The Lancaster Canal at Garstang...

England’s canal network may be the last technology that everybody could understand... as well as marking the moment in our history when we abandoned the notion of self-reliance and put our faith in ‘experts’ and ‘professionals’ instead. It’s amazing to think of the time, effort and money expended, mostly during the 18th century, to create two thousand miles of man-made waterways. They were the future of bulk transport... for a while.

Canals made commercial sense: a barge, pulled by a single horse and carrying a typical payload of, say, 30 tons, could do the work of a hundred packhorses. By the end of the 18th century, though, the canal-building boom was almost over, and wealthy entrepreneurs were looking to invest in the railways. With few exceptions the canals went into an irreversible decline. Lock gates rotted away; the waterways silted up; when land was needed for building, sections of canal were filled in.

So it’s good to see canals being renovated, and brought back into use... even though it’s only non-urgent cargo that’s carried by barge these days, such as tax refunds and publishers’ royalty cheques. The bargees of old would recognise the canals as they are today, though they’d be nonplussed to discover that what they did to earn a living is now being done for recreation and relaxation. There are more boats on British canals now - nearly all for recreation - than there ever were during the heyday of commercial traffic.

For us the canals represent a benign fantasy: the freedom to enjoy a slower, less hectic pace of life. People buy a narrowboat and talk, in excitable tones, about the pleasures of being able to take off whenever they want. They can cast off, and explore the entire canal system. That’s the theory, anyway. The truth, alas, is more prosaic: they find a mooring, somewhere between the abattoir and the glue factory, and never go anywhere.

Never mind... everybody loves canals. They bring a smile to our faces, in the way that barrel organs and steam trains do, as we negotiate the locks and travel through the landscape at walking pace, before tying up at a waterside pub and dreaming the day away.