Up in the clouds

Tuesday 30^th July

Immediately ahead of us today was the Bosley Flight, twelve locks taking us back down 110 feet towards the Trent and Mersey canal. Compared with Marple, where sixteen locks raise the canal 208 feet, this isn’t quite as steep, but it is still a fairly challenging bit of work.

Looking down Bosley Flight from the top

Before we got there we had to traverse a lift bridge (electrically operated, no hand-cranking like the Peak Forest) and then before the locks we stopped at a water point to refill. I have never seen a water point that filled so fast, we did ¾ of the tank in about 15 minutes, many places that would have been half an hour and more.

After that we started on the locks. I had been nervous all the time we were filling in case someone came past us, because following someone through a set of locks makes things very much slower and harder – you have to fill each one again before you can go in. But nobody had appeared. However, as I cycled forward to the first lock, having left Loulie to bring the boat up, I saw another narrowboat emerging from a side arm parallel to the lock, and facing down hill. However when I asked him if he was going down the flight he said no, he was just winding – and proceeded to turn very neatly in a space I would not have thought feasible.

So that meant we were at the front of the queue going down, and to make things even better there was a boat coming up Lock 1 (the top lock) so all the locks behind ought to be full and set for us. There was a vlockie helping them, and apparently he had worked all the way up with them, so I was hopeful. However when we had put Loulie through the lock he said goodbye, so maybe his shift was ending.

Bosley Flight

I was on the bike, cycling forward to get each lock ready to work Loulie through. The locks are all in very good repair, the gates are tight and all the sluices work well. However the design is poor for a single person operating the locks, because there are two top gates and two sluices, one each side, but the only bridge is at the bottom of the lock, beyond the lower gates. So in order to open the top gates you have to open one, then walk all the way down the lock, across the bridge and up the other side. When the boat comes in you then close one gate, climb over the boat to the other side, and close that gate. By contrast at Marple there is just one top gate, with the handle on the towpath side, and the sluice winding mechanisms are also both on that side – so you never need to cross the lock at all.

All this was just grit, thinking that it could have been a little easier, but we proceeded smoothly down the locks, with Bosley Cloud looming in the distance ahead. However after we had done six of the twelve, the Cloud disappeared behind the clouds, thick black rainclouds, and we were suddenly in torrential rain, with occasional high-level summer thunder. I was reminded of Ginger Rogers’ pointing out that she did everything the Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. So doing the second six locks was just like doing the first six, but in pouring rain and heavy wet weather gear.

When we came out of the bottom lock the rain had abated somewhat, and we moored just below the lock point and had a slightly belated lunch. We debated whether we might stay there for the night, as the forecast was for more rain, but the constant traffic and bustle at the lock would have disturbed the dogs incessantly. So we unmoored, and carried on for just a mile or so. We tried a couple of possible spots, but they had wide ledges to keep us away from the bank. Eventually we found a spot, very remote, and settled down to wash and dry some of the wet clothes and dog beds that we have accumulated.

Map at 30-7-19

TODAY: 5 HOURS. 4.3 MILES. 12 LOCKS. 1 BRIDGE.

VOYAGE: 54.65 HOURS. 71.3 MILES. 55 LOCKS. 8 BRIDGES

Alpaca mac if you do

Monday 29^th July

We heard the last of the rain on the roof this morning, but by the time we were up it had stopped, and during the morning it developed into a very nice day, hot and sunny but not oppressively so, as it was on Thursday. We have had the full gamut of English summer weather in the past few days, from Saharan heatwave to Indian monsoon.

After breakfast Loulie took the dogs (minus Ruby) off for a good walk, while I followed to pick them up when they were ready. They got a good way before I reached them, a couple of miles, and along the way Minnie suddenly stopped and stared into a field. She had found some very strange creatures, though oddly the other four dogs didn’t seem interested in the slightest. And as the photos confirm, these are indeed the legendary Alpacas of Higher Poynton.

Alpacas looking at Minnie

We had some good fortune, because I had been worried about the collapsed state of much of the bank, and how I would get in close to pick the girls up. However I was at a bit of good towpath at a marina when I saw two boats coming the other way at a bridge, and I reversed (very nicely!) over to the side to let them past. Just at that moment the dogs came back through the bridge, followed by Loulie, and they were able to board in style. We pushed on, at one point getting a view of White Nancy. This is a folly/viewpoint built at the top of Kerridge Hill, overlooking Bollington, to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo.

White Nancy, just visible at the left of the summit ahead

This was the day we were losing our guest, Blossom, and we arranged to meet Shirley in Bollington at noon. Bollington is a nice little town, but built on very steep land around and above the river Dean. The canal cuts across the valley on a high aqueduct, so the main road and most of the town is 150 feet below. However two huge mills, Clarence and Adelphi, were built right next to the canal, and we moored next to Clarence, which is in very good shape and home to lots of businesses and a café and wine bar. It is nice to see one of these old buildings being maintained well – usually they are pretty scruffy, maybe home to a few lock-up style businesses or used for rough storage.

Clarence Mill at Bollington, at the north end of town

Shirley arrived and had a coffee, while I went down into the town to do some shopping. It was very easy scooting down on the bike, but coming back loaded it was a question of using the bike as a cargo carrier and pushing it up the hills. We said farewell to Blossom, and “Hello!” to our heavy-duty wet weather gear, which Jonjo had dropped with Shirley, we having forgotten to bring it with us. This would have been very useful on Sunday, but there is no doubt we will need it again, looking at the forecast for next week.

Adelphi Mill at the south end of Bollington

Teggs Nose

After Bollington we went through Macclesfield, or at least the eastern outskirts, the canal doesn’t really go near the town centre. There is an impressive warehouse and mill, which used to belong to Hovis.

Old Hovis Warehouse at Macclesfield

We were now back out in the country, and looking for somewhere to stop. As always on a strange canal you have the dilemma – do we settle for an OK mooring here, or travel forward looking for a better spot? – the point being that it is impossible in practice to go back once you have passed somewhere. We looked at a couple of places but didn’t fancy them, then soon after working a swing bridge (no gravel-related problems this time) we found a good place, on shuttering and well away from anyone else, so we put in the mooring clips and settled down for the night.

Moorings at Lyme Green

Map at 29-7-19

TODAY: 6 HOURS. 9.7 MILES. 0 LOCKS. 1 BRIDGE.

VOYAGE: 49.65 HOURS. 67 MILES. 43 LOCKS. 7 BRIDGES

You shall not pass

Sunday 28th July

It rained very hard all night, loud enough on the roof to wake us several times, and it was forecast to carry on all day. We got ourselves organised and we were just feeding the dogs when a walker passing by mentioned that a boater around the corner was having trouble with the swing bridge, he couldn’t open it. As we were going to have to go that way, I walked down the towpath to see what was up.

I found a man and his wife, on the narrowboat Northgate. The bridge was jammed because the rain had washed a whole lot of gravel and small stones down the lane, and into the curved groove between the bridge body and the stone rim. This meant that we could not rotate the bridge, it wouldn’t budge. The man had already started to scrape and lever the stones out, using a screwdriver, but the gap was much deeper than the length of the screwdriver, and many of the stones seemed stuck fast anyway.

I went back to our boat to see if I could find anything longer, but the only item I found, a brush handle, was too wide to go into the slot. At that point I called CRT, who said someone would be along, and we went back to scraping.

The offending bridge (after fixing)

Over time we were joined by other boaters, and the CRT people came. They had a couple of long thin metal fence poles, the sort that have a loop at one end to take cord or wire, and we started prodding and scraping with them – they were at least long enough, but it was still tedious work. They went off to see if they could find a pressure hose, and our small but growing team continued – one guy found a bucket and start to use that to wash away the smaller stuff, which allowed the rest of us to see and move the bigger bits more easily. After about three hours chipping away like the Seven Dwarves we had got out enough stones to allow us to shift the thing, and we were on our way. In the end it was fun in an odd sense, like the challenges you get on a management training course – "with this limited choice of tools your team has to achieve the following objectives".

The start of the Macc

The rain hadn’t been too bad, but it picked up as we sailed back to Marple, and stopped to replenish our water. We only did that yesterday, but Loulie had done several loads of washing in the meantime. She got the machine, a little single tub, before this trip, so that we can be self-sustaining on longer journeys. She has to intervene manually more often than she does at home, but it works well, though it does use up a lot of our water.

Goyt Mill in Marple

Navigating in the pouring rain

When the water had been refilled we set off down the Macclesfield Canal, past a really large old building, Goyt Mill, the biggest we have seen since Manchester. It was really torrential now, and we were looking for a place to stop, but this is a busy canal with a lot of people moored in the good spots, and quite a bit of the towpath wall is collapsing, so you cannot moor. We went about four miles, through High Lane, and then in Higher Poynton we found a very nice mooring, with no-one close and shuttering to attach the mooring pins to. The only downside is that we have very poor internet signal, so I am writing this up offline to be posted when we reach civilisation.

Map at 28-7-19

TODAY: 4.75 HOURS. 6.9 MILES. 0 LOCKS. 2 BRIDGEs.

VOYAGE: 43.65 HOURS. 57.3 MILES. 43 LOCKS. 6 BRIDGES

End of the line

Saturday 27th July

We made a fairly leisurely start today. John went for a run first thing, back all the way into Marple, a bit over four miles for the round trip. Then Loulie took the girls for a proper long walk, down into the valley of the Goyt below the canal. We set off eventually some time after eleven, and headed up the valley towards Whalley Bridge and the end of the canal. 

This is a curious landscape. We are well into the Peak District, so the canal is following a narrow winding valley, with spectacular hills rising on either side - we had a view of Kinder Scout at one point. But the small towns we are passing through - Disley, New Mills, Furness Vale - grew up around the cotton mills, mining and other centres of the early Industrial Revolution. And of course the canal was at the centre of that. So it is bordered in places by small factories - some old and picturesque, some modern and ugly - and rows of terraced houses. Then you are back winding through heavy woodland with hills glimpsed beyond.

It started to rain as we set off, and essentially didn't stop all day. We were in no hurry, and travelled slowly up to New Mills, then Furness Vale, where we spotted a workshop beside the canal which is the base of Andy Russell, who painted Eileen, and whose signature (“Lovingly Hand Painted by Andy Russell”) appears on many of the nicest-looking boats.

We pressed on down to the end of the canal, which is Y-shaped, with two arms of about half a mile each. The first one goes down into Whalley Bridge, where it ends in a small triangular basin next to a warehouse which was built in around 1800 when the canal reached the town. There's a water point there, and we filled up, about half an hour in the rain. On the way back down that arm we moored again next to a Tesco, and picked up supplies. 

Whalley Bridge Basin

Back at the junction we turned down the other arm to Bugworth Basin, which is a much bigger transhipment area, now preserved by volunteers, with lots of dead end arms and bridges. We had thought of staying overnight, but it was quite crowded, and didn't look like our sort of place. As we left we passed a boatload of drunken young men, all crowded in the stern of their hire boat, and we were very glad we had made the right decision.

Bugsworth Basin

We were aiming to moor close to the spot we had occupied last night, but in the end we found a place a few hundred yards short which looked good, and moored there, on the edge of Disley. We were opposite some houses, which meant we felt a little embarrassed when our dogs wouldn’t stop barking, but at least we were out of the rain at last.

Map at 27-7-19

TODAY: 7.5 HOURS. 9.2 MILES. 0 LOCKS. 2 BRIDGEs.

VOYAGE: 39.9 HOURS. 50.4 MILES. 43 LOCKS. 4 BRIDGES

Up to the top

Friday 26th July

Our main challenge today was going up the sixteen locks of the Marple Flight. This has become moderately notorious recently, as it has been closed for nearly two years after one lock collapsed and had to be rebuilt, and then they discovered another one also needed to be rebuilt. That meant that the Cheshire Ring was cut for much of 2017 and all of 2018, and only reopened in May this year. This flight takes the canal up 208 feet to the summit pound, which is very long and runs 16 miles down past Macclesfield to Bosley, and 6 miles up to Whalley Bridge, all on the same level. At Bosley you start the descent to the Trent and Mersey and eventually down Heartbreak Hill to the Cheshire plain.

The spectacular Marple Aqueduct

We had moored overnight only about half a mile from the start of the flight, but first we had to cross the Marple Aqueduct, a spectacular edifice about a hundred feet high, and dominated by an even higher railway viaduct. Apparently in the old days boatmen used to bury their horse in the valley below the aqueduct. Just after the crossing there was a narrow squeeze through between two walls which apparently used to be a short tunnel.

The remains of an old tunnel

When we arrived at the Marple flight we were greeted by two CRT volunteers (vlokkies), and a third soon arrived. One of them came up the whole flight with us, which made a huge difference. I alternated with him - one of us would let Loulie out and close the gate and paddles behind her, while the other went forward to the next lock to empty and open it. That meant that Loulie never had to hang around waiting, while I didn't have to scramble to finish one lock and then run up to the next one. So we were moving as fast as possible, without getting too exhausted - the pace was set by the speed the locks filled up. One lock was very slow to fill, and Loulie eventually sounded her horn to tell us that she wasn't going up at all, but apart from that they were all very well maintained and well designed, which also made the experience that much better. Locks 15 and 11 were very clean and neat - those are the two which had to be rebuilt, so the weed hasn't had time to regrow. Apparently they had to take out each stone by hand, number and clean it. Then when they had built a new concrete foundation and retaining wall all the stones were put back in place - the locks are all listed "buildings".

The flight is also in a very attractive setting - it starts in a deep wooded valley, and slowly moves into the town, past a fine looking old warehouse, and winds up beside a row of terraced houses climbing up the hill.

Looking down Marple Flight from the top

We reached the top in about two and a half hours, and moored for lunch, then I did a bit of shopping. The Macclesfield Canal sets off south from this point, but we intended to stick with the Peak Forest Canal right down to the end at Whalley Bridge. We made our way slowly for a mile or two, as the views became more spectacular ahead of us, looking into the lower reaches of the Peak District. The canal was also becoming more rural, with stone farmhouses on the steep slopes above and below us, and at one point I had to raise a bridge which allowed a farm track to cross the water. We were in no hurry, and about four we found a promising spot and moored on some Armco - there's a bit of a shelf but not too bad. We found out later that the towpath here is also a road or lane - it's tarmacked and just wide enough to get a car or van along, as happened to our surprise. Fortunately there have only been 2-3 vehicles along all night.

Progress to 26-7-19

TODAY: 6.15 HOURS. 4 MILES. 16 LOCKS. 1 BRIDGE.

VOYAGE: 32.4 HOURS. 41.2 MILES. 43 LOCKS. 2 BRIDGES