Dude, I pay £1,000 for my licence and I don't see it being used wisely either. But Pudelwagon hit the nail on the head - it's a shallow ditch, the equivalent of a road. You would not try and turn the M1 into a nature reserve while cars were still using it.
No one said it was a nature reserve Zed, but fish and other wildlife have populated it over the years so you can either ignore them or help them. I’d rather see them flourish myself. Bazza makes a good point re rod licences as you do boat licences and other fees. You pay, surely someone should ensure that goes to its intended purpose. I think we’re all to happy to bury our head in the sand in this country that’s why funds are so easily syphoned off and people get away with it! Did I tell you my dad’s mum was bought up on a barge they were water gypsy’s with horses apparently. My Great grandad Lote was the bargee, taking steel from the Black Country with a boat and butty, 6 kids and walked every mile alongside the horse, while the kids steered the boat and ran ahead to the locks. He gave it up when they motorised them!
Yes they did - CRT. I'm all for it to a point but one can't help wondering how far it will go. They appear to wish boats only to use visitors moorings and in some places they are literally herding them there by making the towpath such that it's increasingly difficult to find a spot you can moor and actually get off the boat.
I agree. We have been down to Stratford upon Avon and never been on this bit before. Sometimes it’s been hard to even spot the mooring pins by locks as they’re overgrown. Stepping off the side can be a lottery as you can’t see exactly where the edge is (and there’s lots of stingers!). It’s also making it difficult to get a mooring chain/pin in through the Armco as you either can’t see it, or it’s full of mud/foliage .
They seem to like to spend/waste loads of money changing the CRT logo, vehicle lettering, sinage and workwear rather than spend it on the maintenance and repair of the actual canals.
I can sort of see what they're attempting, rebranding as a "well being" thing. They know that without the government grant they are screwed and their efforts are around presenting themselves as something worth government support. The problem being that canals just for or mainly for boats = money chucked at a white middle class hobby so they must present themselves as something EVERY tax payer gets something from. Hence you get @Merlin Cat 's pictures of a lovely rambling towpath with a bleedin hedge between it and the canal - would you even know there's a canal there? They used to cut right to the edge but now that last bit is presented as a natural habitat for... something - great excuse not to bother!
Thought you did, I don't mind anyone's views on canals and I have to admit they have become much more popular. I imagine you can remember the state of the canals in your area when you were a boy - not good! There was a golden age of recreational canal use where it seemed like if it floated, someone had it on a canal, the licence was super cheap, more of a logging thing than any attempt at income. Sadly poorer people have been priced out of the scene. Narrowboats on the canal in the 70's were quite rare, it was mostly GRP and wooden cruisers - cheap boat/cheap licence, ordinary people having cheap fun on the water. Now it's not worth the annual costs to run a cheap boat to use now and again so it's either a game for the better off or somewhere to live... mostly, there are always exceptions. All of life has gone in this direction with the haves pricing the have nots out of the way simply by coughing up. It's not deliberate, but it's endemic. Houses, VW campers, anything where there is money to be made is squeezed until the pips pop. No money? Do one! Cheap entertainment? Sit in you hovel and watch TV.
The cut has always been pretty well looked after around my immediate stretch Stourport to kinver, but I know what you mean. My bro in law managed dartline cruisers for quite a few years back then, the cut or the circular they do from Stourport - Black Country- Worcester and back was tended to, so we never witnessed the decline as badly as elsewhere.
BW even started filling in locks with concrete, so determined to shut it all down. Three cheers for Barbara Castle. Lots of info, here's a random article if anyone is interested.
Further adding to my previous comment, canals and railways were originally intended as industrial transport systems. Canals now have the same status as disused railways. Their sole use now is for leisure and recreation - walking paths, cycle paths, nature reserves, pleasure boaters and fishermen. Sadly, maintaining a canal is a costly business and when funds are short, they must be concentrated on infrastructure rather than fish welfare (that's pretty obvious as a canal breach = no fish). Towpaths, and moorings come second but water quality is much harder to regulate. I don't know a lot about fishing but I presume the fish licence covers rivers as well as canals. How that money is spent is really up to the fishing lobby to impress upon those who control the purse.
They have proper canals with proper boats though. We miniaturised everything didn't we and now it's useless for transporting materials, it's just too small. Much of the system, probably the majority, is only about 3-4ft deep, 6 6"ft wide locks, it's toy town stuff really, built as cheaply as possible for one purpose - profit, now! I wonder who it was that came up with the idea of really long thin boats to save building decent sized canals. Typical Brit logic. Then, in the article I linked to we find the UK government didn't even know the canals belonged to them. Thy had belonged to the train companies who bought them purely to shut down the competition and when trains were nationalised the canals came with them.
Well spotted. Doh! https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/news/countryfile/2240834.how-barbara-castle-saved-our-canals/
Blame the Duke of Bridgewater and the likes of James Brindley, Thomas Telford etc for the design/construction but I don't think we will get them to answer! As for bigger canals, the South Yorkshire Navigation is plenty big enough to carry any freight imaginable. Vic Waddington tried his best, BACAT, Barge aboard cataraman, but failed because the stevadores blacked it as they thought all the jobs would go. Where are those jobs now? The "system" favours road transport (it's where the money in the form of taxes comes from) in stead of bulk carrying on canals and rivers, despite the pollution from all the 44 tonne lorries, which is probably put on one side.
tbh it wasn’t much cop as a footpath in some places. Especially if you met someone coming the other way! I saw a cyclist nearly topple off when overhanging stingers caught her by surprise! It also makes it hard to spot on coming boats , and the edges going through narrow bits.
The leeds and liverpool is a big one and fantastic, but just try and use it! Not many do because of the extreme likelihood of getting trapped on it for up to a year or more by one disaster or another which translates into "nobody much uses it" so it doesn't get priority and round we go. Same for the Rochdale - almost impossible to navigate these days and was only reopened fairly recently after a huge restoration. The Bridgewater is the only one still in private hands I believe. It's huge, deep, well maintained and policed by someone akin to Hitler. You can't stop on it for long without getting moved on even if you're perfectly entitled to be there. The whole thing is a bit of a mess. The pretty touristy bits are great but once you get out of "walk down path from car" distance you get what Merlin Cat showed us.
At a recent visit to Cane hill locks I was surprised at the poor condition the lock gates were in especially as given it’s a big tourist thing
