A walking life
THE great canal-building age of Britain left a legacy we all enjoy. We trundle happily along these quiet waterways by narrowboat, foot or bicycle, scarcely appreciating their tempestuous history and miraculous survival.
My walk (a nice long one) is along the Shropshire Union Canal, which stretches from the industrial West Midlands to the River Dee. Everything is idyllic—sunshine, mounds of hawthorn blossom, flowering webs of cow parsley, sitting swans and bundles of newly hatched ducklings, skidding giddily on the water’s surface—but only as I walk do I appreciate the complexity of the canal’s construction and its chequered history.
I start at Wolverhampton station, a confused mass of buildings and roads above the calm, deep water of the canal. I’ll finish at Shebdon on the Staffordshire/Shropshire border, where my daughter lives and where, after 21 miles, I think I’ll be done.
Esta historia es de la edición June 08, 2022 de Country Life UK.
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Esta historia es de la edición June 08, 2022 de Country Life UK.
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