I think most days at some point I’m on the canal. I suppose it’s become part of the rhythm of my life. And I love being so close to this – Five Rise as well, because it is this kind of wonder of the world. But it’s very ordinary as well. It’s just here. I like seeing other people in the summer coming here and you see it for a moment through their eyes. But it’s very special.

I mean, I’m a bit obsessed with the canal because I’ve cycled the whole of it twice. So once from Leeds to Liverpool and once from Liverpool to Leeds. And also I went to uni in Liverpool. So I always think to myself, in a big kind of way, I’ve never, I’ve never left home? It feels like an umbilical cord for me in my life. Everything kind of is attached to it in some way and I, yeah, I love it.

And also I used to cycle to Leeds a lot when I was younger from Shipley – and just seeing the way it’s changed over time. So, in the eighties there were bits which were really properly rural between Shipley and Leeds. That’s mostly gone now and I know the next time, each time I’ve done the cycling the other way towards Liverpool, it’s really changed each time. So you’ll go through bits which are kind of quite boujee and kind of, “Oh! We’re just having lattes and it’s so, so great!” And then next thing like being, you know, kids throwing stones, little baggies up all over the place. I mean, and the vibe, everything in between. Very rural. I mean, I love it. I love it all.

I mean, it’s interesting to me at the minute that there’s stuff about the ways that we think of it as quite a slow experience and kind of recreational, but actually they could bomb! When it was an industrial highway they really motored with – they got distances much quicker than you’d imagine. So I find that interesting. I find it interesting that it’s only recent years that as I grow up with it, my feelings about it and understanding about it change.

So, it’s only in recent years that I’ve really begun to understand or acknowledge how much the whole of Britain was involved in the slave trade and how when you look at the canal networks and how you’ve got… I don’t know, Birmingham was making pistols and firearms and then you’ve got Manchester and us making wool or cotton and all that. And the ways you just look at this, always going to Liverpool or Bristol. It’s quite something when you look at the map and then you look at the roots. It is, it’s… It was a a bit of a moment of feeling, a bit winded. It’s human blood! But then thinking about how in acknowledging that – that doesn’t spoil anything in a sense, it gives it a chance to be reborn and, and to acknowledge how beautiful it is now and how life wants to live? So, yeah, I, I think about all of that. It’s kind of… and we can’t get away from that past, but I don’t think we should try to. I think the better life is in acknowledging that. And also that side by side, all of that horror, there’s this amazing thing as well. It’s… I don’t know. I don’t have the answers, but I think about it a lot when I’m trogging up and down.

So thinking about the future, I think we’ll get there. I think it’ll be amazing. I think we will have solar and wind. I think we’ll have wave power. I think we’ll have ways of getting around which are really human scale. And I think canals will be a massive part of that. Because actually in the future, human beings are actually finally going to learn how to acknowledge the nature in themselves and learn to live with nature and alongside nature. And actually, if you look at Bradford, the way that these tendrils of nature go into the city and through and how like sat we’re here. Ten minutes away, are cows and sheep that way, ten minutes away by train, it’s Bradford city centre, or 20 minutes, you know. And I think eventually that’s what rewilding will be. And I think that we will have tendrils of nature going through cities. I think we’ll have food growing up the sides of skyscrapers. And we will…

But it won’t just be about tech. It will be about how we take in ways to communicate more. At the moment, we’re really obsessed with our discovery of our own neural pathways in our own brains. But I think eventually that will mean that we will begin to be able to communicate with animals and we will understand that they, they get it. It’s just they don’t they don’t use vocal cords in the way we do. And we will begin to actually do what we’re meant to be on the planet for, which is to be real husbands of the planet! And I think we’ll get there. I really do.

And I feel like, I know this is going to make me sound completely crazy, but I’ve always felt that eventually motorways will be giant roller skate parks. I just really think one day kids will play on rollerboots on motor – and I would love to live, I won’t live to see that. But I think we’ve got a lot of shit to get through first. And kind of going all those things that we’ve been killing ourselves about for so long actually, literally don’t matter.

And frankly, Queering! I mean, I’m not saying that were perfect or that we’re, as humans we’re like, “Aaah!” But queers have so much to teach the world and keep teaching the world. That it’s about listening to yourself. It’s about finding the multitudes of ways of being. I think it’s how you feel and how you think. I think, for example, trans people are kind of magical beings, and I think they are they’re not just trying to liberate themselves, they’re showing how we can all be liberated and all think freely about our own bodies.

I mean, I just think about that – every human being on this planet deserves to be here. They were born and they also have something absolutely unique to give to the world. But how many of us do get to do that fully or even partially. And what we could all do together if we could just decide that we ask the person who’s born, what is it that you want to do today? Imagine what the world would be like!

“Blow, west wind, by the lonely mound

And murmur, summer-streams –

There is no need of other sound

To sooth my lady’s dreams”

 

Beware the Grundylow, my child

Its fingers long and thin

When at the water’s edge beguiled

It waits to pull you in

 

You must not teeter near the reeds

Or mess about the shore

Too many past not tekken heed

And now they play no more

 

For waters dark and waters deep

You ne’er may know what lurks

Inside the heart of one that sleeps

Among the myre and murk

 

A gurgle in its belly comes

When lads n lasses squeal

You’re tastier when you’re having fun

The Grindy’s fav’rite meal!

 

Don’t near the bank, eyes to the ground

Watch close your feet below

For tendrils creeping up around

Your ankle and your toe

 

And when dusk falls, it’s on the prowl

In grindy-grundy grease

With vice-like grip and stench so foul

To take you underneath

 

Beware the Grundylow, my child

It’s fingers long and thin

When at the water’s edge beguiled

It waits to pull you in

And I’ll no longer grind my teeth

I’ll just listen to the creaking of the hull

And the swaying under twilight skies

Embers in the stove

Kingfishers that I know

And I don’t want no more

Than to drift on by

We’re at the top of Bingley Five Rise Locks! Opposite the cafe, the conveniences. It’s a lovely place. You’ve got, look at the view – look at that! And you get lots of, you see lots of deer and things running about in the wild. You see otters here now and again.

Right, I’ll start the engine before I cast off. Listen to that! The purr! [laughs]

Highest lift, in the shortest length of time in the country. There’s taller cana… There’s taller lifts. But there’s more locks to go with them. So there you go. Off you go. Listen to that! The smoothest 61 year old engine in the world! Honestly! [laughs] All these other engines nowadays… are sort of like four stroke, really smooth – water-cooled. This is a two-cylinder diesel engine that’s like, 61 years old?

Ay up, John! I’ll try not to break the speed limit! [laughing]

Alright, have a nice day.

All these, all these boats along the righthand side, are continual moorers they just stay here. The boats on the lefthand side are continual cruisers who move every two weeks. My idea of boating is not being double-moored and staying in the same place all the time. It’s like this, to me, is the last bastion of freedom. I didn’t buy a boat to stay in the same place. Some people just want it for a little bit o’ leisure. Some people want to just, I think, basically try and escape from the system – as much as they can. As much as we can’t. You can try your best.

But we’ve gotta go slow ‘cause we’re going past these. We might be doing, maybe two mile an hour? This little thing – 61 years old engine, I might be able to get up to four mile an hour? But then again, the speed limit’s four mile an hour! So…

Ideal.

Anyway, it gets us about! It’s reliable, it starts, it runs. And it’s all, it’s never let us down. Apart from the one time I ran out of fuel. You know they say, “what’s the problem with the car – it’s the nut behind the wheel!” Yeah. It’s this idiot that let it run dry. And the only way I could get out of it – stuck in the middle of the canal – was to grab the rope, get down to me boxer shorts, and swim to the shore and pull it in. At least it was a nice, warm summer’s day.

So I’ve got to move about a mile and a half every two weeks. But that’s every two weeks you wake up to a completely different vista. And over the years, you discover these places where you can park your car reasonably close, but you can wake up in a absolutely glorious, glorious view. So that’s what I’ve done. I could go and change canals but I’ve done Leeds-Liverpool for 14 year. Because I can go from Leeds, through Shipley / Saltaire, then I can get into Lancashire and get over to Burnley. And I sorta turn round at Burnley. At Barrowford, I sorta turn round. And then just go back towards Leeds.

And that is one of the clauses – you’ve gotta cover a certain amount of miles in a year. So I cover me miles, I wake up in places that I want to be. In some glorious places! Once you get out past Skipton towards Gargrave. There’s places where you can moor up on the offside. You’ve got the towpath side and then you’ve got the offside. But you moor up on the offside you’ve got nobody walking past your boat and looking in your window. And they are some spectacular places. Just like, there’s aqueducts with like, the river runs underneath ya. And ya park up on the aqueduct and just walk down the hill and you can go for a, if the weather’s clement, you can go for a swim. Or paddle or whatever. And just go, you know, walk, walk through the fields, walk up into a forest and you get some, there’s some really, really good places.

Afternoon, gentlemen! Morning, gentlemen!

Right. So now we’re going to come to a swing bridge, which is – we’re going to stop the traffic! I do feel, you know, a little bit sad when I stop these people. But, I pay me money! So, y’know… Industry was built on the canals! Y’know? Yorkshire wouldn’t be Yorkshire. It was built on canals. You wouldn’ta transported all the goods without these. So yeah, I pay me money and stop the traffic now and again.

So Rosie, if you want to grab that rope there – I’ll pull in to the side. Beau? Nowadays you get this little box here. Turn the key. You press the open button, keep it pressed. Don’t worry, it’ll happen in time. Good things come to those in time. Oh yes! We’ve got an Audi driver that’s had to stop! Right, you keep that, keep it pressed open. I’ll go and get the boat. When the bridge opens, I’ll come through and then you press the close button. You’ll start… Ooh, it’s starting swinging! Right so, Rosie is the bridge master!

Beau beau! How did you get out? You’re supposed to be indoors! Get back inside, go on – get back to bed! Welcome to the world of boating! It’s horrible when you get like five or six vehicles and you can see people are like really get stressed out, you feel guilty. But at the same time it’s like – I’ve got my right to use the canal.

So we just pull up at the other side. Rosie can shut the bridge. Press the close button! And then we just tie up again. Wait for Rosie. And all’s good.

There’s, you might even see some kingfishers. The stretch we’re going down now – kingfishers, sort of, they have their territory. So you’ll have one kingfisher that comes flying alongside ya in front o’ ya, and then it backs off and then the next kingfisher’ll come along. Kingfisher aren’t… they’re not scared of us. I think, one of the things kingfishers do is like they skirt, the front o’ ya boat, because the front o’ ya boat disturbs the fish. So the kingfishers see the fish disturbed and then they go in for it. But they all have their own territory. So you’ll see one kingfisher doing it and then it’ll stop. And then the next kingfisher comes in, and that’s his bit of territory. They’re very territorial. They are beautiful. Kingfisher’s are one of the most beautiful birds I’ve ever seen. Just a flash of green and blue. Well, this is a – this is generally a spot for them. Might be going too slow for them to, for them to be interested. But sometimes nice to go slow.

The heron! You get more and more and more of them. Over the last ten years I’ve been cruising up and down here, the herons and becoming more prolific. Seriously. You get loads o’ them. That might be a plastic one – but there’s bloody loads of ‘em.

So now we’re coming up to another swing bridge – and this is a major road so you can trap loads o’ people!

Are you gonna do it again, Rosie? You’re a bit of an expert now.

100%! It’s my role.

Shall I give you the keys?

Yeah – pass ‘em over!

Rosie’s the keymeister!

I’m gonna try, I’ve never done one of these before.

Oh great! Are you learning as well?

Yeah!

So what are you doing today? Just having a…

Inspections. Okay. We’ve got an aqueduct under here, we’ve got an abstraction weir up there which feeds the canal so there’s quite a lot going on around this area. Hold it. Oh you just press it once and you gotta keep your finger on it.

We had one last year when someone was doing one of these and a bus decided to try and go through the barrier . Got stuck on the bridge and the bridge swung with the bus on it and the boat went past and videoed it. Surprised it didn’t break the bridge to be honest.

How regularly do you do inspections?

So this is Ben and he’s a asset inspector, and they go out every day and just walk the canal, just all day doing inspections. I’m an engineer and I do the general inspections and principal inspections, which I get about 50 a year that I’ve got to do, so… I just get out and do them – when it’s not raining!

And are the inspections like canal inspections? Or boat inspections? Or both? Or…

Just canal and structure inspections. We’ve got rangers as well that go out and check all the licenses on the boats and stuff like that.

There’s a bridge further down that’s shut.

Shut?

Yeah.

As in, can’t go through it?

For two weeks. Yeah, because we’re fixing it. So it’s not…

Do you know which one it is?

Yeah, it’s Bridge 195 at Riddlesden.

Okay.

I think they started today so I’d just… you’ll get as far as there and you’ll be able to tell, ‘cause it’ll be shut.

Thank you.

Thank you!

We didn’t get to press the button. This guy was saying that bridge 195 which is around Riddlesden, is shut.

Right, well I shall check my map.

He said check your map because something might’ve shifted.

If it is, you won’t be able to…

I was going through Riddlesden ‘cause I was going to Kildwick, so I might have to cut my journey short! I’ll just check my map! This is the Boater’s Bible. You get many of them. But this is…

What we looking at?

This is for the Northwest and the Pennines. So – best get me glasses on. Riddlesden. So, 195 is Booths. I ain’t getting to Kildwick today! Well let’s just go as far as we can.

Exactly.

Would that be an alright idea?

Yeah, it’s good for us.

Go as far as we go and then if we can’t go no further, we can’t go no further.

Do you know where the term ‘legging it’ comes from? When, before canal boats were actually engine powered, they were drawn by horses. So when you came to a tunnel – how do you get your horse to pull your canalboat through a tunnel? Have you got any idea? It’s impossible. So what they had was a team of leggers and these leggers, they’d lay on their backs on the canalboat, and they’d just push either side and push the canalboat through the tunnel. That’s where the term ‘legging it’ comes from.

How’d you get a horse through the other end?

The horse went the other way! And met them up at the other side! But yeah, that is it – it’s leggin’ it. Lying on your back, pushing a canalboat through a tunnel. Yeah. Leggers – they were called leggers. And that’s where the term legging it comes from.

This is, this is how the canal worked, you know. It’s like there’s wonderful places that I came through down south, where they’ve got these bridges that go in a corkscrew style so that the horse could walk over the bridge to cross from one side to another. I’ve can’t think of any… I’d have to look in… in the Nicholson’s Bible. But they are – it’s just a bridge that goes from one side of the canal, corkscrews and goes the other, so the horse can go from one side of the canal to the other side of the canal and still tow the boat without being unhitched.

It’s like, Victorian architecture and invention was absolutely amazing. We can do it easily now because we’ve got computers that do it for us. You know, everything’s computer-aided now. These people did it just using their brains and using their nouse and working it out. Nowadays everybody just goes like “Oh my God, me phone’s died! Argh! How do I survive!?”

D’you wanna have a go, Rosie?

Yes, I do!

It’s completely back to front. So if you’re wanting to go left, you pull it right. If you want to go right, you pull it left. Pull it right!

Pull it right?

Pull it left. Like I did say, it’s completely opposite of what you’d expect. Yeah. If you want to go right, you pull to the left. If you want to go left, you pull to the right.

Sorry guys! [laughing]

Beau beau – get back on, c’mon.

Still want me to do it right?

Yeah.

 

Tell us what’s happening, Rosie.

Well, I took over the steering for about 3 seconds and managed to ground us.

It’s like I say, it gets very shallow at the edges.

And now Ged is manually pushing us like a, like a horse on the canal.

Yeah, it is really weird. Gotta get used to it. ‘Cause normally you’d just go like that – and you go left, like that – you go right. I think what’s basically happened is some weeds were caught. It wan’t your fault! Take control of the helm. Yeah.

Okay. Right I’ll do it again.

You’re in charge again.

Okay, great.

I think some weeds get caught. It’s what happens quite often.

Okay. We’re coming up to… we’re coming up to 197. So we’ve got two bridges to go. If 195’s still shut. Anyway the simple fact is, we either get through or we don’t.

Oh, Rosie’s being all polite and letting the cars cross first. [laughs]

Oh you’ve jumped back on, Beau beau! Well done!

Right then, ahead we go. Listen to that – full speed ahead – all 13 horsepower.

So that guy tells me that Bridge 195 is broken, but it’s jammed open.

Well, that’s not problem!

So we’ll see.

This is the life of a boater. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know what bridge is going to work. You don’t know what bridge is not going to work. It’s just like… it’s just the excitement of the canal! Everyone thinks it’s boring. Ya have excitement all the time!

And I’ll no longer grind my teeth

I’ll just listen to the creaking of the hull

And the swaying under twilight skies

Embers in the stove

Kingfishers that I know

And I don’t want no more

Than to drift on by

Kith and kin with those that know

The still and misty dawn

The boating life would do me good

It don’t half slow you down

Sit n watch the world go by

I lie-lie-la-lie

And I don’t want no more than to drift on by

So my name’s Andrew Bayliss. I’m the workshop supervisor for the Canal and River Trust here at Stanley Ferry workshops. So we’re situated on the Aire and Calder just outside Wakefield. So we look after over 2000 miles of canal network, stretching over the entire country itself. We’re the only two workshops in the country what manufacture lock gates for the Canal and River Trust.

So we produce here, roughly around about 75 sets of gates per year between the two workshops. So on this site, there’s been a building since the 1860s. We’ve been producing a lock gates here now since just after the war. Quite a lot of the process making the gates is actually still hand, you know, we use us hands, we use hand tools and things like that to create what we need.

We’ve got something of round about 2800 – 2900 locks. So each lock comprises of top and bottom gates and that kind of stuff. So as I say, it’s a continuous cycle. You tend to get quite a lot of wear where the gates meet each other. Boaters sometimes don’t open both of the gates, and sometimes they just leave one open and they squeeze themself through. So it creates a, you know, a big massive hole in the actual gate itself. But most of the actual deterioration on the gate itself is on the waterline itself. So where the water fluctuates in the canal over around about 200 millimetres up and down, that’s where most of the actual rot, you know, is on the gates themselves. You find that when you, we’ve actually repaired gates, say, for instance, a certain part of the gate’s broken and it comes in here for repair, we have to take certain parts off and replace them – you’ll find down at the bottom of the gate, it’s just as good as it was when it was installed 25 years ago. It’s just an absolutely amazing.

So it’s British Oak. We only use a certain amount of the European oak that’s normally the bigger sections because obviously you find that in Europe it actually goes quicker and you get the bigger sizes in there. I would say some of the actual trees, what we’re actually chopping down is probably 100 – 150 year old. But all our timber is actually FSC certification so we know exactly where it’s been chopped down and part of that process we have to basically replant the trees and that kind of stuff. So it’s, it’s a sustainable product at end of the day, but obviously it’s a lot of years before it gets to the stage where we, we can use it unfortunately.

I think most people can’t understand, you know, most of these canals are over 200 year old. And you think to yourself, how did they physically manufacture the canals in them days? You know, they didn’t have the facilities like we have with cranes and all that kind of facilities what we have now in modern society. It’s just a fantastic feat of engineering. It really is. And planning the route, you know, for the canals and things like that, the feat of engineering, designing that route where that canal needs to physically go to make it as level as possible without making too many locks to go uphill over the water and things like that. It’s just a fantastic feat of engineering. It really is.

They’re some of the deepest locks in the entire country at Bingley. They really are. You know, the amount of pressure what them gates are actually holding back is immense. You’re talking somewhere in the region of around about five or six, six ton of water pressure right down on the bottom of the actual lock gate itself.

So this is the main workshop itself. So the timber gets actually brought into the workshop and it goes on our planing machine, which then squares and trues the timber up ready for manufacturing. I can’t smell it now.

Can you not?

No, I’m so used to it now I can’t even smell it. Everybody comes in here and goes, “What a lovely smell! Absolutely fantastic.” But no, I can’t even smell it anymore. I’ve been here too long.

Well, I started on the factory floor, manufacturing the lock gates, like I say, 25 years ago, and then I was here about 11 years, then I moved up to team leader role. Which then obviously were making me in charge of the lads on the actual factory floor, making sure they did everything safe and to the spec what we need for the manufacturing of the gates. And then I’ve been a workshop supervisor now for about three years. Yeah.

And how many people work here?

 

So we have eight joiners which are split into teams of two and they work on each individual lock gate from start to finish. So when I started, we could have been say for instance, sat on some of the machines in the workshop for weeks on end on the same process, but we found that everybody were getting fed up, getting bored of the actual process. So we decided that we would actually start manufacturing from start to finish with them – with them people. So they see it all the way through from start to finish. It actually produces a better quality of actual product. We still do it the traditional way. Yeah. Mortise and tenoned joints. Exactly the same as what they did over 200 years ago. And then in our case, we actually still dry-fit the gates themselves. So we still actually peg the gates like old traditional methods. So it’s as I say, it’s just created exactly the same yep – same way. You are talking between four and five weeks for two people to manufacture the gates from start to finish, which is not a great deal length time for what is.

So most gates are what we call pairs of gates. So like a double leaf. Like you saw, you’re talking nearly six ton of weight there for the gates themselves. Yeah. When you try and open a lock gate, if you’ve got something in around about 50 or 70 ml difference in water level from one side to the other, you wanna open the gates. There’s, it’s that much pressure on the gate, you’ve got to equalize the water before you physically can open the actual lock gates themselves. You know, the lock gates themselves, they only seal in three places. On the bottom of the lock chamber itself. The locks go up to a piece of timber, which is actually fastened down to the ground. We call them cills. And then it’s actually seals along the wall edges, the lock canals themselves on the canal chamber and where the actual gates miter up in the middle. And that’s the only three places where the actual lock gates seal.

If we don’t maintain them correctly, that can cut the, the life span of the actual gates down. Clear the vegetation what sometimes grows on the gates themselves, you know, we need to get on top of that and make sure we get rid of all that, because the root system will get into the actual timber itself. And then what happens, the water gets into there – then when it freezes, it opens the fissures in the actual timber open. And then that’s where you start getting the rot in the actual timber as well.

I’ll certainly be here till I retire, definitely. Yeah. There’s not many people can say we do what we do. It’s just a matter of keeping that heritage, you know, knowing that you’ve actually manufactured something that’s going to last 25 years, you know, and last longer than you. It’s absolutely fantastic, it really is. You know, it’s a way of looking back at the past. What, you know, what we did.

Hello listeners, and welcome to the 168th episode of ABF series How We Made It, where we explore the adaptation stories which really changed our world. I’m Marnett Cooper and this chapter was first broadcast on the 20th of June 2275.

The foremother of the Drinkable Rivers Movement, Li An Phoa, famously declared that the sign of a healthy economy should be a drinkable river. And although we now take this for granted, I wanted to better understand how our waterways became drinkable. So today we’re in Bingley, in West Yorkshire, talking about the historic Re-Oxygenation Project, which brought the region’s waterways back to life. This stretch of the canal, just four miles from Bradford City Centre, now supplies the surrounding district with an abundant hydrosphere, making it one of the healthiest states in the Northern Confederation.

I wanted to understand more about the journey from dead zone to blue zone. So I’ve caught up with Dylan Wade, an independent ecological historian.

Your research field is the heritage of biomimetic technologies. What exactly is that?

Yeah, Biomimetic simply means drawing inspiration from other parts of the natural world to solve our specific human problems. So designing with principles that recognises that we are all part of nature, and very much still learning from it. This all seems very normal now, but when the ReOxygenation Project began here in Bingley in the 2050s, it was really pioneering stuff and was a key part in effectively transforming our waterways into the healthy ecosystem we have today.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how the waterways have changed over, well, I guess it’s really the last 500 years or so.

Well, if we go way back to 1770, when the engineers of the first industrial revolution began to cut the land, to build the canals, a process of extraction and essentially ecological enslavement began, which, as we all now know, had truly devastating effects. And it began this chain reaction – a sort of race to the bottom, whereby biodiversity just completely plummeted.

Can you give us a sense of how bad things actually got?

I mean, at first, signs of impact were largely ignored and even though the oceans had begun losing oxygen since the 1950s, the issues of waterway asphyxiation only really began to be discussed in the 2030s. And we know how bad things got by looking at the archival records of certain species. Brown trout, for example, need nine or more milligrams of dissolved oxygen per litre to thrive, and in the 2030s it was never more than three milligrams. So lethal conditions.

Wow. I mean, it’s it’s really hard to imagine, isn’t it?

Exactly. And as you know, this was the beginning of the Second Collapse; underwater life was suffocating and the atmospheric oxygen levels were dangerously low. It’s sort of amazing that it was turned round really, and that we’ve the reoxygenated and generative waterways that we do today.

To better understand the history of biomimetic technology pioneered in this area, I travelled upstream from Bingley to Morton to meet bioengineer Clara Afron.

Clara, Hi. Um, can you tell us where we are and what exactly is going on around us?

We’re about three miles up from Five Rise at Morton Bridge. And can you see the floats on the water surface there? They’re the top edges of a series of large nets which snare the larger items of rubbish which come downstream. We pull out all this rubbish and stuff to feed the bacteria beds there. And it’s this special bacteria that chomps through the plastic – I love that, to break them down into nontoxic, organic matter. So from this point in the channel, the water flows down to Five Rise, Three Rise and then Dowley Gap. And as it cascades through each lock, it picks up oxygen through the water movement – but even more so from flora and fauna, which were introduced in the last couple of hundred years. So by the time it’s at the single lock at Hirst Wood, the water is good enough to drink.

And is there a way to monitor this?

Yes. Just after Hirst Wood, water quality is assessed through our monitoring system of the Mother Mussels. These are ten indigenous freshwater pearl mussels which will close if the level of pollutants in the water is still too high. And if the mussels close, the flow downstream is stopped. And when this happens, the backup water supply from Chellow kicks in, and the region’s drinking water comes from there until the flow is clean enough to drink once again.

So these mother mussels are literally the gatekeepers of the region’s aquatic health.

Yes, exactly. And when this was implemented in 2050, it was the first time this biosyncratic tech had been used in the Northern States or, England – as it was then.

The success of the project here in Bingley is not all down to bioengineering. I met with Ana Trzcinska, a world leader in underwater audio-landscaping, to understand how the Bingley ReOxygenation Project enlivened these waterways using sound.

When aural researchers realised that sonic scarcity was a key trend across all the aquatic dead zones, local people started to use audio to encourage underwater oxygenators back to the area. They were planting the extra-respiring plants like Water Crowsfoot and Hornwort, but the archival records show this wasn’t enough. What the fish, the clams and the plants really needed was the sound of the healthy environment. So my predecessors, about 200 years ago, they were the real innovators. They built these aquatic sound landscapes which were attractive to the fish and flora that they wanted to entice home.

And you have some of the original sounds from the 2040s and 50s which people were using to create this sonic environment. Can we hear some?

Absolutely. So this particular archive recording is from the year 2039. Listeners might be able to tell that some of the sounds in this piece were created artificially, as at the time, of course, capturing an authentic and true recording of a healthy waters just wasn’t possible.

The ecological turnaround at Five Rise is undoubtedly extraordinary – and ecological historian Dylan Wade agrees.

It’s such an important story to understand. It’s more than 500 years since construction on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal began, and 225 years since the ReOxygenation Project officially began. It really is a heritage of change. And here we are today enjoying clean air and clean water. It’s kind of amazing.

Well, thank you, Dylan. And to all of our contributors today. That’s all we’ve got time for this week. So from Bingley’s fresh waters and fresh air to all Comrades of the True North, Goodbye.