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23 December 2004 Here's one for WRGThis is The bit you can see on the picture looks reasonably well-dredged and is free of obstructions. Shortly out of shot to the right, it becomes badly overgrown and impassable. But the canal does continue, just about in water, for around half a mile. It ends at the Hay Inclined Plane, a well-preserved but nonetheless derelict incline leading down to the Severn... just about. The foot of the plane is actually the Coalport Canal, which runs parallel to the river past another one of the Ironbridge museums. Now I'm certainly not going to propose a trip-boat that started at Blists Mill, ran down the rather precipitous inclined plane, then continued along the Coalport Canal... although it certainly would give the lie to the description of Anderton as "the original Victorian white-knuckle ride”. But a bit of dredging, easily within the compass of a WRG camp or two, would enable a trip-boat to run along the level Shropshire Canal section, perhaps drawn by one of the Blists Mill horses. It would bring the waterways to life in a site where they have been absolutely pivotal for 250 years, but now barely register above 'ooh, look at that'. Here's a BBC 360-degree view of the canal at Blists Hill. They do already have a couple of boats sitting around at Blists Hill. One is a Shropshire Union ice-boat. Another is a Shropshire Canal tub-boat (iron, unusually, not wooden). But the real stunner is Spry, the only surviving Severn trow, beautifully restored and sea-worthy. Somehow I don't think she'd fit down the inclined plane. Comments | |
a rare surviving section of the once-extensive Shropshire Canal tub-boat network. It's at Blists Mill, the recreated Victorian town in Ironbridge Gorge. (Anna, Jo and I went there today.)
