Present Day
The 15 locks are built to take boats 86 feet (26 m) by 13.25 feet (4.0 m), which means that they are not quite wide enough to take two narrow boats at a time. The Navigation is now managed by British Waterways.
There is a towpath along the entire length of the navigation, which forms part of a number of long distance walks. The Stort Valley Way is a 28-mile (45 km) circular walk, while the Three Forests Way is a 60-mile (97 km) circular walk, passing through Hatfield Forest, Hainault Forest and Epping Forest. It was devised by the West Essex Group of the Ramblers Association, as a way to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.
Read more about this topic: Stort Navigation
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or day:
“We do not rest satisfied with the present.... So imprudent we are that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius.... They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)