The roads were barely wide enough for ahorsecart, and often I looked over the face of a crumbling mountain, forcing myself to think of something other than death.
As recently as the 1950s a character called Frank the Frame Burner drove his horseandcart around London collecting cast-off 19th-century gilt frames to melt down.
When they were built, canals were a miracle, of what was then, modern enginering, however today, they are as commercialy redundent as the horseandcart.