I am a newcomer to your site, and reading through its many articles, discovered those about visitors—or should it be 'visits'—to the waterways, so on Wednesday put it to the test.
We dropped down through Oxford onto the Thames, so counted them (we came straight down by the city not via Duke's Cut) at 11.50am and all together counted 13 people on the towpath over the three miles from the junction to the river, but according to the numbers given by CaRT there were over 1,500 visitors short!
Then thinking about it, the three of us, my wife and daughter, we realised that all the way down the Oxford Canal we all agreed we saw just the occasional walker, often with a dog or a cyclist for miles on end.
Even through Banbury, there were lots of people going over the bridge to and from the shops, but just a few sat on the seats by the side of the canal and a couple of couples walking. So how it gets all those millions—or is it trillions now?—I have no idea other than a figment of someone's vivid imagination.
Joseph Drummond