Ellesmere Port June 2019

We were able to get away for a week at the start of June - we're going to have a full two weeks later in the summer when we plan to do the Cheshire Ring, so we had to decide what to do with this shorter break. We opted to tick off Ellesmere Port from our list - it is the extreme northern end of the Shropshire Union canal, and also has the National Boat Museum, so it is somewhere we had down to get to, and a week seemed like a fairly easy round trip. Our plan was to crank it down to Ellesmere Port on the first few days, so that we could come back in a much more leisurely fashion on the return. Loulie needed to be back home on Friday evening for a horse event on the Saturday, and we didn't want to be under time pressure.

Ready to sail

We actually set off on the Thursday evening (30th May). We drove down to the marina and put the dogs and luggage aboard, then Loulie drove home, and cycled back up to Preston Brook, while I took the boat out and met her under the M56 bridge. We put the bike on board, and got through the tunnel at half three, which put us through the Saltersford tunnel at half five. At the Barnton we had to wait as there was a boat coming the other way. As we stood there we thought we could hear music, and sure enough when the boat came out there was someone playing the violin in the stern. We wanted to get on as far as we could that evening, and in the end we moored in a spot we have used before, just short of Wincham bend.

Bed shenanigens

The next day we pushed on to Middlewich, and took on water just below Big Lock. After going up that one and the three-lock flight we refuelled at Kings Lock, and then turned onto the Branch of the Shroppie. We went up the Wardle and Stanthorne locks, then moored out in the country at a remote spot. The next day we stopped in the morning at the Aqueduct Marina for a pumpout, then found ourselves in long queues for the final two locks on the Branch, before turning right at Barbridge and heading for Chester. Down the Bunbury staircase, and then we met some first-time hirers and did a couple of locks with them. They stopped at the Shady Oak, and we went on a bit and moored well out from the bank, on the usual Shroppie shelf.

We planned to get all the way to Ellesmere Port the next day (Sunday) so we got off fairly early. Soon after we started we passed Tattenhall Marina, where our adventures with Eileen all began last year. The new people from yesterday caught up with us at the first of the five locks down into Chester, so we did those with them - I found the bicycle really useful on this flight, which are spaced out so that walking is rather slow. We stopped in the pool in Chester and did some shopping, then carried on down the three-lock staircase under the shadow of the city walls. This is quite spectacular - each lock drops you about 11 foot, but because of the way the staircase works, the gates are looming twice that height above you when you are at the bottom.

We emerged into the basin at the bottom, where a flight of locks leads down tot he River Dee - the bottom lock is permanently closed now. We went on through the suburbs of Chester, around the zoo and then headed off across the flatlands of the Wirrall towards Ellesmere Port. It must be said that the surrounding became less salubrious as we travelled, and we decided we did not want to moor close to that end of the canal. So we reached the Boat Museum, turned in the pool there, above the three locks which lead down to the Ship Canal, and headed back the way we had come. We eventually moored at quite a nice spot near the village of Stoak, on an Armco bank with no shelf.

The next morning the engine wasn't keen to start, though it caught eventually, and we noticed that the starter battery was very flat, and there were warning lights on the battery control panel. We called Matthew at the NNC, and tried doing a few things he suggested to relay power between the batteries, but nothing seemed to work. We decided we would take Eileen in to Nantwich the next day, to get it looked at, so we wanted to get on as far as we could. We went back up the staircase flight - even more imposing when you enter from the bottom and look up at the lock doors above you - and then we worked up the five locks out of Chester. We kept going up Wharton's Lock and we eventually ran out of light above the second Beeston lock, the Stone Lock.

The next morning when we tried to start up there was no charge in the battery, so we had to call the NNC for help, and waited for a couple of hours until someone came. In the end all he had to do was put a jump lead across from the leisure battery bank to the starter, and that got us going, but of course we needed to get the problem fixed, so we carried on to Nantwich anyway, arriving late in the afternoon, after a very wet trip in the pouring rain. They couldn't do anything then, so we slept overnight in the finger moorings in the boatyard.

In the morning I cycled off to Sainsbury's on the other side of town, and when I got back I discovered that the engineer had found and fixed the problem, which happily was not a failed alternator but only a loose connection. He also advised us to rev the engine hard on starting each time, to get the charger to kick in properly. We were back on the canal by lunchtime, and now we were under no time pressure, so we cruised to Barbridge and then did the first two locks on the Branch before mooring at a nice spot just past Church Minshull. I went for a run on the towpath, which was no fun as the footing was horribly uneven, and the Strava app which I used to track the run lost credibility when I told me that I had done 50 feet of climb - on the towpath.

On Thursday morning we started without hurry, and found ourselves in queues at Stanthorne and Wardle locks. However when we turned north to do the three-flight and Big Lock it was quiet again. We picked up water below Big Lock and did some shopping, and then decided to push on through some rainy weather, eventually mooring near Wincham at the same spot we had a week ago. On Friday morning we again had an easy start, through Saltersford at 13:00 and Preston Brook at 15:00. Loulie cycled home to get the car, and I moored very comfortably in calm weather back at the marina. Quite an eventful trip, but good fun, and Mabel seems to enjoy the boat as much as the Labradors - it's only Ruby that hates it. We can cross Ellesmere Port off our bucket list - it's not a stretch of canal we're likely to want to revisit very often, I think.

Voyage: 56.75 hours. 105.8 miles. 46 locks.

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.