Present Status
There are now about 2,200 miles of navigable canals and rivers throughout the United Kingdom. Most of them are linked into a single English and Welsh network from Bristol to London, Liverpool to Goole, and Lancaster to Ripon, and connecting the Irish Sea, the North Sea, the estuaries of the Humber, Thames, Mersey, River Severn, and River Ribble. This network is navigable in its entirety by a narrowboat (a boat 7 ft wide) no longer than about 56 feet. There are also several through-routes not connected to the main network, notably those in Scotland, e.g. Glasgow to Edinburgh via the Falkirk Wheel, and Inverness to Fort William via Loch Ness.
The aim of campaigning bodies such as the Inland Waterways Association is to persuade British Waterways (which owns about half of Britain's inland waterway network) to fully reopen all disused canals. In May 2005 The Times reported that British Waterways was hoping to quadruple the amount of cargo carried on Britain's canal network to six million tonnes by 2010 by transporting large amounts of waste to disposal facilities.
The speed limit for the majority of inland waterways in the United Kingdom managed by British Waterways is four miles per hour. All speed measurements on BW waterways are expressed in terms of speed over the ground, rather than speed through the water.
Read more about this topic: Canals Of The United Kingdom
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