A great city, criss-crossed by mile upon mile of urban
waterways, some closed and filled in but mainly still navigable...
Originally they were built as arteries of commerce,
carrying the wealth of the city but these days the trade that their polluted
waters carry is largely the tourist trade...
A distinctive local style of boatbuilding that dates back
to the heyday of the canals...
A wealth of historic canalside buildings, many of them now
crumbling into decay...
You have probably guessed by now that I'm talking about
Birmingham and the BCN. Well you're wrong. I'm talking about Venice. That's
right, the Italian city with almost as many miles of canal as Birmingham. Big
Venice, that is. For those of you involved in Canalway Cavalcade: yes, there
really is another one.
So how does 'The Birmingham of ltaly' measure up when
compared to the real thing?
Locks, first. Those inconvenient little mechanisms for
changing levels of canal, necessitating several minutes of wrestling with stiff
paddle gear and gates every time. The BCN is lumbered with. You can't go
anywhere without meeting them, and not just one at a time. Every single one of
them is part of a flight, from five flights of three locks up to one of 21 at
Wolverhampton. Venice doesn't have any locks. They sensibly planned their
canals all on one level to avoid the need. One-nil to Venice.
Similarly with tunnels and aqueducts. Venice was very
intelligently sited on the Adriatic coast where (a) there isn't anything higher
than you to tunnel under and (b) there isn't anything lower than you to cross
over. Leave aqueducts to the Romans, they can use them for their drinking water
or something. Whoever designed Birmingham put it in the worst possible place,
as if deliberately intended to trouble the canal engineers. Every engineer from
Brindley to Telford had to find ways over, round or under the obstruction.
There are six tunnels (with six towpaths between them, but not one each)
including the longest and third-longest currently navigable tunnels in Britain.
Or eight tunnels including the second and I-don't-know-what'th longest if you
reckon those openings-out in Dudley mean that it's really three separate
tunnels. Or ten tunnels if you count the two tunnel-like bridges created when a
new road was built across the old and new main lines near Galton Bridge. And
there are aqueducts over rivers, roads, railways, motorways and other canals.
All those extra structures to build and maintain that would have been
unnecessary if only they'd built Birmingham somewhere flat. Three-nil to
Venice.
Water supply is another area in which Birmingham lags
behind. On the BCN, an elaborate and expensive to maintain system of feeders,
reservoirs and (at the end of the Wednesbury Oak Loop) the last of a number of
mine pumping stations keeps the water levels up. In Venice, they simply wait
for the tide to come in. Four-nil to Venice.
"But come on", I hear you cry, "surely the BCN
must have something going for it?" Well, it has hosted at least two IWA
National Waterways Festivals in the past, and there's another one coming fairly
soon. 500-plus boats gathered in one place must mean a lot of good publicity
for the BCN. 500-plus boats gathered in one place in Venice would mean a
slightly larger-than-average traffic jam. Four-one to Venice.
And what about the local inhabitants? Everybody knows the
Venetians speak an incomprehensible foreign language and eat funny food... All
right, all right, let's say they're equal on that one.
But surely the BCN wins on towpaths. Virtually the entire
system of over 100 miles is accessible to walkers, anglers, wildlife
enthusiasts and local residents just out walking the dog. Most of Venice's
canals run between buildings with no towpaths at all. Nowhere there for the
locals to go out walking the Doge. And the only horses you see are bronze ones
stuck to churches. Four-two to Venice.
And what about the canalside pubs? The BCN has dozens, from
basic boozers to up-market eating establishments, selling beer from many local
breweries, including at least one pub (Holts' Brewery Tap on the Titford Canal)
that brews it's own beer. As for Venice, well, the only canalside pub I could
find in the whole place didn't serve draught mild or sell pork scratchings.
Call that a pub? Four-three to Venice.
What about canal restoration? In Venice the canals that are
closed have been filled in forgotten about, while on nearby Torcello, there are
the remains of waterways abandoned hundreds of years ago, without any sign of
any restoration in progress. Not a pump or a tea urn to be seen. Meanwhile back
on the BCN, two lengths of canal - the Titford Canal and Dudley Tunnel - have
been re-opened and several arms and basins have been restored. And there's more
to come: the Lichfield and Hatherton Canal Restoration Trust are hard at work
on the northern reaches of the Wyrley & Essington and its connections,
hoping to reinstate two links, to the Staffs & Worcs and Coventry Canals.
WRG will be joining them for a canal camp on August 3-10. The latest
restoration scheme proposed is to extend the Dudley No 2 Canal back through
Lapal Tunnel to join the Worcester & Birmingham. So that makes the score
four-all.
Apart from that, there's really not much in it between the
two cities. Venice has gondoliers; Birmingham has gongoozlers. Venice has
Casanova; Birmingham has Mike Palmer. Venice has its Bridge of Sighs; The BCN
has bridges of all sizes - hundreds of them. Venice has the 'Arsenale';
Birmingham has Aston Villa. Birmingham has Spaghetti Junction; Venice has
spaghetti (lots of it!). But there is one important respect in which the two
cities' canals differ. The waterways of Venice are connected via the Venice
lagoon and various canals to the River Po, and thence to Milan and Pavia, but
that's as far as it goes: a small system, isolated from the rest of Europe's
waterways, making it rather inaccessible to the average IWA member. The BCN, on
the other hand, is right at the centre of Britain's waterways: it connects
directly with other waterways (the Staffs & Worcs, Worcester &
Birmingham, Coventry, Grand Union and Stourbridge Canals) making it easily
accessible from anywhere on the canal system.
So go ahead and visit it now, and make your own mind up.
You might find you like it. It's certainly unique: a canal system that was
still being enlarged in the 1860s, once managed to get itself excommunicated
for failing to pay its church taxes and was subject to a proposal to dye the
water blue to improve its appearance. Beat that, Venice!
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