Martin Clark wrote: > Nick wrote: >> It's interesting to find as I collect canal data that the precise naming >> of every junction seems to be an idiosyncrasy of the UK canal network >> and elsewhere (even in the UK) junction's don't have the same specific >> names they do in - say - Birmingham. > > Seeing as how there are fewer canal junctions in the whole of Ireland > than there are in Birmingham, I suspect that there was never the same > need to identify each junction by name! > > I take it that you are aware of IWAI's online waterway maps? > http://www.iwai.ie/framed.map.html
They've got an excellent site, I love the way you can walk along each waterway. But, as http://www.iwai.ie/maps/grand/maps.grand.6.html shows, no names for junctions! > The other difference from England is that the locks on the main canals > do not have names as such but are known by numbers, for example: Twelfth > Lock, etc. The locks on the Shannon-Erne have geographical names, though. The one that's sitting at the back of my mind is that they count double locks (staircase pairs) as 1 in the numbering. Currently I count them as 2 in the total. So I'm either going to have to follow Irish use - and so give a count of 20 locks for a waterway that in England would have 24, say - or to stick to my use and accept that to go through Tenth Lock to Twelfth Lock, inclusive may be up to 6 locks! The latter helps the time calculations of course - it taking longer to go through a double than a single lock. Furriners, eh?
