A Tabloid Article by Linden Dunham
The Greater Depression saw a worldwide uprooting of provincial communities and mass migration towards the big cities. A significant minority though resisted the pull of the urban centres. Forced to abandon the ghost towns their homes had become, yet unwilling to be cooped up in the sprawling metroplexes they became nomads. In the United Kingdom there was something akin to a revival of the New Age Traveller movement of the 1980s: Families and like minded groups living in mobile homes or vans and buses converted for residential. Not all of the Britain’s nomads opted for life on the road though. Some took to the waterways in narrow boats and other craft capable of navigating the country’s canal and river network.
The breakdown in civil society experienced by the United Kingdom in the Dark Times means that the canal network, so lovingly restored in the 20th century, has started to fall into decay again. Administration of the network is fragmented and under-funded. Maintenance is haphazard and in rural areas often non-existent. Long sections of canal are half choked with weed and silt, their banks and tow-paths overgrown or slowly crumbling into the water.