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The charity making life better by water

Meet Anne

Hyde Lock, Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal

"I just love it here, so much to see, so much to hear. Even though it's winter, the birds are singing and the ducks are splashing about in the water – and it's so very different from being anywhere else in this noisy 21st century when there are many more cars than pedestrians!

I come from Yorkshire so I've always known about canals. As a little girl, I used to play by the Leeds & Liverpool Canal in Saltaire because we used to visit a friend of my mother's who lived in one of the terraced houses there built by Titus Salt for the workers in his mill. And when I was older and met my husband in the 1950s, he was working as an apprentice in the huge mill by the canal and river in Saltaire. I think the mill has now been converted into shops and an art gallery so today you can get in to see the enormous high-ceilinged rooms where all the weaving looms used to be.

I've spent a week with some of my family who live on a canal boat, and I've been trying to imagine myself living on a narrowboat. It's a very small space inside the boat, but it's just so peaceful. Travelling for miles and miles and seeing such glorious countryside, and all at the top speed of four, just four, miles an hour. Blissful!"

Ann, Hyde Lock, Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal

photo of a location on the canals
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