ET ISSUE 2136 Saturday 31 March 2001

On the Waterside

Despite continued restrictions, canal paths remain the best option for bracing walks, says Tony Durrant

IT was so good to be walking a straight line again in the world of water, birdsong, grass and trees. I even had some mud on my boots. What joy. I will never again regard canals as the preserve of dog-walkers, joggers and wayward supermarket trolleys.

As I had nowhere to go except forwards, my mind could wander. This was not the case at the park, my previous stomping ground in these desperately enclosed times. There, the long-term itinerant was starting to suspect me of taking over his patch. Besides, walking around in circles was beginning to irritate rather than relax me.

Of the urban routes available to those with itchy feet, canal and river walks on the leafy outskirts of towns and cities offer the nearest thing to a linear footpath with solitude and greenery.

And as my chosen waterway stretched ahead, I counted my blessings. It hadn't been built for industrial purposes, hence the lack of a towpath and disfiguring warehouses or tunnels. This was the Royal Military Canal, a 28-mile arc stretching across the south-easterly tip of Kent, from the Cinque Port of Hythe to Pett, near Hastings. It was built with no other purpose than to hinder any invasion launched by Napoleon.

The canal, nicknamed Pitt's Ditch in its day after Prime Minister William Pitt, took two years to complete, from 1804 to 1806. It is about 60ft wide and designed with dog-legs every 600 yards so that field guns could rake stretches of it. The north bank had a 35ft soil parapet for the protection of troops, backed by a military road.

From where I stood, it didn't look wide enough to withstand the might of Napoleon for long. This was a sentiment expressed at the time and commented on after the war by the travel writer William Cobbett in 1823: "Here is a canal to keep out the French; for those armies who had so often crossed the Rhine and the Danube were to be kept back by a canal." Maybe Pitt, like many political leaders, thought it wiser to be seen to be doing something than nothing.

I had started my journey at the eastern end, on the outskirts of Hythe, and knew that I had three or four miles at least before the foot and mouth restrictions reined me in. The only signs I came across this far were proprietary warnings to anglers to join the Cinque Ports Angling Association or sling their hook elsewhere.

There were no anglers out today. A keen south-westerly was blowing in off the Channel and the grey sky threatened rain. In the summer, however, these banks are overhung with all manner of rods and poles, owned by the more sedentary souls of the angling community.

There is nothing to disturb their ruminations on the one that got away. The largest watercraft here are rowing-boats hired to tourists. The canal, closed to traffic by sluice gates at both ends, is criss-crossed by small bridges, many too low even for barges to cope with. It is fed by streams running from the North Downs and the recent heavy rainfall had caused it to take on the appearance of oxtail soup.

This constant input with no output is threatening to silt up some parts of the canal within just 10 years. Shepway District Council has decided to launch a conservation plan. The waterway, classed as an ancient monument, will be dredged and any stonework, paths and other works of the fortifications preserved.

Mowing will be reduced in some of the more manicured areas adjoining it to help introduce wild flowers, and nesting-boxes are to be installed in woods. Encouraging stuff.

Before long, the first inhabitants of the water came into view; mallards, of course, and a little farther on a pair of moorhens, marked by the distinct red flash on their forehead. They then chugged quickly to the far side and sheltered among the weeds and bankside greenery at my approach.

Where the path ahead was split by a stand of young trees, I took the narrower one and glimpsed the squat shape of a concrete pill-box through the undergrowth. Another defensive measure, this time against Hitler, rather than Napoleon. The 19th-century version of pill-boxes are not far from the canal: 74 squat, cylindrical stone forts called Martello Towers, placed regularly along the shoreline. Like the canal, they were never tested, although some were pressed into service in the Second World War as platforms for air observers and spotters for cross-Channel batteries. Pitt would have been pleased that the country was getting its money's worth.

I was now in the company of dog-walkers and joggers as I passed through Hythe itself, where the canal was hemmed with concrete and banded by fresh-cut grass and bright patches of daffodil. Now here was the advantage of an urban day out: a detour to get fish and chips on the delightfully old-fashioned high street nearby. Hythe is still the place where they don't have McDonald's, thank God.

Then, on the edge of town, the Duke's Head. Real fires, two of them, and real ale. Two of those as well, thank you.

The highlight of the day was when I stopped to watch the surface of the water. A slight disturbance and up popped a great crested grebe from its underwater hunt. After regaining its breath, it dived again and stayed under for almost 20 seconds, before resurfacing about 10 yards away. I was sure it knew I was watching and, like a teenager showing off at the swimming pool, kept on diving for greater lengths of time.

Beyond the last houses, I could see the green rim of the higher ground, the old Saxon shore, which signalled the real countryside and the imminent end of my journey.

The canal pottered into woods and towards sheep fields, where I was stopped by ominous red-and-white striped tape and foot and mouth warnings on plastic placards.

I bade farewell to the canal and wondered what to do next. Walk back the way I had come on the other bank? Why not? I knew there was a chip shop, a pub and a great crested grebe along that way.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001

Answers

British Waterways

Martello Tower

History of Martello Towers

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001

Leisurely barge trips along canals in the south of France are also to be had. This comes to mind as my wife's employer, his wife, and their respective (and sedentary) parents are now embarked on one. I fear for his equilibrium, since he's a hyper-active go-gettitnow sort of guy. And drifting at 1 mph through a beautiful countryside for two weeks may have unsettling consequences.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001

Not with wine at every meal, he won't.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001

LOL!

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001