Canals

The Canal & River Trust: the local council hiding in charity’s clothing

Earlier this year, a 67-year-old pensioner and his dog were made homeless after being turfed out of their houseboat on…

Four things we learned about the UK’s waterways from Chris Clegg’s Canal Time Map

In my ever-present efforts to satisfy the cartography-minded readers among you – i.e. all of you – I stumbled across…

Developers shouldn’t just treat canals as an aesthetic bonus. It’s time to use waterways for construction again

While London’s canals have seen a great resurgence in the last forty years, they’ve also witnessed a drastic move away…

5 ways London’s waterways will be shaped by the Canal & River Trust’s new mooring strategy

Anyone without a vested interest in the canals, bear with me here; I’ve got big news. The Canal and River…

“There had been an ‘incident’”: On losing your home in a fire

When, in December of last year, a drunk Brazilian girl cycled into my houseboat and fell in the canal, I…

Here’s why canal boat dwellers find it so hard to vote

‘Not my problem’. This was, in essence, the response received by worried boat owners when they reached out to Bethnal…

So how does a canal boat travel uphill?

Sea-faring boats face many challenges, but uphills are not one of them. They have to deal with up-waves, of course,…

How the big freeze of 1962-3 killed off Britain’s canals

The English are internationally renowned for banging on about the weather. When British drizzle is compared to the hurricanes of…

“I moved off land three years ago after falling in love with a boat”: tales of London’s canals

A few weeks ago, we published this article by Lawrence Shepherd. It argued that London’s canals were becoming dangerously over-crowded,…

The housing crisis no one's talking about: London's canals are getting dangerously over-crowded

When I moved on to a canal boat, 20 years ago this summer, it was not a particularly popular thing…