Email: Safe towpaths

I am afraid I do not agree with you correspondents who are concerned by what they call the unsafe towpaths, as in 13 years of boating the only problem on the towpaths that we have had was happy drunks at the Three Soulbury locks.

Our cruising includes the entire school holidays, as we are both employed in education, and covers nearly all the major waterways.

We tend to start early in the morning, with the canals being busy at holiday time and our day's cruise will end in the early afternoon, when we then go for a long walk, choosing to stay where there are footpaths marked, but also extensively walking the towpaths.

Though in the early years we did not cruise so extensively, this built up over the past three years for the entire time we were on holiday, and in all this time we have never been in any situation where we felt concern of any kind whilst walking the towpaths. But the same does not apply, I have to remark, to cyclists, but they are now a common problem.

Gerald Benton