by Steve Tanham
(📩 300 words, photo and prose. A five minute read)
Our evening dog walk takes about forty minutes – a bit longer at the moment as we are looking after a friend’s blind Labrador, Rosie, and, while she’s fully mobile, she has to take things slowly and use her poor nose as eyes…
We leave the house through the back gate, then pick up the old canal path and walk along it for about twenty minutes, stopping for the dog necessaries as appropriate.
I can understand why many people have no interest in having a dog. I was always a cat person until my wife persuaded ‘us’ to have a collie. I have no regrets. The companionship – not to mention the constant exercise – is wonderful.
But not on a freezing evening…
Looking after two dogs is a challenge.
The canal path takes is to one of the famous ‘bridges to nowhere‘; outliers of a former age when these amazing waterways were the backbone of trade – the lorries of their time, albeit slower.
The walk ends at Bridge 178, above. But the beautiful old stone construction is not the main attraction. Sitting at a bench to the right of where the photo was taken is one of the best views for miles around. This stretch of the old Preston-Kendal canal was famous for its views, and this section was the bargers’ favourite.
And here, in the full glory of the sunset, you can see why…
We call it the place of the sunsets. It never fails to delight.
———-
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers a journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner guidance and outer companionship.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)
Sun in Gemini 
Dogs help us stop and smell the roses. We were always cat people as well. Hubby convinced me that we needed a dog once we retired and moved to Spain. Now I am smitten and now we have two of them!
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A happy picture, Darlene! 😊
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A beautiful view, Steve. Walking in the freezing cold is a challenge.
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It certainly is, Robbie! Cold fingers and cameras don’t easily go together… 😊
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Haha, no. Hot sweaty fingers aren’t great either.
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‘Slip, sliding away…🎶
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I also am a cat person. Over more than 30 years, five different cats lived with us. But in 2014, a Newfoundland puppy joined the household. She is now almost ten, and still in good health. It took me a while to get used to a really big dog, but I’ve adapted. Right from the start, the dog made me smile, which helped.
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That made me chuckle, Audrey. What a ‘big’ task to take on. Glad it had turned out well. Tess (our Collie) is also in her tenth year. Sadly, bigger dogs don’t live long…
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So beautiful there! Why did they drain the canal? Here, they would have stocked it with fish for people to enjoy fishing.
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It’s under the protection of the Canal and Rivers Trust: a national government body. The canals were created in the early 19th century and briefly reigned as a means of cargo movement. They were superseded 30 years later by the railways and slowly fell into decline. Certain stretches were cleaned up and opened for leisure boating. Volunteers continue to restore key stretches, but roads and even motorways have been built over them.
A section of the local canal (Preston to Kendal used to run through the land that is now our garden. We’ve landscaped it into two levels, but you can still see the shape of the old canal basin if you know what it is! We bought the land but the ‘government’ still has the right to relocate it if the canal ‘navigation’ is ever re-opened.
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