From the canals of Shropshire to Mars
As you may have heard on Radio Shropshire earlier today, Shrewsbury and Newport Canals Trust is heading from the canals of Shropshire to the canals of Mars.
Last year Nasa announced that they were looking for names to be engraved on a small plate that would be onboard the Perserverance Rover that blasts off to Mars on July 17th 2020. I thought, what a great idea and promptly added our name to the other 10.9 million names being micro engraved. Soon after I received the ticket.
Note the mileage points for the trip 313,586.649. If only they were Airmiles we could all go on holiday. So why do this? Is it so that some alien in a few million years time will find a piece of space junk on Mars use a microscope, discover us and decide to come visit?
As nice as that might be for our ancestors. It, according to some people in the area; is about as likely to happen as us to restore these canals. If we believed that we wouldn’t be here now would we!
This is all a great endeavour which needs support from us all and a great many more too. We don’t have the USA government behind us with $billions. We have each other and the great work of our volunteers. There are companies out there who are looking for great stories to cover. We have several of them. There is the Flaxmill end of the canal, there is Berwick Tunnel, there is Wappenshall, there is Newport and there is Norbury Junction. Best of all is the ambition to join them all up again. Then we have Bainton and Berkhamstead our 2 historic canal boats who will do more for the canals in the future when restored than they probably ever did in their 200,000 mile journeys working on our canal system.
Get out there talk to people about us and what we are doing. Tell them we are going to Mars. We are, in name. Our trust and all it’s members deserve to be known by all. Maybe even as far as Mars.
Oh yes, Canals were first discovered on Mars by Angelo Secchi in 1858 this was confirmed by Giovanni Schiavelli in 1877, he named them ‘canelli’. American astronomer Percival Lowell in 1894 explained them as being irrigation canals taking water from the poles to the inner areas of Mars that could only have been made by intelligent beings!
Sorry I’m afraid the canals on Mars stories aren’t real. They are pure fantasy that was exposed finally when good quality photos could be taken of Mars in the early 20th century.
