one thing we never do on this channel as in me and you on this channel? Kiss?
first job Rebecca is to find the pathway that's not actually a pathway there's a pathway there
so we're not going on that's not the pathway the pathway that we're trying to find is not a pathway
one of the things that we love doing on this channel is exploring old historical routes,
abandoned Railways abandoned canals, and trying to learn about the history of them
how they developed and came to be today now on occasion we get comments from you
guys telling us that we don't always look at the sort of the basics of how
an old Canal would have worked today we thought we'd take a step back and deal
with some of the basics on exactly how a canal functions with two really important features
the late 1700s coal was discovered in Somerset or Somerset shire one of the
symptoms of that is that the right word not symptom but what are the consequences
that's better of that was this canal the wilts and Berks Canal which took
um a route from semington uh down on the Kennet and Avon all the way up to Abington to the Thames
and gave another route into London that was its goal and it did that fairly successfully for
the first sort of half century before the railway came along and took over
like many canals it tells that same story and here is the first feature we're going to show
you today it's a uh an old abandoned lock there's not much left of this one [Music]
so all around us now there's a lot of old bits and pieces a lot of old relics down there on the
floor some of the hinge parts for the for the lock all the way down there in the actual old
lock itself there's some brick work there's a lot still here that you can kind of see on this
uh little stretch of canal now more importantly back onto today's subject all around us there you
can see a huge Ridge now we're roughly about 70 68 70 meter Contour above sea level and a
huge Ridge in front of us here is what about 25 30 meters higher we need to get up to around
about 95 100 meters in quite a short space of time so exactly how did they do that [Music]
so let's assume with this high quality graphic that the ridge in front of us goes on for 20
miles or so well you can't build a tunnel and you can't defy physics so let's stick our water
on The Canal at each level and let's dig out well let's call this a lock now you'll also note that
we have a vessel let's try and get that vessel down a hill so let's introduce a sluice and a
culvert into that chamber hey Presto we now have a lock full of water so let's close the sluice
off and open the upper lock gate when the water is balanced and level well in goes our little vessel
now we need to let the water out of the lower lock gates in a controlled manner
which will lower our vessel until we're at the bottom and equal with a lower level of water
now if we open the bottom lock our little vessel can chug along to its Hearts content but you might
recall that in this case here I said we have 25 meters to climb that's huge and realistically
we've probably only done a few meters in that one lock at best so the easy answer is build
more locks which is why we have seven here yes seven here today to look at but then we have
another serious problem on our hands so that's the second lock we've seen today looks like it's in
part restoration from the wilts and berks Canal a lot more to be done there and between what is the
second lock we come across today and the third which is just ahead of us we've got a huge what
looks like a winding hole where maybe you turn your boat around but I wonder actually if it's
not I wonder if it's just a big expense to um sort of increase the distance between the locks Maybe
so why increase the distance between the locks let's get back to this excellent
graphic so we're now faced with the same problem again we need to get downhill
oh let's just build more locks right as many as we want in fact let's stick another one
just here same principle let's let more water into our new lock but wait we have a problem
were now running out of water between the locks oh well that's not good for our little vessel in
fact now we've become grounded so effectively we need to increase the distance between each
lock for allow for more water but without the actual physical distance you need well then you
need to fill artificial ponds or pounds effectively you have now added distance between
each lock right so let's lower our vessel once again and carry on delivering some coal and more
importantly show you some utterly joyous bits that are ahead of us on today's little Adventure
so the third lock that we've seen today looks very much more restored and brick
lined throughout sort of a ladder down in steps down in and yeah it looks absolutely brilliant
I think all we would need here potentially are some lock Gates so some great progress been made
here on Lock Free a few more to go before we get to something really rather interesting [Music]
and now all of a sudden you can tell that after four locks
we're getting up towards halfway over the ridge um quite a drop now behind us in this
short space of time and at the top of that Ridge is something integral to this canal
I think we're just approaching trows Bridge t-r-o-w trows Lane trows bridge and I guess
that could be a hat tip to the boats used on the um Thames and severn um deeper excavations
it actually maybe we're not at trows Lane maybe this is actually the Fifth Lock of today hidden
down here somewhere I would say I assume this is gonna be a bridge here but we're not there's no
Lane ahead of us so actually we're going for this to be a um a lock and there's clearly been nothing
done here you can see oh yeah you can see all the masonry Rebecca and brickwork on the far side
there's about 150 200 meters that way to the road along the canal line I misread the map they sent
me and I assumed you could walk this bit but you can't this is the most sort of aggressive barbed
wire it is very Barbed wired yeah so we can't walk that way because the the gate is sort of
chained there's barbed all the way across the top the bottom the sides private land no public right of way it's
only 150 meter stretch what a little Corridor this would make for sort of you know walkway
why would you why would you need to feel the need to fence that off so nobody can enjoy it
there's a hundred years of canal that took that route and you've kept it to yourself well done
so the frustration is I really want to get to that point 150 meters that way to show you what is sort
of integral to this video and uh the canal itself and what we're talking about today which is how
canals worked so to do that we're going to have to walk in a big loop back towards where we came from
up the top of the hill back down the hill just to over there so um let's do that in a quick montage
stop the Montage I'm still gonna rant here we go right
150 meters stretch not open to the public people aren't going to come and walk this stretch up
and down here because it's not a through route it's a dead end and then back again that's not
attractive to someone that wants to walk the dog or just go for an afternoon stroll or an
evening stroll and if people aren't walking here people aren't going to care about it people aren't
going to want to see this done people aren't going to donate money people aren't going to
do all the things that make their Community better open that last stretch and make this a
Community Asset make this for for generations to come not just your generation not just you
personally who owns that silly little bit of land there open your land make it accessible
for your community so everyone can enjoy it and everyone can increase the value of their life and
their happiness goodness sake people stop closing little pockets of land better for you open bits of
land there for everybody let everybody enjoy the world that we live in you're not here for that
long so for goodness sake sort your life out and let everyone else enjoy it [Music]
Reservoir now when you go and you look and you research at how the wilts and Berks were filled
with water you come up with a river maden we mentioned on the western end and then middle to
East you see uh Coates Reservoir in Swindon what about this section well there it is huge Reservoir
just there but there's nothing to say that I can say that actually it was built for the canal but
it was constructed and opened in 1810 that's the same year as the canal and it the brook
Lily Brook feeds in to the top of the uh the Seven Locks we were just at so it fits really well that
that Reservoir was built it's to feed the Wilts and Berts Canal what we want to do on this little
journey is have a look and see if we can find the entrance point is there a sluice is there just a
an over spill how exactly did that Reservoir keep water there and feed the canal
and a YouTube membership no we don't and what the benefits are of that we're gonna sort out the
tiers in the next few weeks but the point being we do have a patron and a YouTube membership so
if you like this type of content you can you can hit those links in a doobly do below and
support the channel [Music] we didn't realize a bit naively really just bumped into a local lady
who just told us all the history of this area just wonderful stories this here is the the embankment
of the canal the the Towpath of the canal so that there which we just thought was was the brook and we
were going to find the canal a bit further one that's the canal there we didn't realize we were
quite as close to it so the bit we filmed just back there by the gate well that is exact spot
where the Lily Brook came in and fed this bit of the canal but the fascinating thing is the
lady we just spoke to said that the the tockenham reservoir from Lily Brook was not man enough to do
the job of supporting this canal and that's why the coates was built so this was sort of
almost an embarrassment they didn't build it big enough or deep enough or whatever or far enough
down the valley for it to hold enough water we've seen the seven big locks back that way uh towards
Dauntsey and how much water they'd have taken every single time a vessel went down [Music]
we're now sort of in the canal on this footpath and you can see just over there and that's another
point where the brook would have entered the canal I'd kind of hoped in some ways to see some more
mechanism or something physical where there was a sluice or an overspill and brickwork or something
to suggest that that's the point so this has been the very short story on how a canal Works two of
the basic principles locks reservoirs and stuff like that hope you've enjoyed it don't forget
we've got a patron if this is a sort of content that you guys enjoy um it hit that in the link
below otherwise you can go and watch our playlist on canals which will appear just here [Music]