The Nile Barrages at Qanater

The Point Where The Nile Divides Into The Two Branches That Make The Delta, Spanned By Nineteenth Century Barrages That Began The Modern Control Of The River, With Long Public Gardens Along The Banks That Have Been Cairo'S Picnic Ground For A Century And A Half And A River Boat That Still Runs Up From The City · Qanater El Khayriya, Qalyubia

Twenty-two kilometres north of Cairo the Nile does the thing that made Egypt: it splits into the Rosetta and Damietta branches and becomes the Delta. Muhammad Ali's engineers began building barrages across both arms here in the 1840s to raise the summer water level and irrigate the cotton, the work dragged on for decades, and the result - finished around 1861 and much rebuilt since - is the beginning of the modern control of the river that ends at Aswan. It is a handsome piece of nineteenth-century engineering with crenellated towers, and the Irrigation Service planted long public gardens along the banks beside it. Those gardens are the reason Cairenes come: a century and a half of picnics, rowing boats, bicycles and wedding photographs, reached by river boat up from the city when one is running. It is not a monument so much as the capital's oldest day out, and on a Friday afternoon it is comprehensively packed.

Where the Nile splits into its Rosetta and Damietta branches, 22 km north of central Cairo, Qanater El Khayriya, Qalyubia, Egypt

The gardens keep daylight hours with a small charge and are open daily, longer in summer; the barrages themselves are working irrigation structures and are seen from the roads and the bank rather than toured. The gardens are EXTREMELY crowded on Fridays, Saturdays and Egyptian feast days and comparatively empty midweek, which is the single thing worth planning around. WHETHER THE RIVER BOAT FROM CAIRO IS RUNNING has varied with the season and the operator, so confirm rather than assuming - the road takes under an hour from the northern suburbs when traffic allows. Rowing boats and bicycles are hired on the spot in season. Photographing the barrage structures themselves is better not pressed, as they are working infrastructure.

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