Holding back the water.

I like many of you have probably seen flood defenses on the TV and wondered how on earth a bit of plastic and some scaffolding can hold back water, well having seen it for myself, I can vouch for the fact that it does.
On the Grand Union Leicester Line, following temporary repairs to a leak into a cross canal culvert north of Bridge 63 it has become necessary to close the canal to Navigation between Bridge 63 and 64 so that a permanent repair can be made to the culvert and bridge. Temporary fabric dams were installed on Thursday 30th September and the British Waterways Major Works Team dewatered the canal. The works are expected to be completed in order to allow the canal to reopen to navigation on Friday 15th October. With boats now moored either side of the repair work, people will be pleased to get on the move again. Many of them probably heading back to their Winter moorings.We walked down to have a look at how the work was progressing and were amazed to see how the sheeting is holding back the water. It is really impressive and makes it much easier for the work to be carried out. Having repaired the culvert, it was discovered that the footbridge was in a sorry state, so they are now repairing that as well. Ordinarily British Waterway's carries out repair work over the Winter, but occasionally there have to be emergency stoppages to do major repair like this one. With the Canals being so old, and more boats coming on to the system, I think we can expect more of this sort of thing to happen over the coming years.