Ever wondered whats at the bottom of the Regents canal?

[Laurence Hogg]

From the mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2788221/ever-wondered-s-bottom-regent-s-canal-drainage-work-famous-london-waterway-reveals-bicycles-traffic-cones-huge-25-pound-carp.html

[furnessvale]

Having found all this rubbish, which is quite normal for most canals, do they intend moving it or will they do the usual thing and refill the canal leaving the junk in?

 

George ex nb Alton retired

[alan_fincher]

There is a complete set of keys for each and every one of the different expensive bike locks that we owned at the time somewhere in the Regents Canal!

[archie57]

How many miles of Heras fencing has been used I wonder - and at what cost?

[TaffyRon]

Surprising to see so much metal, im sure our travelling friends would come and remove the metal for free?!

[comfortably numb]

I think this is just representative of what is in most urban canals. I've taken part in a few of the BCN clean ups and we've fished out a huge variety of junk. The most common I've come across are bikes, tyres, supermarket trolleys, and cables/wires. There's also been a fair amount of household items such as fridges, cookers, chairs, and dustbins. There have been a few safes (empty of course), and at one of the clean ups somebody fished out a sword.

[MtB]

I'm surprised how few traffic cones there are. A drained pound I saw (somewhere during the BCN Challenge IIRC) was strewn with them. Probably 50 or 100 or so.

 

 

MtB

[David Schweizer]

Parts of the Stourbridge and Dudley canal has very clear water, and it is possible to see all the rubbish on the bottom, mainly old bottles, drinks cans, and junk food cartons. As the area is not partcularly "urban" but popular with anglers, one can only assume who the main culprits are!!

 

 

Edited October 11, 2014 by David Schweizer

[twbm]

Shock Horror! Empty canal contains rubbish! Read all about it!

 

Nothing more significant going on then.

[YamYam]

When the canal at Merry Hill froze a couple of years ago some fun loving lads decided it would be fun to throw some chairs (amongst other things) from Wetherspoons onto the ice. The place looked like a bombsite until it melted.

[blackrose]

Shock Horror! Empty canal contains rubbish! Read all about it!

 

Nothing more significant going on then.

 

Yes, they found some fish too.

[furnessvale]

When the canal at Merry Hill froze a couple of years ago some fun loving lads decided it would be fun to throw some chairs (amongst other things) from Wetherspoons onto the ice. The place looked like a bombsite until it melted.

And then they sank peacefully below the water, out of sight, out of mind, until a boat gets tangled up in them.

 

George ex nb Alton retired

How many miles of Heras fencing has been used I wonder - and at what cost?

Got to make sure the racing cyclists don't go over the edge.

 

In the old days the towpath would have been closed to traffic. I wonder if the cost of all this fencing has been factored into the cost of a cycling licence......whoops!

 

George ex nb Alton retired

[TaffyRon]

The want to have a look in the staffs and worcester above stafford, twice I nearly rolled my NB last month

Yes, they found some fish too.

yep, now hes Britains most wanted carp

[Phil Ambrose]

I remember when the bridge which carried the GU over the North Cicular Road near Park Royal Nth London sprang a leak. Some years earlier the IRA bombed it and the repair failed. The leaking water was channeled into the River Brent a few hundred yards away.

I worked on an industrial estate which was very near this point near the Guiness Brewery and Heinz factory. We had to cross the canal to enter the estate and the bed of the canal was littered with safes,motor bikes and literally thousands of bits of metal where engineers and apprentices alike had made a cock up and rather than put it in a scrap bin for the foreman to see had decided to launch it into the canal.

I was not guilty of this as the factory I worked in backed onto the rubbish dump opposite the Ace Cafe.

Phil

[YamYam]

And then they sank peacefully below the water, out of sight, out of mind, until a boat gets tangled up in them.

 

George ex nb Alton retired

 

Exactly, the only saving grace is it is quite deep for a basin but as you say not great fun should you catch them on your prop

[Tim Lewis]

 

Went for a walk along the drained section (john sons lock to Salmon Lane lock) this afternoon and must admit that I was pleasantly surprised how little rubbish there was considering the area.

 

Tim

[peterboat]

Loved the terrapin took me back to when I was young and we had 2 of them wonder what happened to them

 

Peter

[comfortably numb]

When the canal at Merry Hill froze a couple of years ago some fun loving lads decided it would be fun to throw some chairs (amongst other things) from Wetherspoons onto the ice. The place looked like a bombsite until it melted.

 

Not quite on topic, but this reminds me of the big freeze of 1963 when the canals froze over from the Boxing day until way into March. As a young boy I lived near to the Guillotine Lock at Kings Norton (in the days when it was a nice area to live in!!!).

 

During that freeze the ice was so thick that doing as kids do, we used to light fires to try and melt the ice. Normally a stupid thing to do of course but I reckon the ice was so thick it probably reached right down to the bed of the canal. It was also deemed as being safe enough for adults to ice skate on it too.

[YamYam]

Not quite on topic, but this reminds me of the big freeze of 1963 when the canals froze over from the Boxing day until way into March. As a young boy I lived near to the Guillotine Lock at Kings Norton (in the days when it was a nice area to live in!!!).

 

During that freeze the ice was so thick that doing as kids do, we used to light fires to try and melt the ice. Normally a stupid thing to do of course but I reckon the ice was so thick it probably reached right down to the bed of the canal. It was also deemed as being safe enough for adults to ice skate on it too.

Yes, I remember that freeze too, skating on the Tame valley section. Unfortunately I happened to go through it, luckily only upto my waist and managed to dry off at my friends house so my parents were thankfully none the wiser, but we all know at the age of 9 we are invicincible. Wouldn't go on it now even if I knew it was 3 feet thick

[Peter X]

 

Not quite on topic, but this reminds me of the big freeze of 1963 when the canals froze over from the Boxing day until way into March. As a young boy I lived near to the Guillotine Lock at Kings Norton (in the days when it was a nice area to live in!!!).

 

During that freeze the ice was so thick that doing as kids do, we used to light fires to try and melt the ice. Normally a stupid thing to do of course but I reckon the ice was so thick it probably reached right down to the bed of the canal. It was also deemed as being safe enough for adults to ice skate on it too.

 

I was 7 years old at the time, and my memory of that winter is that I just stayed indoors as much as possible and kept warm. London SE20 does have its very own little bit of canal, the sole remnant of the Croydon Canal about 100 yards long, but I didn't feel the urge to go and walk on it. Wasn't I a boring child!

 

Incidentally while the ice on any still water that winter was probably thick enough to walk on safely, I very much doubt it would have frozen to the bottom of a canal. Because water reaches its maximum density at 4 degrees C, the bottom of any inland water tends not to fall below that temperature, which is how goldfish etc. survive winter when their pond ices over. The whole of life on earth depends on the two facts that water is slightly less dense at 0 degrees and ice less dense than that.

[mark99]

its maximum density at 4 degrees C, the bottom of any inland water tends not to fall below that temperature, which is how goldfish etc. survive winter when their pond ices over. The whole of life on earth depends on the two facts that water is slightly less dense at 0 degrees and ice less dense than that.

 

That good to a point. An ice cap prevents oxygenation of the water so the fish eventually suffocate. The big thaw of 63 revealed wholesale loss of fish stocks.

[Emerald Fox]

Yes - but you have to realise the folk who chuck all that rubbish into the canals are only tidying up the environment, like sweeping the crumbs under the mat. They are in fact extremely concerned with this Global Warming thingy. Er... Climate Change.

There has been talk about how creepy spiders and rats are - but ne'er a spider nor rat has ever dumped one fridge or Sainsburys trolley into the Regent's Canal.

[ditchcrawler]

I worked with a chap and as a child the canal ran at the bottom of his garden. He told me any and all rubbish got dumped in the cut. Well it just despaired when you did that