End of the Line

Monday 7^th September 2020

Our plan for today was to go down to Shardlow and on to the Trent, then go to look at the Shardlow marina where Loulie is thinking of holding her 60^th birthday event. We would then come back up the canal and start our journey back towards Fradley Junction and eventually Birmingham. Before we set off we fed the dogs and then took them for another walk down the cycle track towards the Trent, so that I could see it.

We got under way at about 9:15, and within a mile we reached the first of three locks before we get into Shardlow. As with the ones yesterday these locks are large with sharp undertows, though the final one, just above Shardlow, is relatively shallow. Having passed that one we proceeded slowly through Shardlow itself. This is very much a canal village, and unlike Preston Brook at the other end, the distinctive buildings, especially warehouses, have been retained, in some cases being converted into houses or flats. One house, with a long lawn bordering the canal, had a miniature railway track curving around it – the trains must have been inside their shed as we could not see them.

Final milepost at Shardlow

Flood control gates and warning lights

At the end of the village we passed through a set of flood gates – normally open, as they were today, but there for protection if the river rises. After passing a marina with a lot of moored boats, we went under bridge 1, the end of a sequence which started at bridge 213 up near Dutton. Just beyond that we came to the final lock which would let us down to the Trent. In this lock we were joined by another boat, Daedalus, a nice looking 70-footer with a tug bow, owned by a couple who spend the year aboard, though they have a house down in Essex. Having another boat made the lock more comfortable, though it was still difficult, with one of the paddles not working. We let them go ahead of us out of the lock, then followed them out onto the river.

This is a very different proposition from the narrow water we saw first up at Burston. After following a channel out of the lock for a few hundred yards you come to Derwent Mouth, effectively a crossroads. On your right the Trent itself flows in, and on the left the river Derwent emerges – this is a fair size, though not navigable by canal craft. Straight ahead the combined river flows downstream, and we followed it. It is now a hundred yards or more across, and flowing quite swiftly. We went under a substantial pipe bridge, which supplies water to the city of Leicester, and then under the M1 motorway. Just after that the river swung away to the left over a large weir, and we kept straight ahead into Sawley.

Derwent Mouth - the Trent coming in from the right

Looking up the Trent

Derwent Mouth - the river Derwent on the left

Following Daedalus towards the pipe bridge

Sawley, with a large marina and other moorings, sits on what is effectively a short stretch of canal, with the Trent looping around it to the north. At the top, where we went in, there is a flood lock, which is left open at normal times, so the water is at the same level as the river. At the other end there is a lock, manned by lock keepers and worked by machinery, which lets you down again onto the river (whose level has dropped when it went over the weir).

Sawley

The river seemed even wider as we emerged, though maybe the channel is just more spread out. There was a plastic bottle stationary in the middle – it wasn’t obviously a buoy, but it was either stuck on a very shallow spot or moored to the bottom, and I spent some time deciding which side of it looked more like the main channel. Fortunately, if there was a wrong side I picked the right one. The river curved broadly to the left and then back to the right, and we came to the crossroads which would be the limit of our journey this time. 

The crossroads

Straight ahead the Trent continued downstream, trending north until it becomes tidal, and eventually meets the Ouse to form the Humber Estuary. Up that way you can link up with the Yorkshire canals, and eventually reach Leeds and the Leeds & Liverpool canal.

Mouth of the Erewash

Looking across to the Steamboat Inn on the Erewash

To the left is the mouth of the Erewash Canal, which runs about a dozen miles north, between Derby and Nottingham. There are proposals to open further lengths into the foothills of the Peak District, but this will always be a dead end, unless the Derby Canal which I mentioned in yesterday’s blog is restored.

The Trent continues, with the Grand Union opening to the right

On the right is the beginning of the Leicester Section of the Grand Union Canal. This runs a long way south, through the centre of Leicester, and eventually meets up with the main line of the Grand Union, which comes down from the centre of Birmingham.

All three of these routes offer a lot of interest, and we would hope to travel them some day, but for now this was as far as we were going. We turned in a wide arc, very easy in the open river, and headed back upstream. We passed a large boat on the way, not seagoing I guess but bigger than you would meet on a canal. We went back up the automated lock and out the flood gates to Derwent Mouth. At this point we had planned to turn up the Trent again to visit Shardlow marina, but we reckoned that it would take a couple of hours at least, and time was already getting on. So we headed back up the locks through Shardlow and beyond, and in the end we moored in the exact spot at Weston Cliffs that we had left this morning – though facing the opposite direction, of course.

We have now completed the “End Run” – top to bottom of the Trent and Mersey, and the main objective of this trip. But now we were thinking about the second mission, to visit the centre of Birmingham. I was carefully counting back from the jump-off spot we had been advised to use for the final day into Birmingham, to make sure that we would reach it in time.

TODAY: 8:00 HOURS. 14.2 MILES. 10 LOCKS.

Voyage: 39:10 HOURS. 71.3 MILES. 45 LOCKS.

New Water

Friday 4^th September 2020

Before we set off today we went for a walk with the dogs, and just ahead of us we found a track or lane running over a bridge and down to the right, to the River Trent. It is quite small here, maybe a dozen yards wide, and you could easily wade across, probably never even going waist deep. We have been with the river since Stoke (Stoke-on-Trent, the cluse is in the name) and in fact we first crossed it on an aqueduct just below the last of the five Stoke locks, but we did not notice it at all then. The canal basically follows the course of the Trent from now until it ends at Shardlow – at that point the river is navigable all the way down to the Humber and the sea, and that was the point of the canal, to provide a link between the west coast at Liverpool and the east coast at the Humber estuary. Brindley’s great cross also included links down to the other major estuaries of England – the Severn and the Thames. Following the river was the best way to route the canal, especially in the early days when the technologies of locks, cuttings and embankments, all of which allow you to straighten and shorten the route, were still primitive and expensive. The river flows in a huge curve, down from Stoke then east around the bottom end of the central ridge of England, and back north-east – and the canal follows it.

The young Trent at Burston

Soon after starting we came to the first lock of the day, at Sandon – we were stuck behind a man on his own, who was rather slow. A few miles further on we descended Weston and Hoo Mill Locks, and almost immediately we reached Great Heywood Junction, where the Staffs and Worcs canal heads off south west, ultimately to reach the Severn. But we stayed on the Trent and Mersey, so we were now on waters we had never travelled before.

Great Heywood Junction

We came to another lock straight away, but we were still stuck behind slow boats, and we were at the final lock of the day, at Colwich. Soon after that the canal took a sharp right and left dog leg, going over the Trent so the river was now running to our north. This was on the approach to Rugeley, and when we got to the centre of town we moored up, so that I could do a bit of shopping. When I climbed up the canal bank I discovered we were right by a large Tesco, closer than many of the cars in the car park.

After leaving Rugeley we came to the site of the old Armitage tunnel, which is no longer covered, but which is still a long stretch wide enough for only one boat. There was no signage on the canal so we just proceeded, though we were aware from the canal map that this was a narrow passage. When we got to the other end, round a slight bend, we found a couple of boats waiting. From what we could see there were signs at that end telling boats travelling north to send someone ahead to ensure the coast is clear.

After that we passed the small town of Armitage, and the large Armitage Shanks toilet factory, which stretches along the side of the canal – a large old brick building, still active though rather run down. The village of Tuppenhurst is on the outskirts of Armitage, and after passing through we found a mooring on a long curving stretch. There was a bit of a shelf, but apart from that it was a good spot. The bank was quite soft so I put two pins in for each rope, and we settled down for the night.

TODAY: 8:30 HOURS. 16.0 MILES. 5 LOCKS.

Voyage: 34:40 HOURS. 66.1 MILES. 38 LOCKS.