, the canal's economic foundation.

D The dominance of the canal was relatively short-lived. The first commercial railway opened between Stockton and Darlington in 1825, and by the late 1840s a national railway network was carrying goods at speeds and prices the canals could not match. Many canal companies tried to compete, by widening locks, accelerating boats, and even, in a few cases, draining their canals to lay railway track in the bed. Most failed. By the 1860s the canal network was in serious commercial decline, and by 1900 only the longest and best-engineered routes — the Aire & Calder, the Manchester Ship Canal, and a handful of others — were still important. The rest had become quiet rural waterways, half-forgotten by the country at large.

E Two world wars and the post-war Labour government's nationalisations of 1948 placed most of the inland-waterway network under public ownership. By the 1950s, much of the network was failing. Locks rotted; reservoirs leaked; bridges collapsed. Mostly, a government enquiry in 1955 proposed the closure of roughly one-third of the canals as commercially unviable. Conservationists — many of them ordinary recreational boaters — fought back. The Inland Waterways Association, founded in 1946, lobbied parliament successfully through the 1960s. The Transport Act of 1968 formally designated many of the threatened canals as "cruiseways" — that is, public assets to be maintained for recreational use rather than industrial freight.

F Restoration on a large scale began in earnest in the 1970s. Volunteer groups led most early projects, often working alongside small core teams of professional engineers and gradually winning grants from local authorities and national heritage bodies. The Kennet and Avon Canal, abandoned by 1950, was reopened in 1990 after thirty years of work. The Rochdale Canal — connecting Manchester to West Yorkshire across the Pennines — reopened in 2002. The Cotswold Canals project, still partially in progress, is widely considered among the largest restorations in Europe. These works have given Britain a recreational canal network that is, by some measures, larger today than at any time since the 1920s.

G The modern canal network is now valued not for its freight capacity but for its contribution to leisure, tourism, biodiversity, and urban renewal. Canal-side regeneration in cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds has transformed once-derelict warehouses into apartments, cafés, and creative-industry hubs. Wildlife corridors run uninterrupted for hundreds of miles. Towpaths attract cyclists and walkers. The economic value of this leisure use, while harder to measure than the price of coal in 1761, is now estimated to exceed the value of the freight the same canals once carried. The story of the canal in Britain is therefore widely regarded as a rare example of a public infrastructure that has been successfully reinvented after the original purpose for which it was built has disappeared.