Recovery
But even while the canals were declining, there were individuals who recognized what would be lost by the death of the canals. At the start of World War II, Lionel Thomas Caswall (LTC or Tom) Rolt and his wife Angela had decided to live on board a narrowboat they had turned into a home. His account of their life aboard the Cressy, Narrow Boat, became an unlikely best seller. Their four-month voyage on the Oxford, Grand Union and Trent & Mersey canals inspired another author, Robert Aickman, to contact Rolt and together the men became the nucleus of the Inland Waterways Association, which in 1946 became a charitable trust that would promote, conserve and restore the canals.
Of course it took some time for that to happen. When the railways were nationalized (put under government control) in 1948, the canals they owned were transferred to the British Transport Commission. In 1962 the canals became part of the British Waterways Board and later British Waterways, a quasi-autonomous non-governmental agency or quango. Then in 2012, the Canal & River Trust was created as a charitable trust. CRT took over the assets of British Waterways, except for the Scottish canals, which remain under the control of the Scottish government.
Today the canals no longer carry goods but are instead tourist attractions. The Falkirk Wheel, which joins two Scottish canals, transports more tourists on its tour boats than cross it in narrowboats. What was once an Industrial Revolution superhighway is now a sedate and unhurried way to relax. Canals mix history, because you can find horse-drawn boats next to restored steam trains next to high-speed rail. You’ll see canal side development, like grocery stores and factories converted into fashionable apartments, but you’ll also find stretches of farmland and forest and you can still eat blackberries along the towpath. Canals combine the old and the new and somehow make it timeless.
