The price we paid for stopping for lunch

After collecting some train tickets from Stalybridge Station we set off down the last four locks of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. In some ways I was glad to leave the HNC behind - the stiff paddle gear, the low pounds, the shallow water even in "full" pounds, the dodgy bit of Standedge Tunnel - but in other respects I was sorry. The views of hills close at hand, the old mills, the friendly people, the excitement of Standedge Tunnel. We had rushed it; it would have been good to have spent more time savouring the walks and villages. We shall return!

At the bottom lock we just had to pose for the camera.

Some of the locks on this canal have ingeniously cranked balance beams in order to accommodate bridges. Lock 2W (or is it W2?) has bottom gates which, from a glance of the balance beams, look like they are open when in fact they are closed.

The bottom gates of Lock 1W are even stranger: one balance beam is conventional but the other has a double crank.

The highlight of today's cruise was Marple Aqueduct. New steps have been put in to make it easy to look at it from below, but I just set the camera to wide angle and waited for a train to pass by on the viaduct. None came.

Of course, as soon as I had given up waiting, one came along.

What was the price we paid for stopping for lunch? We were overtaken by another boat, Leo, who proceeded up the Marple Locks in front of us. I had to turn every one when we followed half an hour later. We caught them up even though most of the locks were in their favour. (To be fair, though, we overtook them when they stopped after operating the lift bridge; we had managed to nip through after them.)

Leo even got the prime mooring on the junction. The 48 hour moorings on the Macclesfield Canal just the other side of the junction were full so we banged a couple of pins into the steepish bank and put the gangplank out. We had a good meal in the Ring o' Bells pub.

What's this? No locks to do tomorrow? I think it might be the only lock-free cruising day we will have done since setting off in March.

Down the Ashton

I'm sure last time I did the 18 locks on the Ashton Canal they weren't the slog they were today. Perhaps it's because last time we were ascending. Or perhaps it's because last time we weren't following a boat and having to turn almost every lock.

I'd set the alarm for 0715. Five minutes earlier and we'd have been down the locks an hour sooner, I'm sure. Oh well, there's no rush, and we're all set for new (to us) waterways tomorrow. Actually, we're already on new water as we have tied up having turned right onto the Rochdale Canal from Ducie Street Junction. 100 yards ahead of us is the first lock, Lock 83.

There's a rich feast of old mills and warehouses on the Ashton. Here's a sample of lovely brickwork at the water's edge.

There are occasional surprises, such as this garden and mooring.

At Audenshaw, in the vicinity of Guide Bridge and a historic railway junction, is a boatyard full of railway memorabilia and some interesting boats. (I've mislabelled the photo as "Droylsden Marina", it isn't.)

I think Maria operated on the Peak Forest Canal and was used in a re-enactment of loading with limestone when Bugsworth Basins reopened after restoration.

Samuel Barlow boat Daphne is there ...

... as is Clio, on the inside of Daphne.

Just beyond, under the motorway bridge, is an old (day?) boat with mooring pins jammed in the 'ellum as a tiller. It's there, presumably, to keep the rain out of the hold to stop it sinking.

As we got nearer the centre of Manchester we began to see more 20th and 21st century buildings. Downstream of the Clayton Locks is the Etihad Stadium, home of Manchester City Football Club. For a time, while I was at university, I lived within walking distance of their old ground at Maine Road.

Today we saw the first dumped supermarket trolleys of this trip. (We've been away for three weeks now, but it seems much, much longer. "Home" seems a different world, somehow.) Back to the trolleys - this is the second of two today, in a side arm.

Nearly all the locks on the Ashton have Lockgear hydraulic paddle gear with large spindles. I got used to them, but it was a relief to be able to wind one or two conventional rack-and-pinion type paddles. All the paddle gear had "handcuff key"-operated anti-vandal locks in various states of repair.

Incidentally, the out-of-focus sign behind reveals that CRT have yet to plaster one of their stickers over the original BW notice. Are these really the badlands? We saw no evidence of trouble.

The buildings got increasingly wacky. This one looks to be a stack of three giant playbricks, only approximately aligned, with huge lettering on them. The words are the names of waterways in the area, including Bridgewater Canal, River Irwell, Rochdale Canal. I couldn't read it all as I was too close.

And so to our mooring for the night, just on the Rochdale Canal. After a walk through the city we had a barbecue. A brick wall and a bench provided the perfect place out of the wind.

I had to attend to the prop just once - a thick bramble was round it. Easy to remove. I've been warned to expect worse on the Rochdale, but I can be in and out of the weed hatch in seconds!

Two-way working? I don't think so

We moved from Romiley today (at last), but only as far as Dukinfield Junction where the Peak Forest Canal meets the Ashton Canal.

The first bridge we came to was this marvellous brick specimen carrying a railway line, although you wouldn't know that merely by passing under it.

A little further on a house on the offside has a narrowboat weather vane.

We heard on the news this evening about an incident involving an aeroplane having to be escorted by fighter jets as it came in to Manchester Airport. This wasn't the one, but I happened to take this photo of a low-flying plane overhead.

Rather more interestingly, we squeezed through Woodley Tunnel, grateful that we didn't have a chimney sticking up, to find that the sign reads "Method of working: two-way traffic".

You can indeed get two narrowboats through the tunnel in opposite directions, but not at the same time!

We tied up before the junction, but later decided to top up the water at the cunningly concealed water point at Portland Basin. I'm sure it's not an official water point as it is difficult to get the boat to it, and it has a permanently attached hose (which, of course, was very useful). While there I took some photos of the scene. Here's the junction looking along the Ashton Canal towards Manchester.

And this is the Ashton Canal Warehouse of 1834 which now houses a museum. We looked round the museum in the afternoon. It's good, but the labelling feels somewhat patronising, much of it being geared more to schoolchildren than adults.

Tied up in the basin itself are several old wooden boats, including Southam, which we saw on the Peak Forest Canal.

At least one of these boats is not what you might call a "runner".

After watering up we wanted to get back to the "safety" of the Peak Forest Canal, where there were some boats tying up. I knew there was a winding hole just past the lift bridge, so we headed up there. Before the lift bridge there was a wide which I thought might just be big enough to wind in. It wasn't.

Never mind, it wasn't an official winding hole. So we carried on through the lift bridge to the winding hole as marked in Nicholson and started to wind there. It was a bit overgrown with trees, but I had my bow saw out and cut back as much as I could reach.

At the towpath I used the shears to trim back some brambles to make it easier to get the back end round.

But it wasn't to be. The winding hole was too silted up for the bow to go any further forward. We had to give up and go another 3/4 mile to the next marked winding hole, just south of Warble's Boatyard and just north of Bridge 4, where we got round all right. Then we headed back to our mooring for a rather late tea.

We're ready for our assault on the Ashton Locks tomorrow morning, and then we look forward to welcoming Jim, formerly of Starcross, who we hope will join us as we ascend the Rochdale Canal.

All this, and I haven't said anything about what we did yesterday, which was to visit Andrew and Bekka in Sheffield. We cheated, and took the train. I'll have to write properly about this at some point, as the train went through beautiful Peak District countryside.

A swiz at Swizzels

Bugsworth to Stalybridge

Nine week cruise - day 11 - Tuesday 12th July 2005

Another hot and sunny day. We left Bugsworth Basin at 1005 and turned left to go to the end of the canal at Whaley Bridge where we watered up. This is one of the places I used to go through on my way to Salford University back in the 1970s - and think, "Wouldn't it be amazing to explore the canal here one day?" And here I was! OK, so it's taken 30 years, but I made it. Left Whaley Bridge at 1120 after looking at the remains of the tramway.


We stopped at New Mills to look at the Swizzels Matlow sweet factory. David tried to blag his way in for a look round, and made it as far as the staff (sweet) shop, but there we were turned away.


Next were the wonderful Marple locks, where, at one point, you head straight for the road at car level, before diving underneath. Spectacular!


Such a lot of good stuff today - the Marple Aqueduct provided more spectacle ...


... and we legged through Woodley Tunnel for fun.

At Dukinfield Junction at 1955 we turned right, heading for the Huddersfield Narrow Canal - more excitement to come! We finally moored at 2215 in Stalybridge outside an old factory just above lock 7W. Isn't Tesco handy?

Today:
11.0 hours
17 miles 7 furlongs
22 locks

Cumulative:
95.5 h; 198 m 1 f; 97 l