Walking on the towpath to happiness

WE are fortunate to have hundreds of miles of territory for Shanks’s Pony: the canal towpaths of Britain.

A warm August day finds me on the Trent and Mersey canal south of Derby, walking west from Swarkestone. It’s a broad, quiet stretch of water with a few boats chugging along in the sunshine. Not much wildlife, and few pedestrians.

This is the life. A rucksack on my back with a growler and some sandwiches, and the prospect of a pint at the end of the journey.

The pastime is getting more popular, and not just because of the pandemic. Canal Trust chiefs plan to spend £45million over the next five years, doing up a hundred miles of towpaths in urban areas including Burnley, Wigan, Sheffield, Bradford, Birmingham and Leicester.

Er, Bradford? No canal there, lad, unless you mean the Leeds and Liverpool which skirts the city and has a viable towpath. The original link closed in 1922 and was filled in.

But I digress. As important as money is manners. Walkers have priority on the towpath, and official signs urge “share with care”.

But cyclists treat it like a race track. Towpath rage is common. I have been known to shout “towpath hog” at speeding miscreants.

Walkers are all too often physically threatened by two-wheeled villains who don’t even have a bell on their bike.

And there’s always the risk of meeting biker Bojo coming the other way with a retinue of armed racers, though I think the towpath is beneath his towering dignity. I’ll just Carry on saddling Shanks’s Pony.