Lost communications and a berth in the weeds

Question – what good is one walkie-talkie? I’m not sure if that would be a walkie, or a talkie, but in any event the answer is – not much use. We bought a pair before we set off in order to make it easy to communicate in locks – we saw someone using them on a previous trip and thought we’d try them. They work very well, they save a lot of shouting and waving, and with a range of over a mile they come in useful in many contexts. However my unit has stopped working now, so the one that is left has nothing to communicate with. At least we think it has stopped working - we can’t be sure as it is lying at the bottom of the canal. I carried it clipped to the outside of a pocket, where it was easy to grab, but as I was getting onto the boat at a lock a rope caught it and pulled it out of the pocket. It bounced off the side of the boat and into the water with a very terminal “plop”!

Posie fascinated by some moorhen chicks

We had a major lie-in this morning, as the dogs allowed us to sleep until twenty to eight. Bridget had another run through the field of maize before we got under way at about 9:15. We had a busy day ahead of us, with 20 locks down to Wheelock. Altogether from the exit to Harecastle Tunnel down to Wheelock there are 26 locks in about seven miles, a stretch known as Heartbreak Hill. We did six of them last night before mooring, and now we had to complete the run.

On the canals going downhill is no easier than going up, and in some ways harder, for the helmsman at least. You need to be alert while in the locks, to keep well forward away from the cil or lip at the base of the upstream lock door. If you get this caught under the stern of your boat as the level drops the bows will be forced under water, and in extreme cases you can sink. For the person operating the locks down is as hard as up – there are as many heavy gates to open and paddles to crank.

Church Locks

One of the oddities of this part of the canal is that many of the locks are doubled – two single-boat locks side by side. This is intended to speed up traffic, and it does. It is different from the double-sized locks on some other canals (such as the northern Shroppie) where two boats travel together in one wide lock. That style is wasteful of water when a single boat uses the lock on its own, and you can get swirled around a lot.

Brindley's bridge and Telford's side by side.

Mow Cop from Lowton

We met an old man at our first lock, and he walked with us for a while, telling us some of the local canal history. The Trent & Mersey was built by James Brindley in the 1770s (he is buried just a few miles from where we moored last night) but it was improved in many places fifty years later by Thomas Telford, who also built the Shroppie. He was responsible for doubling most of the locks on this hill, and also other improvements including the removal of a staircase at Lawton, which caused delays. The man showed us a bridge where Brindley had built one arch in brick. Then later when Telford built the second parallel lock he added a second arch, but this time in stone.

Disused lock at Pavilion

Built to last

Although notionally all but one of these lock were doubled, in practice several of them have subsided or fallen into disuse, so the pair becomes a normal single. Loulie also found the locks very heavy to work, with stiff doors and paddle mechanisms which were almost impossible to shift. Without the ratchet windlass handle she would have been unable to do them at all.

The M6 again

Because the distance is so short the locks kept coming in unrelenting fashion. At one point there was a gap of about a mile, and Loulie got off to give the dogs a walk, but other than that there didn’t seem time for lunch or even a cup of tea. The double locks do make things quicker if someone is already using one when you arrive, but it’s hard to tell from a distance which lock you will be using, and I had a few awkward manoeuvres when I had to get across from the lock mooring to the opposite side in a short space. At Hassall Green we worked the lock in the shadow of the M6, last seen on Monday down near Stafford, about 25 minutes away by motorway. At half two we realised that we had done 18 of the 20 locks, so we took a break for lunch.

After eating, and retrieving Bridget from a golf course, we did the last two locks and moored just the other side of Wheelock, exactly where we stopped in Bunbury Mill (a hire boat) on 27^th June. Only six weeks ago, but it seems an age – having our own boat has completely changed our approach to the canals. This also means that we have closed the loop – we have now sailed every mile and every lock of the Four Counties Ring, in a variety of boats and at different times.

Snug moorings

We had dinner at the same Italian restaurant we used in June, having promised them we would be back in our own boat – though we also brought an extra dog. We are moored very snugly in some high bankside vegetation, with enough of a gap at the stern to get ourselves and the dogs through. Tomorrow is Middlewich, and some pumpout excitement.

It's not the poop deck, it's the pup deck.

Today: 6.5 hours. 5.3 miles. 20 locks.

Voyage: 53 hours. 90.6 miles. 87 locks.