Passenger rides on a horse-drawn boat have made the canal a popular tourist attraction in the summer months.

BBC: Grand Western Canal repairs to cost ?3m

Last year Canal Plus made an operating loss of euro374m and drained euro500m of cash from Vivendi.

ECONOMIST: Vivendi Universal

Water running through the reeds in the canal beside them made soft gulping sounds as it swirled along.

NEWYORKER: Nawabdin Electrician

Balancing against the weight behind him, which made driving along the rutted canal road difficult, Nawab pushed on, under the rosewood trees.

NEWYORKER: Nawabdin Electrician

Back home Morris was a key promoter of the Erie Canal, which made New York the commercial center of the new nation--and indeed of the world.

FORBES: An American Giant

It may be that broad trends, such as the triumph of notions of progress, the decline of the Ottoman empire, the advance of mechanisation and the emergence of international capital markets, made the construction of the canal inevitable.

ECONOMIST: The Suez Canal

The bouncers at the Star drove off, couples made their way to the dark seclusion of the nearby canal bank.

NEWYORKER: Bravado

Similar boat trips are already running in Loxwood, West Sussex, on a stretch of the canal which the volunteer-led trust has already made navigable.

BBC: Wey and Arun Canal boat trip plans on display

The key was not to try to dig a Suez-type of canal, a great sea-level trench from ocean to ocean, but to create a lock-and-lake canal, where the ships are lifted up by a series of locks to a man-made lake, and then they sail across that lake, and then they are set back down on the other side by another series of locks.

FORBES: Fact and Comment