Category: canal

A blot on the landscape?

The spoil from digging was scattered all around and no attempt was made to cart it away; and that accounts for the mound.

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Image of the day – 142

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

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For some time I’ve been walking sections of the Cotswold Canals as and when I have an opportunity and the inclination. Yesterday I walked a section that included the famous Sapperton Tunnel.

Tunnel construction started in 1784 by digging vertical shafts down from the hilltop at intervals along the line of the future canal, and then tunnelling in both directions towards adjacent shafts, hopefully meeting halfway and repeating the process until the tunnel was completed in 1789.

The photo shows where one of these twenty-five vertical shafts was cut. The spoil from digging was scattered all around and no attempt was made to cart it away; and that accounts for the mound. And as it was not possible to cultivate the mound, trees have grown over the years. So the wooded mounds are now very visible features of the landscape.

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