THE fur trappers who opened up the North American wilderness two centuries ago looked upon it as a disease and had a name for it: cabin fever.

Locked away in snowbound shacks for months on end, they often turned on their companions in fights that sometimes led to murder.

Now as far as I am aware, thank goodness, the closing of the Leeds-Liverpool canal and its towpaths in Skipton has not actually led to homicide.

But now I know what cabin fever feels like, along with perhaps a thousand or more people who live on the Gargrave Road side of the canal.

It started with the floods of last November, got worse with the closing of the Brewery Lane swing bridge, and has now been hit with a triple whammy by foot and mouth restrictions on the north side footpath towards Aireville Park.

For all that long, cold, weary winter I have been cut off from roughly half my life. And although I have not succumbed, the thought of murder has passed my mind from time to time.

You see, my family have a greenish-sort of conscience. We rarely use a car in Skipton. We walk: to the supermarkets, to the High Street, to our favourite pubs, to my allotment.

We normally walk across the Brewery Lane swing bridge - scene of everyday motoring mayhem when it was open - or along the towpath into town. Walking is cheap, good exercise, and non-polluting.

Then, at a stroke, a visit to the supermarket meant either a grind down the High Street in the car - it's a long walk with heavy groceries - or using the bypass. My allotment was suddenly a four-mile trip away, there and back, via the bypass.

On top of that, every road gang in the world descended outside the railway station to make Broughton Road an obstacle course and suddenly Herriots Hotel, one of my "locals," was marooned in space, cut off by road at front and towpath behind.

Businesses all along the north bank have suffered too. My so-called "corner shop" - it's actually in the middle of the row in Brook Street - lost much trade in fresh-cut sandwiches from many Broughton Road establishments including the fire station and the ambulance brigade.

My daughter, who walks to the railway station along with scores of other commuters, had to risk crossing the park, a mud slide for much of the winter, or go by car via town, as though the early morning traffic were not bad enough.

Now why am I so angry? The floods that closed part of the canal was, I suppose, an Act of God, although we gave Him a helping hand through global warming, or so the experts say.

Foot and mouth might go into the same category, perhaps, although slack import controls on foreign meat and a lamentable performance by the Ministry of Agriculture added more than somewhat to its spread.

British Waterways have also been somewhat slow off the mark but, no doubt, the hideous winter weather did not help: I am told you cannot pour concrete in freezing weather and freezing it was for much of the time spent on the rebuilding of the Brook Street swing bridge.

Now, I live near a spot on a beautiful canal which can only be crossed via lifting barriers and flashing lights that would have graced Colditz Castle. Welcome to Checkpoint Charlie, Craven style.

I do not blame British Waterways for building this monstrosity because it was forced on them. Otherwise, as sure as eggs is eggs, someone would have been killed on that bridge and the waterways may have been held legally responsible in this litigation mad age.

So this is why I am angry. The culprits who made these precautions necessary were the motorised maniacs who used the old bridge as a combination of swimming pool diving board and the Canal Turn on the Grand National course at Aintree.

These cretins are no doubt unaware that the tilt mechanism designed to absorb the impact of vehicles crossing the bridge was invented by the ancient Egyptians. It was one of the great engineering breakthroughs of its age.

But it was, of course, designed to take the weight of a horse and cart, not a two ton 4x4 hitting it at 30mph driven by a lady on her way to Morrisons, nor a Transit van full of builders and their equipment on the way to the pub, and most certainly not by teenage drivers in clapped-out wrecks.

In 15 years using that bridge, often several times a day, I have been thrown into the air, pushed against the railings, and actually nudged out of the way by a 4x4's "roo bars" designed to fend off kangaroos in the Australian outback rather than aging journalists in the Yorkshire Dales.

I've been lucky. My wife, on her first day out after weeks at home with a back injury, was thrown into the air and then had to injure herself further in preventing me delivering the driver a smart smack on the nose.

And one pedestrian was picked up by the collar of his coat and carried across the bridge hanging from the wing mirror of a speeding Ford Transit.

Brewery Lane swing bridge was due to re-open yesterday (Wednesday), and my two Skiptons will be one again.

I did not know how much I loved the Leeds-Liverpool canal until I lost it. And now we all have another chance to realise what a magical asset it is to this town and its many visitors.

This time, let's treat it with the reverence it deserves!