Canal path "spills" - what do you do?

[Drago]

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.

 

[FishFright]

The Cauldon Canal, Staffs has , or had, a small slipway near the Froghall end. It used to give me the heebie geebies as kid.

 

[Richard Fairhurst]

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

It was initially to make sure that you’d agreed to some terms and conditions that basically said “I promise not to be a knob”.

But at the end it was purely to drive email signups for the BW website.

 

[Tail End Charlie]

Being able to use tow paths adds greatly to ride possibilities. I like using them and accept that there may be hazards which I have to walk around. In the situation the OP describes I opt for gingerly walking across the overflow bit rather than using the footbridge.
I used a tow path last Friday and managed to come off when I hit a mile marker. Of all the places to put a mile marker I had to hit it, I was too busy looking at a bird I'd seen fly off and a rut sent me into the marker. 1760 yards, 5280 feet and perhaps 3 inches either way and I'd have missed it, so i reckon a 1 in 20000 (roughly) chance of me hitting it. Sums my life up.

 

[Drago]

Anals are good hunting grounds for OS flush brackets and benchmarks.

 

[Tom B]

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!

Cheers for that. Tomorrow is off the cards now anyway, turns out the car has run out of insurance so its in dry dock for a while. Doing it from home would make it about a 100miler and mean going over Sharneyford both ways. I'm not upto a 100miler on the FS MTB with a need to be back intime for school finishing time yet.

. Of all the places to put a mile marker I had to hit it, I was too busy looking at a bird .

I've been in the Leeds Liverpool near Chorley a few times in the 90s while chasing a bird. Met her again a few years ago.... Lucky escape - all things considered the Canal was probably the better option. I rode the route for old times sake a few months ago, turns out it was about 15-18 mile round trip, which I did most nights on-top of being the kid with a 4 mile very hill paper-round. No wonder I couldn't put weight on at school.

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.

Not BW, but I assure you nothing has changed with a similar issue. Except, do it anyway and the public are now emboldened to complain about the riding and the ASB. Triple complaints. Anyway didn't people only ever do the training to get the bike kit issue then never go near a bike again?

 

[KnittyNorah]

often even horses safe access to them.

Hang on a minute ... horses were about the first users to be prohibited when canal restoration started in earnest.

Although towpaths were built specifically for horses, to be perfectly honest, they're not - nowadays - a legal (other than very rarely, where it is also a public bridleway or of higher status), safe, nor appropriate place for horses to be ridden. They never were, either. Despite what I got up to in the 1950s on Pet.

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.

 

[chris667]

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

Here's an idea. Why don't you try seeing other people's point of view rather than dismissing people and calling them names?

If it wasn't for a lot of these groups of people, there would be no canal network for you to complain about.

 

[chris667]

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.

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.

 

[Drago]

Anyway didn't people only ever do the training to get the bike kit issue then never go near a bike again?

I dunno, most of the training I delivered was to other forces and ambo.

 

[Jameshow]

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!!

 

[chris667]

Cannot imagine they are best buddies with pole fishing match fishermen!!

In my experience, most people are nice and good. All the horseboaters I have met have been really lovely, interesting people.

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.

 

[Alex321]

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 think a lot of the reason for this is the bolded bit above.

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.

Many more of the canals on the continent never were disused, so both the canals and the towpaths were maintained properly and updated as necessary.

 

[ColinJ]

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!

 

[chris667]

A sign that I photographed from that stretch of towpath... I think that there are stables there!

Sounds fair.