We had been promised sunshine but, as you'll see from the interminable photos, it was a grey, grey day. I was following the Lee & Stort navigation, and that was one of the lock-keeper's cottages.
But let's start with railways rather than canals: the line of the Great Eastern railway runs parallel to the navigation.
I love these user-worked crossings, and this one had a marvellous collection of signage.
This included a rather fine very early 1950s job, from when the route was electrified, in magnificant Gill sans:
Skipping to the end of the walk, to St Margarets station (yes, I want an apostrophe in there, too), where the nanny state-ish fetish with impertinent signage has clearly got out of control:
Although rather magically the adjacent level crossing has the most wonderful lamp shades I've ever seen -- they reminded me of those claw-like, artificial fingernails some women wear presumably on the grounds they think they're attractive:
Ok, to the walk itself.
The clouds looked threatening, but there was a delightful stillness to the day so the water looked calm.
It was pleasantly warm, too.
And everything was still summery rather than autumnal, so green was the dominant colour.
Except, of course, on the berry bushes:
You can walk along the old tow path for many miles, but canal traffic today is almost entirely leisure-based. Fortunately for those of us who enjoy tranquility there was very little of it.
The canal passes the disused quarries at Amwell, now a substantial nature reserve with, allegedly, lots of otters.
But some of the human wildlife is also worth more than a second glance:
A close-up...
Most of the canal appears more natural rather than man-made.
But, a little further on, the New River is fairly obviously a man-made thing. Although actually rather beautiful, I think:
I suspect you're by now bored rigid, so let's end with a pair of unexpected wildlife moments. First up, a deer on the railway tracks:
It was tiny. Absolutely tiny (in fact, at first I assumed it was something like a slender coypu), but it moved very fast:
And then there was this chap, who was staring at me as I took photos at St Margarets station:
So I thought it was only fair to return the compliment:
There are times when it's a real disadvantage to use my smaller camera -- a bigger zoom lens might have been very helpful here.
4 comments:
Nice pictures!
Interesting impressions of those little canals (we don't have much small navigable canals her in southern Germany, as industrialisation happened some time later). What was the source of traffic here? Coal from North Eastern England to London?
Thanks!
Thanks for the compliment.
Those tiny canals illustrate one of the many disadvantages of being at the cutting edge of new technology -- the railways suffered in the same way, and we have one of the most absurdly restricted loading gauges of any railway anywhere. But the costs of expanding it are vast (as we discover on those routes where, for example, container traffic is so heavy that the gauge is opened out to accommodate ever-larger boxes). Hence every international manufacturer has to produce specially reduced versions of locomotives, etc, to operate in the UK, which adds on cost.
These early canals were mostly about transporting coal and mineral traffic (like lime), manufactured goods and grains -- other agricultural produce tended to be distributed through the networks of traditional local markets.
In pre-railway Britain, long-distance distribution of goods was by coastal shipping, and the canals generally formed more local routes from the coastal ports inland and vice versa. One of the advantages of being a small island!
That's a deer? I live in Canada and we have deer in the forest behind where I work and throughout the valley here. I've never seen one as small as that. Must be very young.
As for the building, I've always been impressed at how the British build for a structure to last using materials that won't rot (quickly... usually). Most homes here are built of cheaper materials.
And as for the builder, you should have asked if he wanted to model for you and then told him you had experience and a larger camera at home. One with a proper zoom lens.
You're right: the next stage of my descent into utter perversion is undoubtedly to approach complete strangers and ask them to, er, "model" for me.
I'm giving it serious consideration.
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