We are the East Yorkshire & Derwent Area Ramblers. We open the way for everyone in our local community to enjoy the pleasures of walking.
Peter H
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This walk is a Balloon Walk
Canal Head Car Park: We head down Wilberforce Way and the Canal path past Giles Lock-Sandohill Lock-Coats Bridge—Walbert Farm-Walbut Bridge onto the road. We turn left at Crossword Field, turn right back to Coats Bridge, and back down the canal path to the car park.
The canal has natural banking and has more aquatic plants than most of our canals. Reeds along the margin of sections of the canal provide a habitat for nesting birds. Swans and their cygnets attract a great deal of interest and nests can sometimes be seen on the canal. Moorhen often manage to hide their nests in the vegetation lining the banks. With patience and luck, water voles can sometimes be seen.
In the 1980s, thirteen species of damselflies and dragonflies were officially recorded on the canal and since then, other species have been found. Damselflies and dragonflies are abundant between June and August and need the warmth of the sun to fly. The Pocklington Canal is regarded as particularly important for the red-eyed damselfly. The male is easily recognized by its prominent reddish-brown eyes and blue band near the tail.
A canal to Pocklington was first proposed in 1765 however the canal we see today didn’t open until 1818. Boats traded on the canal until 1932, when it went into serious decline. In the 1960s the Pocklington Canal Amenity Society was formed to save the canal from dereliction.
The Pocklington Canal was a late addition to the waterways network of England and Wales. Work did not start until 1815, despite proposals half a century before. The engineer responsible for the canal was George Leather Jr. The canal was completed in 1818 at a cost of £32,695. It would have been significantly more expensive to continue the canal into Pocklington and the proposed extension did not materialise.
The canal was mainly used to carry coal and agricultural produce. It was never a great financial success, partly because goods had to be transferred to horse-drawn carts at the terminus of the canal, adjacent to the Hull-York turnpike road, to continue their journey. The canal was sold to the York and North Midland Railway in 1848 and, like many English canals in railway ownership, deteriorated through lack of dredging and other maintenance. Subsequently, in the hands of the North Eastern Railway, the canal gradually fell into disuse early in the 20th century and the last commercial craft to use the canal was the keel Ebenezer, in 1932. The railway company purchased a lorry for the owner of this keel to avoid maintenance obligations! Pleasure craft stopped using the canal soon after, because of deterioration of the lock gates.
Pocklington Canal Head
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