Richard Fairhurst wrote:Anyone who thinks the answer to improving cycling in the UK is to pave over 2500 miles of canal, rather than make the 214,000 miles of public road safe and welcoming for bikes... has a very strange set of priorities.
Robert Aickman, co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association and (with Tom Rolt) one of the two people most responsible for saving the canal system, was astonishingly prescient in seeing how unlimited motor traffic would ruin our country. In the '40s and '50s, he wrote splenetic pieces for the IWA Bulletin called 'Motor Moloch', imploring that something be done. Cyclists - and especially cycle tourers - should be fellow-travellers with canallers, not enemies.
I think most of us are. 110%