Vlog 343: The Missing Link
Despite the name of the Staffordshire & Worcestershire canal, it doesn’t actually go through the county town of Stafford so a group of volunteers are now trying to make that happen.
See their website at https://stafford-riverway-link.co.uk/
What happens if they don’t get planning permission for the lock? Is that even a possibility, or is it really more of a formality?
Has anybody done a retrospective look at the environmental impact from the canal network as it was built two hundred years ago? That is, has anyone determined that digging the canals contributed to or minimized erosion, for example? Whether joining canals to rivers was beneficial or injurious to the rivers in various ways? And other possibilities I cannot even fathom.
Obviously, the canals were a tremendous benefit, and there were tremendous human costs in building them. Are they perceived as a net positive? I assume they are, because of efforts to restore old canals and re-create links that were filled in or even just neglected to the point of unusability. Or are the restoration efforts mainly due to people who like narrowboating and people who enjoy the towpaths? Do people living along the canals generally appreciate them, even if they never boat or fish or even just walk them? (I remember from previous episodes the occasional signs some canalside dwellers would post, but such naysayers exist in nearly every sphere.)
Love these restoration vlogs, and my mind just boggles at the effort required. Then it boggles again at the thought of men doing this work BY HAND two centuries ago!
Cheers from Virginia!
I’m not sure about the planning issue but am presuming they are suitably confident that it can be done. The benefits of canals have been analysed by the Canal & River Trust and they have research reports on their website though I can’t point you to a direct page link offhand, sorry!