Leisure Age
Prior to 1985, the River Ouse between Goole and above York was managed by the Ouse and Foss Navigation Trust, but was later transferred to British Waterways. The Selby Canal was then promoted as part of a through route to York, and by 2006, over 2000 boats were using Selby Lock each year, more than double the number recorded in 1988. Today the canal is used almost entirely by leisure boats. Part of the towpath has been included in the Selby Horseshoe Walk.
The canal takes boats with a maximum length of 78.5 feet (23.9 m), a beam of 16.5 feet (5.0 m), a draught of 4 feet (1.2 m) and an air draught of 9.7 feet (3.0 m). Although not historically part of the Selby Canal, the former section of the River Aire from Bank Dole Junction through Bank Dole Lock and Beal Lock to the flood lock at West Haddlesey is now normally considered to be part of the canal, giving it a total length of 11.7 miles (18.8 km) and four locks. Because the River Ouse at Selby is tidal, the lock can only be used at certain states of the tide, and a lockkeeper is in attendance when a transit into the river is possible. Operation of the lock is fully mechanised.
Read more about this topic: Selby Canal
Famous quotes containing the words leisure and/or age:
“A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)