One enthusiast was LTC (Tom) Rolt (1910-1974), an engineer and writer, who spent his 1939 honeymoon travelling along the Midland waterways in a boat called "Cressy". In 1944, Rolt published Narrow Boat, a lyrical account of his 400-mile journey. It was a bestseller, firing the imagination of other narrowboat lovers.

Robert Aickman (1914-81), a writer who specialised in supernatural tales, shared Rolt's love of the canals. In 1946, the pair founded the Inland Waterways Association. This was a voluntary body dedicated to conserving, and finding a future for, the canals. Aickman later documented the early history of the IWA in The River Runs Uphill (1986), whose title reflects the difficulties he faced. At the time, government policy was to fill in canals, which were believed to have no future, and were seen as dangerous eyesores.

Boating holidays

While Rolt wanted to save the traditional working lives of boat people, Aickman believed that the narrowboats' future lay in leisure use. Narrowboats could be bought cheaply in the 1940s, and dozens of enthusiasts acquired them to convert into floating hotels and holiday homes. The large hold spaces were subdivided to create small but comfortable cabins.

In 1950, the IWA organised a "Festival and Rally of Boats" at Market Harborough, which was attended by more than 100 restored boats. In these early days, most leisure boats were run as hotels, providing a skipper and a crew (usually hired from unemployed boat people). Over the years, it became more popular for holidaymakers to hire self-drive narrowboats. These offered independence and adventure, while the hotel-boats were more relaxing.

From the 1950s, dozens of societies formed to preserve particular waterways. Helped by the IWA, they fought to prevent the closure of canals and to bring abandoned ones back into service. Volunteers worked to restore the canals, clearing the towpaths, repairing locks, and removing the shopping trolleys and other rubbish dumped in the water.

In 1964, Aickman summed up his philosophy and his view of the Inland Waterways Association:

The Association has uniquely deep roots in history, imagination, and the quest for happiness in a world where happiness is impossible. From the centre of the battle, I... cry out against the horror of the world, while smiling suitably as another waterway, properly due for extinction a century ago, is renewed at the word of a Royal Personage, so fragile, so touching; and immediately leaps to prosperity and bounty.

                  The Attempted Rescue, 1964

Public backing

By the 1960s, the British Waterways Board realised that leisure use offered a real economic future for the canals, and began to give public funds to restoration. Local authorities also gave their support, for they could see that canals brought tourists into their towns, and provided beautiful walkways for locals. Riverside pubs appeared, where drinkers could sit and admire the passing boats. There were also great environmental benefits, as water voles, otters and water birds found new habitats.

The future

Today, we are faced with global warming, rising fuel costs and increasing road congestion. Our canals could provide part of the answer to these problems. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the Department of Transport have both given their support to transferring freight from the roads back to the waterways. This makes economic sense, for the fuel used in road journeys is 50 times greater than that needed to move the same load on water.

In October 2006, Paul Dumble, waste freight co-ordinator of London Transport, announced plans to transport the vast amounts of waste produced in London by barge rather than by road:

There's an opportunity to use this resource. London can reduce its CO2 impact by putting its waste onto the canals... If we don't take this opportunity to move 5-10 million tonnes of materials down the canals [every year] in the next four or five years, we're never going to get them down the roads because they will be blocked. I'd give up being an environmentalist if I can't get a scheme like this to work.