Thousands of volunteers have helped with the mammoth task of cleaning 2,000 miles of waterways across England and Wales

There were shopping trolleys galore, of course, including 24 in a Sheffield lock alone; countless bikes and hundreds of tyres. Thousands of plastic bags, umpteen gas bottles, several car batteries and other debris were among the other objects removed from rivers, canals, locks and bridges during clear up operations across England and Wales by the Canal & River Trust in 2014.

It was during one such clear up at Salmon Lane lock in Tower Hamlets, east London, in March, that volunteers with the Lower Regent’s Coalition found a second world war hand grenade with the pin still in it, sparking a police armed response and a controlled explosion.

The grenade, like so many of the objects dredged up, is the final line in an unknown story, uncovered somewhere along the 2,000 miles of waterways by the men and women who give their spare time to keeping English and Welsh canals clean. It is far from the only weapon discovered by the people attempting to restore the glory of natural wildlife to the canals, and far from the strangest object found in the water.



Then there were the 14 safes, all opened, found in the River Lee under London’s North Circular road; laughing-gas bottles in the Paddington arm of the Grand Union canal in London were probably linked to nearby rave sites. Laughing gas being the “high” of choice for many young people attending dance music festivals these days.

A 2013 Mercedes A-class car was found in one northern canal, apparently a very expensive casualty of a marital dispute But it was not alone in meeting a watery end – six other sunken cars have been found in the much-abused river Lee.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A monitor found during the clean-up of a stretch of the Regent’s canal near Salmon Lane lock, London. Photograph: David Levene

Jonathan Ludford, the Canal & River Trust’s national communications manager, admitted this rollcall of the stolen, lost and dumped could raise a smile as well as a frown. But, he said, “there is an element of the community who don’t treat the canals with the respect they deserve when you think what these waterways did for the nation”.

Motorbikes and scooters were revealed across the network. Two pizza delivery bikes, complete with soggy pizzas, were on the bottom of the Regent’s canal in London. The Leeds and Liverpool canal provided a watery grave for a 16ft, dead python that had presumably outgrown its owner’s home.

Two bags containing 2,000 £1 coins emerged from Tuel Lane lock on the Rochdale canal. In east London, a Lugerpistol was found on the Hertford Union canal in Hackney.

Plastic bags, bottles and pieces of wire endangered wildlife in and out of the water. “When we drained the Regent’s canal [to repair the towpath], some of the fish we found were unbelievable: pike, carp that were 35 years old, they were huge....” Ludford said. “It shows the resilience of wildlife but we need to protect it. There is nothing like the iridescent flash of a kingfisher.”

Across England and Wales, in locks that may not have been drained for 25 years, damp time-capsules of now outdated technology have also been revealed: typewriters, faxes, laptops, personal stereos and mobile phones. “They are pieces of industrial heritage that are unique and we have to look after them,” Ludford added.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A toy found during the clean up of a stretch of the Regent’s canal near Salmon Lane lock, London. Photograph: David Levene

The debris, bad for wildlife, is no good for boaters either. “If a piece of wire or a plastic bag gets caught in the propeller, you will soon know about it.”

The long list of canal litter, compiled for the Guardian, comes as canal travelogues – in the company of actors Prunella Scales and Timothy West or former political correspondent John Sergeant – prove the perennial popularity of Britain’s waterways on our TV screens.

Despite this, little is really known about the people who keep our canals going. When the Canal Trust took over from the state-owned British Waterways almost three years ago it was given the £460m property portfolio and a £800m guarantee of funding to be distributed annually over 15 years. But over 2,000 miles of waterways require a lot of upkeep, and that’s why volunteers are needed. Funding includes a £39m government grant and another £39m from boating and moorings.

In tough financial times, the trust, which has 1,600 staff, says it has so far recruited 10,000 “friends”, who contribute on average £5 a month, while volunteers last year provided 57,000 days of unpaid work, including as lock keepers .

The government crowned the canal trust the “National Trust for the waterways” but in fact it is dwarfed by the National Trust, the much loved guardian of coastline, houses, parks and nature reserves. with its 4.2 million members, 60,000 volunteers and 10,000 staff.

The comparison is “quite an unhelpful parallel”, said Ruth Ruderham, head of fundraising at the Canal Trust. She aims to have recruited 100,000 regular financial supporters by the time the trust reaches its 10th birthday in 2022.

About £3.7m has been raised by Ruderham’s team through donors, individual and corporate, since the trust began. But conservation work costs, so only about two-thirds of the £200,000 bill for restoring the grade II* Nantwich aqueduct, designed by Thomas Telford in 1826, will come from the trust’s funds. The rest depends on help from local councils and partnerships with businesses and local tourism and civic groups.

“We are free for everyone, open 24 hours a day, every day,” said Ruderham. “The proposition we have is this is a national treasure that we all love, that is available to everyone. People give more philanthropically, I suppose, rather than in their enlightened self interest.”