| My Canal Cruising Experiences... From 1959 to the Present Day |
An eBook and website by Cyril J Wood
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Disclaimer
Comments and opinions are included within this e-Book and website that are made by people other than the Author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Author who cannot be held responsible for any disputes caused by comments included within this e-Book and website. While all attempts have been made to verify information provided, the Author does not assume any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional. This e-Book and website provides links to websites which may possess their own set of policies about what information is appropriate for public access. The Author cannot be held responsible for information or contents located at these sites. Information contained within this e-Book and website is provided solely for the reader's information and, while thought to be accurate, is provided strictly "as is" and without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. The Author will not be liable to the readers or visitors for any damages, direct or indirect, arising out of use of information provided within this e-Book or website, or information provided at any website that can be accessed from this e-Book or website. Proceeding beyond this page acknowledges acceptance of this disclaimer.
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Contents Click here for the latest entries or on the required section in the Contents below to follow links |
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| Forward | |||
| So You Want To Go Canal Cruising? | |||
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Book 7 - 2011 | ||
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Book 10 - 2014 | ||
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Book 12 - 2016 | ||
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Book 13 - 2017 | ||
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Book 14 - 2018 | ||
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Book 15 - 2019 | ||
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Book 16 - 2020 | ||
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Book 17 - 2021 | ||
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Book 18 - 2022 | ||
| Our Boats | |||
| Ruby (On-going) | |||
| nb Squirrel (On-going) | |||
| Adeline (On-going) | |||
| Canals on Screen | |||
| Canals Through the Ages (Coming soon) | |||
| Photography Introduction | |||
| Photoscape (On-going) | |||
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Camerascape |
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The |
Red Dot |
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The Duke's Cut - The Bridgewater Canal (Up-dated) |
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The Big Ditch - Manchester's Ship Canal (Up-dated) |
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Shroppie - The Shropshire Union Canal System (In Preparation) |
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| The Manchester and Salford Junction Canal | |||
| Mersey Connections (In Preparation) | |||
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Foreign Forays - Canals of the World (On-going) |
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The Liverpool Docks Link (Up-dated) |
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| Canis Canalus | |||
| Shannon | |||
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Footnote and Acknowledgements (Up-dated) |
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| Site Map (Up-dated) | |||
| Go to the | |||
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| Website | |||
| e-mail link - cyril.wood@virgin.net | |||
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"Canalscape" and "Diarama" names and logo are copyright |
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This shot of a misty morning near Waverton on the Shropshire Union Canal |
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taken in 1975 is the first photograph in the "Canalscape" audio/visual presentation. |
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Even though the photograph looks monochrome it is actually in colour |
I am writing this introduction to "Canalscape" whilst moored at Daresbury... a beautiful, quiet, rural location on the Bridgewater Canal deep in the Cheshire Countryside. The "Canalscape" Books 1-16 are a true story and the other subjects may be of interest to other canal enthusiasts. "Canalscape" originally started life in 1985 as a short Audio/Visual Presentation containing some of my favourite canal and inland waterways photographs. In the presentation, the images were originally accompanied by the theme from Granada Television's "Travelling Man" but I later changed it to include some of my favourite Enya music... “Watermark” (which should now be playing in the background if your computer's loudspeakers are turned on), “A Day Without Rain” (in an even later extended version) and “Orinoco Flow” (see Footnote) with a short blast of Mike Oldfield (also in the later extended version) accompanying a prologue to set the scene. Whilst writing the commentary script for another audio/visual presentation... "The Phial Story"... about my parent's canal cruiser (see Canalscape Book 1 Chapter 5 - A Small Glass Vessel), I expanded the original script of the boat's history to encompass our boating experiences from "First Contact" in 1959, our subsequent canal holidays, added more photographs and called it "Canal Cruising in the 1960s" which forms the foundation for the written version of "Canalscape". It seemed logical to give the e-Book version (and subsequent website) the same title as the presentations as it contains some of the same photographs (plus a few more) only instead of being accompanied by music... text will have to suffice (but you could always play Enya's cds whilst reading it!).
Tranquil moorings on the Bridgewater Canal at Daresbury
The original title for the written version of "Canalscape"... the previously mentioned “Canal Cruising in the 1960s” was first published in serial form in “The Grand Trunk”... the magazine of the Trent and Mersey Canal Society, although excerpts have also been published in “Waterways World” and other waterways magazines including the Bridgewater Motor Boat Club's magazine and Lymm Cruising Club's "Slipway" magazine as well. Since then, the manuscript has gone through various format changes and grown from a magazine article and multi-part series (first published on the Internet in the original Diarama website) to a single volume, then to two and is now a fourteen volume work. In August 2009 I purchased the "Canalscape.net" domain name and uploaded the eBook to the Internet, enabling it to be read (and hopefully, enjoyed) by a wider audience than possible previously. The various boats that we have owned are documented in Our Boats but only touched on Total Eclipse and Squirrel as they have their own dedicated pages on this website. I have also included additional pieces, relevant to the main subject area that may be of interest to fellow canal and inland waterway enthusiasts including expanded web versions of "The Duke's Cut - The Bridgewater Canal" and "The Big Ditch - Manchester's Ship Canal", "Shroppie - The Shropshire Union Canal System", "The History of Lymm Cruising Club" as well as "So You Want To Go Canal Cruising?" which is what it says on the tin! "Don't Call It A Barge!" which deals with the development of the canal cruisers and "French Connection - The Canal du Midi".. "Canis Canalus" relates to some of the canine companions that have accompanied us on our canal cruising adventures and the latest addition to our family Ruby.
nb Squirrel moored at Calveley on the Shropshire Union Canal
"Canalscape" is an on-going project covering nearly sixty years of canal cruising. My canal cruising experiences started in 1959 and will hopefully carry on for many more years until I am too old continue canal cruising. I planned to retire at the end of 2016 but was encouraged by my employer... Wirral Metropolitan College, to take "flexible retirement" which means that I work mornings (and longer when required) leaving my afternoons free to pursue my many interests. When I (and my wife Ange) retire fully, the extra leisure time would allow us to cruise some of the canals and inland waterways that lack of time has precluded us from visiting and hopefully we will not have not been priced off the canals and inland waterways by the ever-increasing fuel costs, mooring and licence fees. Retirement would also allow me to finish scanning what is approaching one hundred thousand photographic images that I have accumulated over the years. In so doing it would enable me to complete the "Canalscape" project and its component parts as well as other time-intensive projects featured in the "Diarama" website and e-Book. Whilst on the subject of the website... I make no apologies for the site not resembling what most websites look like. It has no frills, banners, animated Giffs (except for one if you look hard enough) or other visual embellishments and advertisements to detract from the overall view of the website. It looks how I would expect and want a website to look! In addition to the main body of the text some of my personal recommendations to read are as follows... a visit to the Longdon on Tern aqueduct that was Thomas Telford's prototype for the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is documented in "Shroppie" - Chapter Eight and the continuation of the Llangollen Canal at Trevor... The Ffrwd Canal (also known as Fletcher's Canal), also in "Shroppie" is explored in Chapter Six - The Canal That Never Was. "The Liverpool Docks Link" is a good read as is "Don't Call It A Barge!". A recent addition is Canals Through the Ages which documents the development of artificial waterways from ancient times. The Manchester and Salford Junction Canal which ran beneath the streets of Manchester is documented in the section dedicated to it. I hope that this addition encourages readers to take the Underground Manchester guided tour which features parts of this canal.
Part of the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal deep below Manchester streets
I try (at the risk of the website becoming a "blog") to update at least some of the site weekly but, due to time logistics when cruising and various other reasons (3/4G network coverage for example), certain sections may be a little out of date. For this I'll apologise in advance. Readers may like to add the parts they like most to the "Favourites" tab on their Internet browser for quicker access but you may have to press the "refresh" button to view the latest version. If you experience any formatting problems (text too small or inconsistent fonts) try clicking the "Compatibility Mode" button on the top toolbar in Microsoft Internet Explorer. There may be other formatting anomalies when viewing in Safari or other Android based web browsers that are beyond my control. For regular visitors there is a shortcut to the latest entries at the top of the Contents section.
Photography plays a large part in my life and the Canalscape/Diarama websites as well. Accordingly, the photographs within this series of volumes are sourced mainly from my photographic archive. They were taken mainly by myself, the earliest of which dates from 1965, although some of the old family photographs and images scanned from standard 8mm ciné film were either taken by my late brother Jim or my Father (or occasionally by me) and date back as far as 1960. There are also images scanned from the British Waterways Canal Cruising Booklets, The Canal and River Trust Archive, the Bridgewater Canal and Manchester Ship Canal Archives plus some glass plate negatives in my own archive dating back well over one hundred years.
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A scan of a beautiful, 100 year old glass plate negative that is in my photographic |
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archive showing the Shropshire Union Railway and Canal Company's horse drawn |
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narrowboat "Irene" at the top of Chester Northgate Locks around the early 1900's... |
... and a more contemporary photograph of the same location taken on a
5 x 4 plate camera in 1986... unfortunately Chester's Ring Road is in the way now!
If you would like to know more about my interest in photography, the photographs used in this website and the equipment used in taking them then have a look at "Canalscape Photography", "Photographic Experiences" and the two "Diarama" and "Canalscape Gallery" sections or "Photography in One" which covers photographic history, theory and techniques. If you have any comments, queries, suggestions, wish to report broken links, spelling/grammatical errors (I do my best but inevitably a few errors fall through the "proofing net") or if you just want to chat about canals and inland waterways... please do not hesitate to contact me at the email address below.
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Cyril J Wood |
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email - cyril.wood@virgin.net |
Updated 06/03/2022
