Email: Fascinating addition

I am not a boater and so write with some trepidation in response to the articles on your site regarding poetry on lock gates.

I live near a particularly pretty part of the system and walk that area often, as well as many other towpaths throughout the North and the midlands. I accept that no one is going to visit a canal especially to read poetry on lock gates.

However, we usually take visitors for a walk along the towpath here and they are all, without exception, fascinated by the locks and their workings—children especially. What to a boater is perhaps mundane and everyday is not seen as such by our visitors.

Now you may think adding letters a costly waste of time but I can see that those who walk the canals might very well find the poetry a fascinating addition to their experience of a canal. One man's waste of money can be anothers' non monetary gain.

Sheila Halsall