About Towpath Treks

history

This all started with a free yahoo website with photographs of historical Liverpool buildings, holidays and sport. I then got my own website www.redstarline.org.uk named after a shipping line operated by the White Star Line of Liverpool. The site proved popular especially the pages about the canal and the American Civil War in Liverpool. When it became clear that I was going to cover the whole 127.25 miles of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal rather than just the first 35 as I had intended I decided to get a new site. The new site www.towpathtreks.co.uk would be just for canals.

towpath treks

This site is named after my favourite guide to walking canals, "Towpath Treks" by George Birtill. In his book he walks from Cherry Tree to Tarleton. I like his style and humour and the fact that he is more worried about swans than youths on the towpath.

the aim

The aim of this site is to give a photographic guide to the canals of England, especially the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. I hope to provide historical notes and points of interest along with my photographs. I would like to think that this site will encourage people to use the canals for walking, boating or cycling. I also know that a lot of ex-pats enjoying seeing places they used to know and love.

I am also interested in recording details of the canals which may be lost over time. I hope to find as many mileposts and stones as possible as I know many have gone in recent years. I am also documenting the construction of the canal link across Liverpool's pier head.

construction

The first version of towpathtreks.co.uk was created on MS Frontpage. This version is being done on Adobe Dreamweaver. This version will have CSS and XHTML whch I am learning as I go. I am self taught with HTML, j-script, javascript and a few other things so I may make mistakes along the way.

design

I have designed the site to be search engine friendly. I will be working on it accessabiliy once the content is sorted out. I have tried to make the site user friendly and easy to navigate.

the adverts

Yes the site has adverts, I'd rather not have them but maybe they will help towards the costs of running the site, getting out and about to take photos etc

If you want to help click the adverts or if you dont like adverts I recommend you download Mozillas Firefox and use the advert blocker on it.

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and would like to know your options in relation to·not having this information used by these companies, click here.

photographs

Most photographs are taken with a Canon 300D with a variety on lenses. I now have a smaller camera, a Samsung S630 for taking snapshots. I edit my photos on Photoshop and use Easy Thumbnails by Fookes Software.

advice on websites

I would recommend that anyone with  website should sign up to the google webmaster tools. They give great information about your site and will help diagnose any problems or errors on it.