Drago
Legendary Member
- Location
- Suburban Poshshire
The anal/Nene link through Northampton is so bad for crime and extreme juvenile nuisance the boaters in the know only traverse the canal through that area at night.
Towards the end they relented and allowed people to download the permits for free - which seemed a bit pointless having permits at all if they were giving them away
I usually put a GPX in the first post of a ride thread but forgot to do it in that one! It finally appears in THIS POST.
It would be wise to cautious about doing that route tomorrow though... There are a few places where you would be on exposed high ground and the forecast suggests that there may be thunderstorms!
. Of all the places to put a mile marker I had to hit it, I was too busy looking at a bird .
This brings back memories.
Decades ago there was a bit of a crime spike on the canals in Poshshire, and British Waterways wanted something done about it.
Can't physicall patrol them by car. Unrealistic to respond to reports on foot and expedt the villains to still be there, so as one of the forces two MTB trainers it landed on my desk.
Back then you needed a permit to ride a bike on their towpaths. The public merrily ignored this requirement but the dibble couldn't. The farce weren't going to stump up for separate permits for every rider, so I tried to convince BW to grant a permit to cover the entire team. They wouldn't.
So thanks to BWs intransigence nothing happened, although they still had the cheek to complain about lack of police action in response to crime levels.
Hang on a minute ... horses were about the first users to be prohibited when canal restoration started in earnest.often even horses safe access to them.
Here's an idea. Why don't you try seeing other people's point of view rather than dismissing people and calling them names?Just not in most of this godforsaken country where NIMBYs and misguided Victorianaphiles seem determined that towpaths must be left almost in the state of disrepair they fell into while the canals were disused
However, it does seem bizarre to me that in this race to a green and ecofriendly conclusion, you'd better not try moving your boat by actual horse power, because you're not going to get very far as physical access for horses both onto and along most towpaths is thoroughly blocked and in any case, all horseboating requires specific permission from the owner of the canal - in most cases, the Canal and River Trust.
I dunno, most of the training I delivered was to other forces and ambo.Anyway didn't people only ever do the training to get the bike kit issue then never go near a bike again?
There are horseboaters about. They even have a club!
http://www.horseboating.org.uk/
The biggest challenge to them is other canal users rather than BW.
Cannot imagine they are best buddies with pole fishing match fishermen!!
I really enjoy riding towpaths. Just not in most of this godforsaken country where NIMBYs and misguided Victorianaphiles seem determined that towpaths must be left almost in the state of disrepair they fell into while the canals were disused and act as a real drag on enabling wheelchair users and riders of cycles and often even horses safe access to them. And then there are freak daft designs like the one in this discussion which have somehow survived, possibly because it was already disused at some earlier time when little bridges would have been built over the towpath spillways as routine renewal.
I know it's not fair to compare the BE/NL ship canal towpaths to the narrow GB ones (although most of the Manchester ship canal doesn't seem to have a decent cycle route beside it either), but French canals don't seem much bigger yet often manage to keep their towpaths open to all.
A sign that I photographed from that stretch of towpath... I think that there are stables there!I know that the biggest occupational hazard to the horses is members of the public feeding them things they shouldn't eat. Not out of malice, but horses have surprisingly delicate digestive systems, or so I've been told. I know nothing about horses really.
A sign that I photographed from that stretch of towpath... I think that there are stables there!