Shropshire Star

Making the cut - we celebrate British canals

The waterways of Britain make for fascinating exploring, and it's something that many of us have taken for granted over the years.

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There are 2,000 miles of historic canals, rivers, reservoirs and docks across England and Wales – and the canal network flows from Lancaster down to London, and from Wales to The Wash. That's a lot of water – 200,000 megalitres in fact. That's enough to fill 2.5 billion baths!

To look after them, then, is a big job. Each year, staff and volunteers from the Canal & River Trust work to keep our waterways thriving. This includes everything from dredging and clearing litter, to operating the locks and taking care of the many creatures that call our waterways home.

We popped down to Broad Street canal basin in Wolverhampton on a sunny August afternoon to meet up with some of the people responsible for making it a great place to explore. If you haven't been down to your local canal recently, you're missing out. Generally, canals are des res locations, adding 20 per cent to the price of a property. They are buzzing with creatures, people and plants, some of which you're unlikely to find anywhere else. And when we got there, we met some equally fascinating people.

Historically, the canal network was used to haul goods like coal, metal and textiles around the region. Cargoes included explosives, chocolate, gin, beer, ice, gold and even the stone that was used to build the Houses of Parliament. Now it's a place to go and chill out, take a holiday, canoe, fish and enjoy.

We met up with a wildlife expert, a lock keeper, a heritage expert and one of the men responsible for keeping everything ticking along on our travels. We also came across a cave spider egg sac, a heron and a few very busy geese – but it was the humans we were interested in.

Ian Darby - Customer Operations Manager

Customer Operations Manager Ian Darby from the Canal and River Trust at Broad Street Canal Basin in Wolverhampton

Ian heads up the maintenance of our canals. It's a big job, that covers everything from water flow to ensuring the paddles on locks are greased for boaters.

Each year, the Canal & River Trust spends £700,000 clearing litter and flytipping from the waterways, but Ian tells us how it's improved over the years.

He says: "Because the canal has always been there, it's abused in some ways. We spend an awful lot of our time and money putting things right which aren't of our making – moving rubbish and that sort of thing. It's a shame that we have to do that, it takes us away from the nicer stuff, and it uses up resources.

"That said, we put a lot of time and effort into educating people and making them aware of us, and there are some benefits to that. Things have really improved over the years. We still have problem hotspots, and we will always have them, but local people are starting to take ownership of their local canal.

Sewa Volunteers

"Before, they would avoid it. But now people are more likely to get involved in their own local way. It's not just about owning a big boat."

We ask what kind of things people can do to help take care of their local canal. Paul says: "We like adoption schemes, where local communities adopt their local stretch of the canal. It allows them to get involved and improve the wildlife there for example. They also have events, where canoe clubs will come and let people have a go at something different. They're used rather than abused."

We ask Paul what his favourite thing about the canal is.

"Narrowboats are great to see on the canal – they're something that's unique to our country," he says. "It's precious to us and it's an added bonus to have all of the wildlife and heritage. The canal can be used in lots of different ways, whether you want to walk and spot wildlife, ride your bike or canoe, it's all there.

It's an outside gym for everybody, right on your doorstep and all for free."

Paul Wilkinson - Ecologist

The growing problem of Japanese Knotweed is one of the problems ecologist Paul Wilkinson has to deal with in his work with the Canal and River Trust

Paul knows almost everything there is to know about the living things that you'll find on the local canal. It's hard to know precisely everything – there are more than 30 different species of fish alone in our waters, including eight which are protected by law.

Canal wildlife

There's also a lot of plants and flowers. The Canal & River Trust spends around £600,000 each year controlling invasive non-native flora, such as Japanese knotweed. Despite this constant headache, Paul has one of the best jobs on the canal, and he tells us what we can expect to see at this time of year.

"Some canals have more boats than others, which will have an impact on some of the species you'll find there," he says. "This is a good time of the year for dragonflies and damselflies which is quite interesting for children. There are maybe five or ten species of them in Wolverhampton alone. The adults live for around two to four weeks out of the water. As larva they live two or three years under the water, not seen unless you go with a pond net."

Isn't that dangerous, we ask? Paul says no, as long as there's adult supervision and people are sensible near the water. He used to explore the canal himself when he was a boy.

Kingfisher

"Well over 30 years ago I'd go to the canal with my dad, stickleback hunting with a jam jar! The canals have changed such a lot since then, when my dad took me to Coseley, it wasn't fair sport as it was full of sticklebacks. Now you'll be hard pushed to find a stickleback anywhere, because the canals are so much cleaner. There's a whole load of new fish that have moved in.

"I like species of fish that represent a habitat, such as the bullhead, stoneloach and gudgeon. They're all indicators of nice clean water. And that then brings in otters and kingfishers. People are seeing a lot more otters on the canals here, and it's incredible.

"We have peregrines now in Wolverhampton, which is a species that as a child I read about and went to Wales to see, thinking that they'd never be seen here. And low and behold, they're here."

  • There were more than 400 million visits to the canal in 2014/15

  • Boats pass through the canal locks around 3.7 million times a year

  • In 2014, 967,000 people went on a canal boat trip, spending £336m. That’s quite a chunk of British tourism!

  • There are more than 32,000 licensed boats on the network (that’s more than there were during the Industrial Revolution!)

  • The Canal & River Trust is the largest owner of fishing rights in the UK and it has 100,000 angling customers

  • In the 20th century, 500 miles of canals were lost. Bad times

  • In better news though, 200 miles of canals were restored around the turn of the Millennium

  • There are more than 1,000 wildlife conservation sites along the canal systems

  • There are 63 sites of special scientific interest (SSIs) and 49 Scheduled Monuments

  • See the hedgerows along the canal? There are 600 miles of them!

  • There are around 400 miles of conservation area, across 313 sites

  • The Canal & River Trust is the third largest owner of listed structures and buildings in the UK, with 2,694. Only the Church of England (with 12,200) and The National Trust (3,500) have more

  • You can find 1,583 locks,

  • 55 tunnels, 2,963 bridges,

  • 336 aqueducts and 73 reservoirs along the canal

Lucky Lowe - West Midlands heritage advisor

Heritage Adisor Lucky Lowe inspects vintage brickwork at Broad Street Canal Basin in Wolverhampton

Seeing plants and creatures along the canal is special, but there are also little treasures to be found, if you know where to look.

Just walking over one bridge with heritage advisor Lucky is an adventure. She points to the ridges on the wooden bridge – four lines etched in almost perfect placement – and asks if we know what they are. We assume it's a pattern, so say as much. But Lucky tells us that they're worn into the wood by the ropes attached to horses from times when they pulled cargo along the water.

Is hung with bloom along the bough

"A lot of the things that we look at as heritage people are easy to pass by. It's the detail – a mile post or the marks and lines from years and lives gone by. If you've got an eye for detail you can see a lot of fun things," she says.

"A lot of towpaths in years gone by got somewhat trashed in places – people just dug them up and concreted them over. I love the historic brick paving, and there's increasingly less of it. Those things might be just a pavement to some people, but to me it's like gold dust. There's some on the Broad Street tunnel in Wolverhampton. It's a reminder of what went before. A lot of the old buildings are gone now, so you have to look for the evidence of what was there."

A lily-decked canal

Lucky tells us that the lock gates are still made to the same spec as they were originally, 200 years ago. It's her job to ensure that all repairs are done sensitively to the protected network.

"The whole network is historic, and a lot of it is listed, so that designated status gives us a duty of care that we have to ensure that we comply with," she says. "So if the ops manager's team were going out to repair a lock, they might find it's listed, so we have a look at the designs and the plans and advise on what materials match what was there originally."

Customer Operations Manager Ian Darby from the Canal and River Trust at Broad Street Canal Basin in Wolverhampton
Sewa Volunteers
The growing problem of Japanese Knotweed is one of the problems ecologist Paul Wilkinson has to deal with in his work with the Canal and River Trust
Canal wildlife
Kingfisher
Heritage Adisor Lucky Lowe inspects vintage brickwork at Broad Street Canal Basin in Wolverhampton
Is hung with bloom along the bough
A lily-decked canal

Paul Roache - Volunteer Lock Keeper

If you're out on a canal boat for the first time, you might find yourself struggling at a lock. In some parts of the canal network, there are flights of more than 20 locks in a row, and if you're lucky, you'll find Paul or one of his fellow lock keepers on hand to help you operate them.

There are more than 250 volunteer lock keepers on the waterways, giving more than 57,000 days of their time to help. Paul tells us why he does it.

"Most of us have an interest in the canal history and heritage, rather than the locks themselves. It's a very different activity to what I was doing in my career. I spent a lot of time in aeroplanes travelling the world in business development in the automotive industry. So this was very much an antidote to that! It was a different pace of life, and yet it's an activity that I enjoy – there's a lot of camaraderie and lots of friendships have formed through volunteering activity. It's something for people to do, not only when they retire, but also on weekends, being out in the open and helping people out."

Paul dedicates around two days a week to volunteering, and this can take him to any of the lock flights in the region.

"A day on the locks can be from around 8.30am to around 6pm this time of year, so it can be a long day," he says, happily. For him though, it's worth it. "Helping boaters is our primary role. So that can be people new to hiring a boat, or those in their twilight years that can struggle to use some of the heavy gates and paddles.

"It's hard work for most people. Generally speaking, it takes around 10 to 15 minutes to get through a lock. If you go through a flight of locks with boaters, you might spend an hour and a half, two hours with them. So on a nice day, you're out in the countryside meeting people, and it's great."

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