Recent History
Today the canal can be used by boats up to 64m in length, 9.6m in beam and 32m in height. The maximum draft is 3.5 m. By the mid 1980s commercial traffic had largely come to a halt with the canal being given over to pleasure cruisers with the exception of a few passages by grain barges. The oil trade ceased in 1985 with the closure of the petroleum depot at Quedgeley. In order to allow the A430 south-west bypass to be built the canal had to be diverted. The new section of channel was opened on 6 May 2006. In January 2009 a project began to replace the Patch Bridge swing bridge with a motor powered design instead of the current hand cranked system.
The canal links directly to the Stroudwater Navigation at Saul junction.
Read more about this topic: Gloucester And Sharpness Canal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)