Sir, – Those of us who patronise the southside towpath on the Grand Canal between Locks 33 (Belmont) and 34 (Clononey) – and, I believe, elsewhere – would willingly accept the rejected hard-surface towpath proposed for the Barrow ("Olivia O'Leary leads campaign to save grassy towpath", August 19th).
It would mean that we could walk the stretch in all weathers and not just when the sun has dried out sufficiently the marshy bits, often further cut up by four-wheel-drive vehicles, most of them on unofficial business. It might discourage waterways operatives from leaving rotting canal undergrowth on the bank during their occasional purges. It might even encourage them to find somewhere else to dump the dredged muck from canal deepening efforts, with its resulting proliferation of noxious weeds.
It might prompt them to replace indiscriminate strimming along the banks with more careful mowing of the broader surface. And it would certainly lighten the grim countenances of the occasional cycling tourists we meet, who cannot believe the condition of what has been promoted as a world-class natural resource and attraction. – Yours, etc,
DENIS BERGIN,
Ballyshane Cottage,
Shannon Harbour,
via Birr, Co Offaly.