Canal Locks

The weather has perked up recently and I took the opportunity to get my trusty mountain bike back into operation.  This morning I went out for a couple of hours and broke it back in properly, while I was out I noticed the number of other people doing the same thing has increased recently.  I snapped this photograph of the canal locks along my route and was pleased with the resulting photograph, you can see the full size by clicking it.  You can also find a couple more that I took on my Flickr account.

While out and about I exchanged greeting with other tow path users and noticed the waterfowl were pairing off ready to nest.  Ducks watched me warily as I cycled past them and I watched male Geese chase off competitors on more than one occasion.  Once the Geese nest, this will make the tow paths a slightly more hazardous place as they will be on their guard against tow path users.  Watching other cyclists led me down a few new stretches of tow path and made me aware of new ways around the old routes I was using.  All of this is nothing spectacular, but what struck me again was how much of this world we miss when cocooned inside a car.

I’ve nailed my colours to the Peak Oil mast already, but to reiterate things, I’m of the opinion that the age of the motor car is entering its twilight.  The cost of Oil extraction is rising, the Oil we are getting is more expensive to refine and more expensive to transport.  The era of cheap energy is over and it will mean the slow end of our car-centric society.  I am seeing much commentary on this, but a lot of it seems to be along the lines of “somebody should change the world so that I don’t have to change my lifestyle”.  When you think about that, it doesn’t make much sense as the world isn’t going to change for us and there is little we can do regarding the underlying reality of this situation.  The only question is how we manage the decline of cheap energy.