Today
The route of the canal lies in a largely agricultural area dotted with small villages and minor roads.
Despite the building of railways along both arms, there are traces of the Paulton arm of the canal and of the Radstock arm. A short stretch of the canal where it joins the Kennet and Avon at the Dundas Aqueduct was restored during the 1980s, and is used for moorings. Excavations of the old stop lock showed that this had originally been a broad (14 feet (4 m)) lock that at some point was narrowed to 7 feet (2 m) by moving the lock wall. While some canal features are on private land, the towpath may survive in places as a right of way, while the later railway between Midford to Wellow is being surfaced to form part of National Cycle Route 24. It has been proposed that a statue, commissioned by Sustrans, of William Smith, the father of English Geology, will be sited next to the path on the line of the canal commemorating his work as surveyor on the canal and his recognition of the significance of rock strata.
Read more about this topic: Somerset Coal Canal
Famous quotes containing the word today:
“We’re in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor. Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“Not too many years ago, a child’s experience was limited by how far he or she could ride a bicycle or by the physical boundaries that parents set. Today ... the real boundaries of a child’s life are set more by the number of available cable channels and videotapes, by the simulated reality of videogames, by the number of megabytes of memory in the home computer. Now kids can go anywhere, as long as they stay inside the electronic bubble.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“At times it seems that the media have become the mainstream culture in children’s lives. Parents have become the alternative. Americans once expected parents to raise their children in accordance with the dominant cultural messages. Today they are expected to raise their children in opposition to it.”
—Ellen Goodman (20th century)