Basingstoke canal blog

Taking pride in the Basingstoke canal at Woking

posgood — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:08:15 +0000

After a beautiful walk along the canal from West Byfleet into Woking one morning this week, it struck me that not enough is made of the canal in Woking. The town should show how proud it is of what it has got. Let’s face it, Woking is not on the whole a beautiful place, with lots of ugly office blocks. The Basingstoke canal should be the town’s treasure. The council could encourage people to take more pleasure and interest in it by erecting information boards at the bridge from Brewery Road car park into the town: one on the canal’s history from 1794, including the fact that it was still in use for industrial purposes even after the second world war. The other information board should focus on the wildlife, including herons, kingfishers, and many different types of dragonfly, to be seen along its length, as well as the fish lurking within its depths. It would make more people feel good about Woking. That must be worth something!

Searching for kingfishers

posgood — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:45:56 +0000

Going back a few years, I used to walk religiously along a section of the canal in West Byfleet, to help rehabilitate my back. I still ought to do it every day. For a few months in the autumn of 2006 and winter of 2007 I used to see a kingfisher almost daily. It was always miraculous. I had barely seen one in my life before. I got to know it well, watching it sitting on branches, dive for fish, and streak horizontally low above the surface the water, up towards the lock, to get away from me. Once I followed one, perhaps the same one, as I walked along the three miles of the canal into Woking. It always kept 20 yards ahead of me. Then one day, it was gone. I glimpsed one briefly again on the canal just once, last summer. I really hope that the predictions don’t turn out to be right, and that kingfishers have survived our hard, icy winter unscathed, after all.

Boats back on the Basingstoke canal

posgood — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:43:33 +0000

Good to see a narrow boat passing through the Woodham flight of locks this morning. The Basingstoke canal was only reopened to navigation earlier this year, after a three-year closure. The boat was moving along quite gingerly, as the water levels were quite low, and a canal authority van was hard on its heels. Passing through the locks has always had to be regulated and monitored for this reason. Yesterday I saw a pretty large fish staying at the surface along a low section of the canal, it may have been struggling for air. Meanwhile new sets of mooring bollards have been installed at the locks along the Woodham flight, so it would seem navigation is being encouraged. They just have to make sure the back-pumping system keeps the water levels up

Walking along the canal

posgood — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:41:42 +0000

The months of June and July are really the best time to be walking along the canal, if the sun and light is right. You get fantastic greens and browns. I treat the canal as an extension of my back garden, and feel a sense of ownership. I started walking along it regularly two years ago, to help repair my back, and wondered why I had not done it years before. Funnily enough, my back is playing up again. The picture of a heron fishing was taken a week ago