Cotswold Canals DVD

Last month I got a review copy of the new DVD about from Waterway Routes about the Cotswold Canals. I watched it immediately, and enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. 

But I wanted to compare it with others available, so I put it aside and hunted for others.

Well, there aren't any others, and so eventually I forgot to write about it.  This 59 minute video is the only one covering the route of the Thames & Severn Canal and the Stroudwater Canal, their routes and their restoration.   A couple of Cotswold Canal Trust stalwarts ask me why I hadn't mentioned it yet, so here I am.  Consider me nagged into action.  Sorry!

The hallmark of the developing Waterway Routes video series is here.  Excellent camerawork, some very gentle amusing touches, a background map, a history brochure (background material to read, very important I think) and a quiet, intelligent and articulate narration. 

What do I miss from it?  I suppose that any way I'd improve it would reduce its saleability.  But I'd really like to see Paul get in front of the camera from time to time and declaim to the viewer, waving his arms excitedly, enthusing. I'd like to see the rougher, uglier areas of the route, and some tut-tut sense of disapproval from Paul.  I'd like to hear some jazz or rock soundtrack, have people people interviewed on the route.  I also wanted to find something to disagree with, something to shout at the screen.

(Perhaps I already did: Every time the narration gave dimensions in 'meters' I drowned the soundtrack with a loud raspberry and wanted to throw tomatoes)   

I particularly liked the coverage of the stretch from Saul Junction down to the Severn.  That ghostly stretch has an elegiac quality about it, knowing that it can't really be restored. 

But the Cotswold Canals DVD does exactly what it says on the cover.  It's a great guide to the route, and shows why this canal restoration promises to be one of the great glories of England when/if it's finally finished. 

Buy the DVD in 2006 (it's a reasonable £12.95) and Waterway Routes will give £1 to the Cotswold Canal Trust.  You might think it's a bit late - mid-December - for me to mention this, but I haven't even started to buy my Christmas presents yet. 

(Incidentally, if you want more detail than on the Waterway Routes map, you'll find it on mapmeister Richard Fairhurst's detailed PDF here.  It's on Nick Bird's still-life 300-photo website The Cotswold Canals, A Photographic Survey, an equivalent to the DVD,)   

Oh, I just discovered that 'Cotswold Canals' is an anagram of 'downcast locals'.  Perhaps it's just as well there weren't any local people interviewed in the video!