Window shutters are fastened closed, and empty rowing boats jostle about their moorings in the quays.
But I did come across some signs of progress - in Salford Quays, for example.
About 2, 500 jobs from five departments are moving to Salford Quays in 2011 from their current London home.
The event is organised by Marketing Gloucester on behalf of Gloucester City Council and in partnership with Gloucester Quays.
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Les Tonnerres de Brest festival that includes more than seven kilometres of quays showcasing an extraordinary range of boats.
In October 2007, Bath Spa University decided not to go ahead with the purchase of the South Quays site.
The canals that ring the city in tight concentric circles are lined with 3, 000 of them, moored to centuries-old stone quays.
Sir James wants to construct his pioneering engineering school at the site off Lower Bristol Road, now known as South Quays.
Archaeologists established that this was the site of the 19th century slave trading complex, the Cais do Valongo, or Valongo Quays.
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Sir James wants to construct a pioneering engineering school at the site off Lower Bristol Road, which is now called South Quays.
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The 475 staff at the bank's Telephony Contact Centre at Salford Quays will be offered redeployment before it closes in September, a spokesman said.
The course was primarily based within Salford with the swim and run finish taking place on the Quays in front of the Lowry arts centre.
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The snarl-up has spilled over from the sidings to dock quays.
Surviving remains at the Loftus site include quays and rutways for wagons, which ran between the foreshore and boats, are still visible at low tide below the old workings.
The Overground service linking Clapham Junction and Surrey Quays will have four trains an hour stopping at these stops, but the trains will not go in to Victoria or London Bridge.
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Since then the format has remained largely the same, but the biggest change came last year when, after 29 years of broadcasting from London, the flagship programme moved to new studios in Salford Quays.
The season, which celebrates the period spanning the 17th and 18th Centuries, launches with a special edition of the Early Music Show, live from the BBC's Media City in Salford Quays, which will feature The English Concert directed by Laurence Cummings, performing Bach, Vivaldi, Handel and Purcell.
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