Crowded waters

ON A brisk Saturday morning the Regent’s canal in north London is bustling. Cyclists and joggers zip along the towpath, weaving their way past mothers pushing prams. A pop-up stall sells coffee to bleary-eyed pedestrians. At one of the locks along the waterway, maintenance workers have stopped their work to hold an open day discussing what they are doing to the 200-year-old network. Such activity hints at how canals have, in recent years, become fashionable once again.

Hewn out of the land during the Industrial Revolution, they were once Britain’s main arteries of trade. The rise of railways and roads made them redundant and many were left to moulder, alongside the old industrial areas of many cities. But, as those grimy zones have been spruced up, so have the 4,800km (3,000 miles) of canals that remain. Between 2005 and 2014 the number of boats on the canals in England and Wales increased by a quarter to 32,000. Canal paths are more crowded in Birmingham and Manchester, where many are designated bike routes. On some portions of the network, freight is making a comeback: the number of containers transported on the Manchester ship canal increased from 3,000 in 2009 to an impressive 23,000 in 2013.