Canal - Ancient and Modern

I suppose it's not so ancient, really - work on the Royal Canal started in 1760 and it was completed in 1817.
When the motorway was extended it involved a huge engineering project (1996) to get the canal, railway line and various sewage and water pipes. We have a friend who was studying civil engineering in college a couple of years before this interchange was completed, and he said it was a project that they studied in college. Anyway, when they were upgrading all the motorway interchanges over the last couple of years, that meant even more works. Right now I can't find the photos I took a couple of years ago. I know I took some - we walked down on a snowy day as far as we could go till we hit a dead end at the new interchange. Yesterday we decided to walk down and take another look - now you can once again continue walking along the length of the canal.
It's just strange to have such a green, verdant bank before the Twelfth Lock and the marina, and then have a short passage over the motorway and through a concrete jungle before once again finding yourself in a rural setting and the 11th lock.

I'll have another look for a couple of photos of the incomplete interchange, but right now I'm stiff from 180 miles on the back of C's motorbike on a rather wet and windy day, and a bath is beckoning. Still, it was a good experience - while some of our biking in Greece has been on main roads, most of it has been down side roads and tracks, and it was good to discover that motorway biking may actually be less boring than motorway driving. Except for the wind...