For a hundred & fifty years, between the plod of packhorse trains & the arrival of the railways, canals were the high-tech water machine driving the industrial revolution. Amazing feats of engineering, they carried the rural into the city & the urban into the countryside, & changed the lives of everyone. & then, just when their purpose was extinguished by modern transport, they were saved from extinction & repurposed as a `slow highways` network, a peaceful & countrywide haven from our too-busy age. Today, there are more boats on the canals than in their Victorian heyday. Writer & slow adventurer Jasper Winn spent a year exploring Britain`s waterways on foot & by bike, in a kayak & on narrowboats. Along a thousand miles of `wet roads & water streets` he discovered a world of wildlife corridors, underground adventures, the hardware of heritage & history, new boating communities, endurance kayak races & remote towpaths. He shared journeys with some of the last working boat people & met the anglers, walkers, boaters, activists, volunteers & eccentrics who have made the waterways their home. In Britain most of us live within five miles of a canal, & reading this book we will see them in an entirely new light.