I'm dreaming of a white... Easter?

This winter has been cosy for us aboard the 'coolcanals' narrowboat, all tucked up at basecamp in UK Boat Hire's marina at Alvechurch on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal.

But Spring is here! And we've set off on our travels again. Coolcanals is back 'off-grid'... relying on the sunshine to fill our hearts and charge our solar panels... Errr... Hmmmm...

Clearing snow off our struggling solar panels

Canal & River Trust keeping the Tardebigge Flight open whatever the weather

Nothing can spoil hireboaters' holiday

Mind your heads under the bridges though!

Bit chilly for bare feet

Coolcanals go for Olympics on canals?

It's the calm after the sporty storm as steaming euphoria settles over the Olympic Park, and roaring huggable London quietly fluffs its mane with pride. But while gold medals swing from the pert necks of athletic bodies, I'm nursing saggy aching limbs after my challenge cruising the infamous Tardebigge flight on the Worcs & Birmingham Canal. 30 locks in a rise of 220feet in just over 2 miles makes Tardebigge the longest lock flight in Britain - boaters either hate it or love it!

We were less than 3 locks into the flight when a BW chap (in his new Canal & River Trust T-shirt) came chugging along the towpath on a quadbike. A fine compliment hid in his ear-to-ear grin and happy greeting  "Oh no, it's the two most dangerous people on the canals!" (He was coincidently the BW hero who rescued us last winter when our boat got wedged in the lock in Stourport Basins) Just for fun, Martine had to prove, on behalf of all womankind, that contrary to the Stourport mishap, girls can be cool as cucumbers at the tiller... and she steered our boat 'through the eye of the needle' into the next slither-thin lock on the flight! Our hero doffed his imaginary hat in overblown Thespian jest, and we sailed away, all three of us waving in canal camaraderie.

In 30 locks I returned a happy "good morning" to 4 boats, 12 bikes and over 40 walkers (I was counting the strolling couples, bouncing families and waggy dog walkers easily enough, but lost count when a rambling group yomped past). Then there was the friendly bunch who were holidaying in a former lock keeper's cottage along the flight (www.landmarktrust.org.uk) - they mucked in by closing the lock gates for us as we passed their cottage.

Winding locksful of uncountable gallons of canal water, and lifting a 57ft steel narrowboat downhill sounds like an Olympic workout... but I'm telling my saggy muscles, it's just another day chilling out for us boaters.

PS The Tardebigge Lock Flight is one of the 100 treasures of the canals in our latest book

The Droitwich Canals have reopened! But what's next, now the shovels have been hung up?

I was at the ceremony, 1st July 2011, when the Droitwich Canals were officially reopened... 40 years since restoration began.

"2,500 volunteering days to get here, £12million to make it happen, 21 miles of extra boating... Allow me to declare this restored canal open." Caroline Spelman (Secretary of State for the Department of Environment) unveiled the Droitwich Canals. The hurrahs that followed could never be more than an understatement of the achievements behind this moment.

Amongst the crowd there were work-worn faces glowing with "We did it!" and there were curious new faces that had sauntered across the road from town to see what the fuss was about.

Some of the big names in the waterways world could be spotted brushing through the bunting, and VIPs included Peter Luff MP and British Waterways' chairman Tony Hales. A marvelous day of suits and ice creams.

But the real red carpet treatment had to be meant for the 'volunteer'. This opening ceremony was a gathering of ordinary folk who had achieved extraordinary things over decades of enthusiasm and hard work for the restoration of the Droitwich Canals. Max Sinclair, the local canal enthusiast who launched the campaign to restore this canal over 40 years ago was there... his presence was the heart of the ceremony. The day drew old friends and gave tumultuous thanks to everyone who had clubbed together to make the reopening of the Droitwich Canals possible... and, for the cherry on the icing, the press got a stonking story to tell.

Martine and I gate-crashed the marquee to hear the opening speeches. Tony Hales spoke with his official hat on, and a personal smile for the achievement of a canal he knows well. "Vision, determination, skill, partnership" his words chorused the positive mood of the Droitwich canals, "obstacles can be overcome for a common cause working together".

Each VIP speaker struggled to thank every individual who'd helped the restoration project - yet the single word that hailed loudest from every corner was 'partnership'. The success of the Droitwich Canals Trust and the strong partnership behind it, was the tip-of-the-day for the future of all of Britain's canals. Where would our canals be without fundraisers and fund-givers, without people who care and people who 'do', without skills and shared knowedge, without local support and central consent?

But none of this is ground-breaking stuff, is it? The case for the benefits of 'partnership' is as old as the canals themselves. After all, a working partnership steered the Droitwich Barge Canal when it was first built by James Brindley, and opened in 1771... Entrepreneurs, engineers, navvies, land owners, local people and politicians.

So everyone seems to agree that partnerships are important. But partnerships without purpose are like ducks without water. Substancial commercial funding only comes to build a canal when it can rely on its future use, its raison d'etre. The mills and factories of the Industrial Revolution were the original business of the canal networks, and now the big industry is tourism. Heritage, wildlife, boating, walking, cycling, sightseeing and waterside attractions are brinking on an exciting new era for canal tourism (especially as the New Waterways Charity launches its PR campaign and public interest is set to boom).

The local area supported the Droitwich Canals because tourism is the 3rd largest industry for the County Council. It is estimated that the canal will bring 320,000 visits over 5 years and £2.75million per annum to the local economy with new jobs.

The pride of a nation is grateful to those behind the success of the Droitwich Canals... Now it's the language of tourism that must help guard the future of this canal, and every other canal in Britain.

Can Art help get Britain's canals out of their current financial crisis?

Ignore it, adore it, spit at it or laugh out loud at it... Art always contributes to every society's consciousness. From an English village where playschool pinnies come out for paint play, to the scars of Iraqi slippers on the vandalised statue of a fallen dictator.

But what has art got to do with any campaign to save our waterways? (IWA campaign: http://www.waterways.org.uk/campaigns/campaigns/campaigns) Well, everyone knows canals have Roses & Castles – the traditional folk art of the people who worked and lived on canal boats in the Industrial Revolution. Decorated pots and pans add to the tourist attraction, and make neat souvenir trinkets. Good stuff for small craft businesses across the waterways.

But we're not silly, we know pots and pans aren't enough to get the waterways out of their financial crisis?

More public support for the waterways is what matters at the moment. More press coverage. More visitors. Every so often, British Waterways sets artists loose on the towpaths to prick public interest and hopefully prod the press into precious media coverage. Fake holes on the towpath and controversial installations of dog-poo in trees do the trick http://www.waterscape.com/features-and-articles/news/2453/for-arts-sake-slow-down. But imagine the impact of a much grander, iconic, public art project.

My point is this:

Antony Gormley sculptures. http://bit.ly/9gTsGT Take 3 of his most famous projects:
1) The Angel of The North rolls around every speeding heart on the A1.
2) Iron Man stands silently, with the audacity to rust away in Birmingham city centre.
3) Another Place, Crosby Beach, near Liverpool, where the statues of 100 iron souls gaze out to sea, with hope beyond the tides.

Mr G's sculpture and the spirit of the waterways would go together like jam and Victoria sponge cake. After all, Britain's canals were our first motorways, made for boats during the Industrial Revolution - and now they offer a vision of hope for urban regeneration, and an accessible escape to rural Britain. Right up Mr G's street!

Imagine Gormley's Iron Men of the Waterways, and where they might stand...

The Angel of the Caen Hill flight wistfully watching over travellers?

Iron Waterways Man daubed in Roses & Castles outside the waterways museum? http://bit.ly/c6lXEE (attracting visitors as the Puppy sculpture does outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao - http://bit.ly/z5os9)

Statuesque souls half-immersed in river silt at the moody brink of the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal? (Crosby Beach has been inundated with visitors since Gormley's sculptures arrived there)

Or what about a solitary Iron Waterways Man on a lonely bit of the Pennine cruising ring? Or Iron Waterways Man graffiti-sprayed by Camden's community?

Imagine the monumental tourist attraction and what that could do for the canals, politically and financially. Imagine the thrill of one day meeting Iron Waterways Man on your travels.

Canals should always be about boating, but they were born and have survived through a tradition of entrepreneurialism and creativity. The real Iron men (and women) of the waterways.

Am I alone on this one?

Waterways for everyone: boats, bikes and walking boots?

All ducks are equal. But are some ducks more equal than others?

"Pah!" say some boaters - but economic need and ethical responsibility is driving the mood of canal folk to properly share our secret national treasure of 2,000 miles of linear heritage. The future of Britain's canals can't be ruled by boaters alone – canals are increasingly used for waterside outdoor pursuits too. Towpaths are being improved, and sometimes even controversially hardsurfaced, to make flat cycle routes and easy canal walks.

IWA, the Inland Waterways Association, have just published a typically rational, informative and ever-so-tactfully provocative article (by Mark Bradley and Keith Goss) www.waterways.org.uk/waterways_magazine on the changing status of Britain's canals... i.e. how we can use them for everything from holiday boating to jogging along the towpath. But when pedal power, boat power and quiet people in walking boots all syphon together in one narrow zone, surely that spells conflict?

Speaking from my own canal experiences as: 1) live-aboard narrowboater 2) long distance canal walker 3) slow canal cyclist.
When I'm in a canal boat, I'm not keen on coach-loads of strolling gongoozlers getting dangerously in my way at the lock gates; when I'm on my bike, I loathe pedalling in first gear behind gaggles of walkers hogging the towpath; when I walk canals, I rage at bike-bells and lycra gusts of wind knocking me into the canal. All 3 of me want it our own way! That said, as all canal goers know, everyone meets up at the end of the day in the local canalside boozer, to share the best of canal life - a pint of mild in a good old-fashioned canal pub solves everything.

And in the same solidarity, cyclists, walkers and boaters are willing to join together on the campaign to Save Our Waterways from blunderingly short-sighted goverment funding cuts. In my bones I know it's an excitingly tough time for canals... and I am (despite selfishly wanting to keep the canal world all to myself) really glad more folk than ever are discovering the secrets of the canals. Yet, in the success of popularizing the waterways, my heart would break if every beautifully clumpy canal towpath was tarmacked so it could be described as accessible to all: canal nature, integrity, heritage and slow manners jeopardized! Off-the-beaten track adventures for canal trail walkers like me would be ruined. Imagine the outcry if Britain's other footpaths, the National Trails, the Offa's Dyke Path, the Pennine Way or the Cotswold Way were smothered in Tarmac! Horror NO!! I'm an activist to protect long-distance canal walks. "Let me smell the soil, scuff the grass, KEEP CANAL WALKS GREEN!"

It goes without saying that bringing investment to the canals is the task ahead. Yet what's special about canals to me is not what money can buy, but more pressingly what we might lose without proper funding.... irreplaceable heritage, unique landscape, slow culture, stoic solitude and a special sense of community that another Britain has lost. Balancing everyone's needs and respecting the territory is the trick. Canals can offer a perceived escape from the hierarchies of consumerism that's priceless. So when it comes to planning for our waterways future, should we be mindful of who gets the biggest say? The Mallard with the loudest voice, the fat Goose who waves the largest wad of money, the decoy Coot... or just a bunch of us daft Ducks?