A winter's tale: preserving canals through the cold
Thanks to your generous gifts, our programme of winter maintenance and repair works are almost complete, with 137 projects delivered across the network to keep our canals open and working for all.
Engineers replace lock gates at Stret Lock (Lock 48) on the Chesterfield Canal in Worksop
Delivering planned works between November and March, is a key part of how we care for our canals nationwide. With quieter towpaths and fewer boats cruising our waterways, it limits disruption to the public and enables our skilled engineers to perform vital repairs, upgrades and inspections ahead of the busier spring and summer months.
As Malcolm Horne, our chief infrastructure and programmes officer says: “Millions of people visit our canals every week, but perhaps they don’t stop to think about what it takes to look after them – or what we would lose if they were gone. Our canals cannot take care of themselves and we can only keep them alive with the support of Friends, supporters, boaters, volunteers and the wider public.”
Here’s where our lock gate works were happening this February. Courtesy of Google
With 1,581 locks across our 2,000 miles of canal, replacing gates and upgrading locks makes up the bulk of our work. Over 100 lock gate refurbishments took place up and down the country this winter, as our map helps to bring to life. It’s astonishing to think that each one represents the site of a major engineering project that you help to fund.
Every lock gate is individually designed and hand-crafted at one of our two specialist workshops, at Stanley Ferry in West Yorkshire and Bradley in the West Midlands, with each costing us around £150,000 even before transportation and fitting. Given the remote location of many of our locks and the sheer size and weight of the gates, just getting them on site is no easy feat.
In fact, when 14 finished lock gates were collected from Stanley Ferry, ready to be shipped to various construction sites across the country, their total weight was equivalent to three London buses.
Our winter programme of works are by no means restricted to lock gates. They encompass a whole host of complex engineering projects, from fixing crumbling masonry and relining canal walls to inspecting tunnels and shoring up embankments – each requiring a vast amount of planning, skill, and expertise from specialist teams.
That’s also before taking into consideration our routine maintenance work, such as lubricating paddle mechanisms, or our response to emergencies, such as the recent breach on the Llangollen Canal this Christmas.
This winter, our programme also included a full hydraulic and electrical renewal at the Sutton Weaver Swing Bridge on the Weaver Navigation.
We have replaced electrics and hydraulics on the Sutton Weaver Swing Bridge
At moorings in Hertfordshire on the Grand Union Canal, we also carried out coping stone repairs, and at Ellesmere Tunnel on the Llangollen Canal, we conducted an underwater structural inspection.
It takes a wide array of different skills, expertise, and, of course, funding, to keep our canals safe, open and accessible, and the challenge of keeping them in good condition has never been greater. Every penny you give is vital so that, each winter, our specialist teams can carry out this critical work across our network with minimal disruption.
As we all prepare for another year of boating, walking, cycling, angling, and wildlife spotting by water, it’s a timely reminder of the hard work needed behind the scenes each winter to provide so many wonderful places to visit on canals once the warmer weather returns.
