Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 553
Canals
Hello Everyone
One of the best things about going back to school in September is meeting up with your friends again, isn’t it?
Some of them you haven’t seen since school broke up, and it is nice to hear about the adventures they have had over the summer and it is nice to tell them about yours.
Bill, Bob and Emily found out this week that Roger and his whole family had gone on a boating holiday; but not on the sea or a river, but on a canal.
A canal is a bit like a river but it has been made my men digging out a long trench. lt is a very long trench – much bigger than Auntie Alice plants her beans into!
So many people had gone on holiday with Roger, that they needed two canal boats to sleep them all.
The kind of boat Roger went on holiday on is actually called a narrow boat. That is because this kind of boat is very narrow.
The Ancient Egyptians built canals as far back as two and a half thousand years ago. The Chinese were building canals not long after that, and were building canals with locks by the tenth century.
Most canals built around the world were extensions of natural rivers and water courses. There are canals found in many countries. Holland, Belgium and Venice are famous for them.
Britain was the first country in the world to develop a nationwide, man-made canal network, but canals existed here before that. The Ancient Romans had developed the building of canals and aqueducts.
Canals could be used for drainage or irrigation. They could take a supply of clean water to large towns and cities.
They fell into disrepair when the Roman Empire collapsed, but were partly renovated in mediaeval times and Tudor times as water transport was an easier way to travel sometimes than in carts on poorly-maintained roads.
More modern canals were first built in the 1700s, but became very important aquatic highways in the 1800s when a nationwide network was built to transport goods during the lndustrial Revolution. This is when manufacturing began to take place in factories rather than in cottages.
There were many miles of waterways that boats could travel along, but these rivers did not always connect large towns and industrial centres in the way that was needed.
So the canals had to be built. Raw materials and fuel like clay and coal had to be taken from the places they were mined to factories. The goods made in factories had to be taken to the towns where the customers lived, or to ports to be transported to customers abroad.
Canals were built in places across England and Wales. They were also built to connect Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland and towns, coalfields and ports in Northern lreland.
They were built by hand. They were built by men called navigators – navvies for short, using picks and shovels. To make the enormous trench waterproof, they lined it with a lining made up of compressed clay and sand. When the canal was filled with water and boats they did not want the water leaking out again!
The first modern canal to be built in England was the Bridgwater Canal in the north-west.
The Grand Union Canal was the UK’s longest at 137 miles long. lt stretched from London to Birmingham; and it is a well-repeated fact that Birmingham has more canals that Venice.
Regents Canal in London, completed in 1820, is now a tourist destination. lt carries boats through the centre of London and can be a haven of peace for people to be away from busy roads.
On the Grand Union Canal just outside Warwick, are a set of 21 locks stretching up like a stairway. Hatton Locks will take boats up and down a height of 150 feet over a distance of 2 miles. lt takes about 4 hours to pass through them. Of course you can’t go uphill on water, it won’t form a slope; this is why the steps, called locks, were built to raise the canal up a hillside.
There were over 1,500 locks built on all the canal systems.
ln other places, to get boats across valleys and up hills, aqueducts and boat lifts were also built. They were amazing feats of engineering in their day.
Boats had to be very narrow to fit through the locks.
They travelled along the canals in both directions, but at no more than about 5 mph.
ln the mid 1800s, railways began to provide a faster form of transport for transporting freight and became the main way of delivering it all over the country – and continued to do so until the mid 1900s.
After this, huge lorries could transport loads along motorways.
About a hundred years ago, the canals started to fall into disrepair, but were rescued in the 1950s and 1960s by a charity called the lnland Waterways Association – lots of volunteers were prepared to do a lot of really hard work. They started to restore the canals whether they ran through a town or the countryside.
After WWl canals started to be used for recreation purposes, and they are now busier than ever, as they have been repurposed for recreation and tourism in the modern age.
You will see many boats of different sizes being used for sport, day trips and holidays. Small canoes and kayaks are much easier to paddle along stretches of water that don’t have waves, tides or currents. Canal water is very calm because it is contained.
Over a quarter of the boats on canals are now homes. They have ducks outside their windows as well as garden song birds.
Some of the newer ones are like plush apartments. Every inch of the inside is used. Beds are flipped up and stored against the wall during the day time. There are lots of cupboards and little cubby holes to store possessions away.
Joggers, walkers and cyclists love to use the pathway alongside a canal. This is called the tow path.
When narrow boats first travelled the canals, they were pulled (or towed) by large horses that were very strong. The horses walked along the tow path tethered to a boat by a long rope.
A horse could carry 30 times the weight loaded onto a barge pulled along on water than a cart pulled along on land. And many of the roads at that time were not constructed to cope with really heavy loads like consignments of steel or easily-broken, fragile items like pottery. They were not robust enough or smooth enough.
The delivery barges that travelled on the canals were filled with goods like coal, iron ore, pottery, textiles or beer but there was a small living space for a whole family too from the late 1800s. Families would live on these boats permanently as they travelled up and down the canals carrying loads to their destinations.
Most of these boats are painted in bright colours and decorated with a special kind of art called canal art or barge art. There were lots of pictures of roses and castles. The pictures of flowers were for the people who lived on the boats and could not have a garden like someone who lived in a house or cottage.
Nowadays, people can live on narrow boats and use them as their permanent home. They live at a particular spot by the side of the canal called a mooring and the boat does not move. People who live on narrow boats nowadays often do grow flowers and vegetables on the roof of their homes because they are pretty flat and there is room to do so.
Other narrow boats can be hired by tourists who want to have a relaxing holiday chugging along the canals. Horses are no longer used; diesel engines were installed a long time ago. But in order to make the transport greener, biodiesel is being favoured nowadays, and some boats have even been refitted to be driven by electricity.
Canals often have lines of undisturbed greenery each side of them. They could be gardens, trees, hedgerows or grass and these margins make wonderful havens for wildlife.
You will find song birds and water birds like ducks, coots, herons, kingfishers and swans near or on canals.
There will also be fish, bats, otters, dragonflies and butterflies.
The Canal and River Trust now works to support the canal network and its heritage.
For a blog post about canals big enough to take large ships, check out Blog Post 195.
Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bob: Do you know where sharks go on holiday?
Bill: Finland?
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Narrow boat
Narrow boat
Towpath
Belgium
Through the landscape
Canal lock
Lock on a ship canal
How a lock works
Water filling the lock with a loud gushing sound
Canal art
Canal art
Canal holiday
saloon = living room
cabin = bedroom
galley = kitchen
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
Some while ago, my Auntie Alice started a new business hiring out doves for dove releases at parities and weddings.
They were a much more environmentally-friendly way of releasing objects into the sky than balloons.
The business has gone very well and the doves are happy in her garden.
The doves are so happy in fact that they settled down and had babies.
Auntie Alice came to the realization that the dove cote that Captain Jack and I made for her was running out of bedrooms for all the doves.
She had to make a decision as to whether she would get another dove cote or sell some of the doves.
She wanted to get another dove cote to make more room for them but Captain Jack said that it might be a good idea to sell some of the doves because they could make even more money out of the business.
He said that the garden would get overrun with doves if things went on like this, and there would be even more of their mess to clear up.
He could find a buyer for them far away; after all they did not want anyone nearby to set up a business in competition with theirs.
Auntie Alice agreed to his idea and she will sell some of the doves – next year.
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Quick Quiz
Can you fill in the blanks?
These words all follow the word water…
- w _ _ _ _
- p _ _ _
- m _ _ _
- f _ _ _
- w _ _
- v _ _ _
- m _ _ _
- n _ _ _ _
- i _ _ _ _
- p _ _ _
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A DOLLS’ HOUSE POUFFE
Here is another idea of how to make a toy out of a disused item.
- Cover a circular piece of foam or stuffing with fabric – tuck the edges underneath.
- Sew into the centre to make a dip.
- Stick it to a bottle top of a colour to match the fabric – you will probably want to choose your fabric to match the bottle top you have available.
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- wheel
- park
- mill
- way
- vole
- mark
- nymph
- icing
- polo
Water vole
