Washington DC - The C&O Canal

This morning I woke up in Washington DC and had several hours to enjoy a beautiful and very warm Indian Summer's day.

As I've mentioned in some of my previous blips, I'm a bit obsessed with canals and narrowboats so I decided to head down to Georgetown and walk along the C&O Canal which surprisingly I'd never done on any of my frequent visits to DC. It was a perfect day for it and I wanted to see how this canal walk compared with the ones in England.

This is the beginning of the Chesapeake & Ohio canal which is 184 miles long and runs to Cumberland, Maryland. . The history of the canal is very similar to British canals. Construction started in 1828, it was first used 2 years later but wasn't completely finished until 1950. There are 74 locks and 11 aqueducts along its length. It was mainly used for carrying coal from the Allegheny mountains and was quickly superseded by rail transport and finally closed in 1924. Today the canal has National Park status.