Along the towpath

Scene in the centre of a busy town (Kidderminster, Worcestershire). My back was just 20 metres from a busy ring road, and the lock in this image allows canal traffic to dip down under that ring road before wending its merry way along to the River Severn (at Stourport-on-Severn), some 3 or 4 miles away. When it reaches Stourport it, the canal, dips down to the river level via a tier of three locks. All this is, of course, late 18th, early 19th-Century engineering.