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Canals make excellent cruising places for newcomers to canoeing. In Britain they can provide thousands of miles of interesting and varied travel. They often run through splendid scenery, especially on some of the summit levels, which are the name given to their highest pounds as they cross hills in going from one valley to another or reach the end of their course up a dead-end valley.

Since a canal does not flow like a river and has no current, its depth remains pretty much the same all the year round. It is equally easy to go in either direction at a constant speed and this facilitates planning a trip and estimating daily distances to be traveled. However, regard must be had for the number of locks to be passed each day, for these delay progress whether you go through them or resort to portaging.

Sometimes locks are arranged in series or flights as on the Kennet and Avon Canal at Devizes (twenty-nine locks in one-and-a-quarter miles) and the Caledonian Canal at Corpach (eight locks in half a mile – ‘Neptune’s Staircase’). Each flight of this kind can conveniently be bypassed by making one long portage using a twowheeled trolley instead of doing a number of short but irritating ones.

The best time to explore a little-used canal is in spring or early summer before the rushes and reeds and other aquatic vegetation grows up to cause serious hindrance or make progress impossible. This advice was particularly applicable to the old Basingstoke Canal, about which we were very enthusiastic, but that lovely waterway has deteriorated sadly during the last decade with the result that today many parts of its thirty-one-mile length lack enough water to float a canoe.

A contrast is the Brecon and Abergavenny Canal which is also beautiful and does not lead to an industrial area (if you go up it), since this has been restored for pleasure boating. There are few locks in its last and best thirty-four miles to Brecon along the wooded Vale of Usk. This canal possesses a 375-yard-Iong tunnel at Talybont and a picturesque stone aqueduct over the River Usk a couple of miles before its upper end.

The Shropshire Union Canal winds through peaceful countryside, too, and has several branches of which the Llangollen section is the most attractive. It is a ‘feeder’ to the main system by taking in water from the River Dee at the Horseshoe Falls (a circular weir), consequently a noticeable current assists progress in one direction. This really is a scenic route for canoeing canal-lovers, with two gigantic aqueducts to be crossed. The massive Chirk aqueduct spans the Ceiriog stream, while Pontcysllte aqueduct stretches 1,007 feet across the Dee and with its nineteen arches of local stone reflects the genius of Telford who saw his construction opened in 1805 after ten years of labor on the project. It is indeed an unusual experience to sit in your canoe against the side of the cast iron trough containing the canal’s water and lean over the side to look down 120 feet to watch the Dee swirling along.