Canals of The United Kingdom - Growth of Leisure Use

Growth of Leisure Use

In the latter half of the 20th century, while the use of canals for transporting goods was dying out, there was a rise in interest in their history and potential use for leisure. A large amount of credit for this is usually given to L. T. C. Rolt, whose book "Narrow Boat" about a journey made in nb Cressy was published in 1944. A key development was the foundation of the Inland Waterways Association, and the establishment of fledgling weekly boat-hire companies, following the example of such companies on the Norfolk Broads, which had long been used for leisure boating. The authority responsible for the canals, British Waterways Board, encouraged this process from the late 1950s by operating a fleet of holiday hire boats, initially converted from cut down working boats.

Holidaymakers began renting 'narrowboats' and roaming the canals, visiting towns and villages they passed. Other people bought boats to use for weekend breaks and the occasional longer trip. The concept of a canal holiday became even more familiar when the large agencies that dealt with Broads holidays began to include canal boatyards in their brochures. Canal-based holidays became popular due to their relaxing nature, self-catering levels of cost, and variety of scenery available; from inner London to the Scottish Highlands. This growth in interest came just in time to give local canal societies the ammunition they needed to combat government proposals in the 1960s to close commercially unviable canals, and to resist pressure from local authorities and newspapers to "Fill In this eyesore" or even to "Close the Killer Canal" (when someone fell in one). It was not long before enthusiastic volunteers were repairing unnavigable but officially open canals and moving on to restore officially closed ones and demonstrating their renewed viability to the authorities.

Local authorities began to see how a cleaned-up and well-used waterway was bringing visitors to other towns and waterside pubs — not just boaters, but people who just like being near water and watching boats (see gongoozler). They began to clean up their own watersides, and to campaign for "their" canal to be restored. As a result of this growing revival of interest, for the first time in a century some new routes have been constructed (the Ribble Link and the Liverpool Canal Link), another is under construction (the Fens Waterways Link). Large projects such as the restoration of the spectacular Anderton Boat Lift, or the building of the startling Falkirk Wheel attracted development funding from the European Union and from the Millennium Fund. The Rochdale Canal, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the Droitwich Canals have all been restored to navigation since 2000.