The first really derelict canal I ever saw was the Thames & Severn. It was August 1958 and I was exploring the Thames in a 12ft motorised camping dinghy. All the way from the West London suburbs to the Gloucestershire Head of Navigation and back in a fortnight It rained every day. Several days it rained endlessly all day. None the less, this was a huge adventure for a 15-year old. The peak of my excitement was reaching Inglesham, junction with the Thames & Severn Canal beyond Lechlade. Here was a creeper-clad Thames & Severn Round House, which had been converted into a private residence. Quietly, I moored up, penetrated what I soon realised was someone's garden and discovered the rotting gates of the first lock. The canal bed remained damp and reedy here as I stumbled around in the undergrowth, trying to trace the line of the navigation westwards. Although boats had struggled through less than fifty years earlier, looking at the mature trees growing everywhere, that fifty years might have been one hundred.
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