Splish Splash

 

Wednesday 26^th August 2020

Our objective for today was to do most of the Cheshire Locks (“Heartbreak Hill”) and reach Church Lawton. That is a nice mooring spot which we have used before, and it is just six locks short of the Harecastle tunnel. That is now on a booking system, and I emailed them, getting a slot for 14:00 tomorrow (Thursday). It should be fairly comfortable to get there from the overnight mooring without too much stress.

The weather was much better, so we took off the cover, and then we moved forward a few yards to the water point which is right outside the Barchetta, and filled up. After that we set off up the hill. The first eight locks are fairly close together, in some cases very close, so I walked between them, before getting the bike off the bow. That allows me to close the lock gate behind Loulie, and still get forward to the next lock before she arrives, so that I can have it ready for her. These locks are fairly sharp, with strong undertows, which are always worse when going uphill, as we were. The water flowing in initially pushes the boat backwards, but as it rises the flow quite suddenly switches – it runs under the boat and reflecting off the bottom gates it is now pushing the boat forward. Even if you anticipate the change and get into reverse in time it is often difficult to stop the bow bumping hard against the top gate. We met a fair number of people, but more going south (downhill) which was good news as it meant that a lot of the locks were set the right way for us.

In the Cheshire Locks

At one lock (a doubled pair) one of the two was drained and under maintenance. This meant you could see the sluices and the ground paddles, which are normally invisible under water.

Ground Paddles on a lock under repair

After the first eight locks you pass under the M6, and the gaps become a bit longer. After the pair at Hassall Green there is nearly half a mile before the Pierpoints locks, so I left Loulie and cycled on ahead. Disaster, however, was waiting around the corner. I had the ratchet windlass in one hand, but the cycle lock (a cable with a combination lock) was wedged on the rear carrier. On a bumpy bit of towpath it bounced off; I heard it land, twisted round to see, and lost the front wheel on another bump. I fell off in stages, and wound up in the canal in slow motion, it seemed. At first I thought “Don’t go over the edge” then I realised I was doing so. Then I thought “Hope the bike doesn’t come in as well” and then it did.

Sadly, at some point in this kerfuffle I had lost my grip on the windlass. I had very quickly established that I was in no trouble – the water felt surprisingly warm, and was only about half way up my chest. The bottom was very solid – the bank was recently installed metal shuttering, and it felt as though they had poured concrete at the base and allowed it to flow out to form the bed of the canal. There were undulations but it was basically smooth. However I could not locate the windlass – I tried scraping with my feet, and even reaching down with my hands as far as I could, but no success.

At this point Loulie came around the corner, and spent a few moments working out what she was seeing – “Is he in the water? He is!”. She pulled over to the side and we let another boat go past while I heaved my bike and then myself onto the towpath.

There was still the matter of the windlass – a very fancy ratchet design that had cost a bit short of £100. I got the fishing magnet and a rope out, and spent a long time casting it out and hauling it in, hoping to lock on to the windlass. One big problem was that the magnet was attracted to the vertical shuttering of the bank, whenever I hauled it in too close. I suspect that this is where the windlass was hiding – close in to the bank, so that the magnet was diverted before it could lock on. In the end I had to reluctantly give it up, and we headed onwards.

Only a flesh wound. This was all I had to show for my dive.

For a few locks I continued without changing – it wasn’t that cold, but eventually I gave up and had a hot shower and a change while we were travelling between two more widely-spaced locks. There was a burst of six locks close together – three Lawton Locks, the Halls Lock and two Church Locks, and we had reached our moorings. This is a good place – quite narrow, but with reeds on the offside, and the narrowness encourages passing boats to slow right down, while there is a combination of rings and Armco to offer a secure mooring. We tied up, fed the dogs and then settled down to try to get over the trauma of the day.

Moored at Church Lawton

TODAY: 6:45 HOURS. 5.4 MILES. 20 LOCKS.

Voyage: 17:40 HOURS. 31.3 MILES. 30 LOCKS.

 

 

Thanks Rishi

 

Tuesday 25^th August 2020

After the marathon yesterday, today was a very short and easy day. After the late night we weren’t in any rush to get up, and we eventually started off at around 11:00. Given the fact that we had moored on the lock landing, our first task was to go up the lock – Booth Lane Top Lock, and indeed that was the only one for the day. We cruised on around the edges of Sandbach, with occasional showers of rain, and we reached Wheelock by half twelve.

We have always found Wheelock rather crowded, but today there were very few boats and we were able to pick our spot, on rings close to the centre and only a short walk from the Barchetta. Loulie took the dogs for a long walk back along the towpath before the storm arrived, and I took a walk around the town – it’s pretty small and not very exciting. The weather when it came was certainly pretty unpleasant, strong winds and heavy rain, and we were very glad we had put ourselves in a position to sit it out. We put the cover over the glass roof – it has started to leak and with the extreme rain we wanted to keep it dry.

At eight we left the dogs on board and walked down to the restaurant, our first meal out under Covid rules. It all went very well, good food and no problems with social distancing – the tables in the Barchetta are mostly in booths anyway, so they are already well separated. We had forgotten that it being a Tuesday we qualified for a saving of £10 each because of Eat Out to Help Out, which was great – we gave most of it back with a large tip.

Waiting for the diners to return

TODAY: 1:30 HOURS. 3.3 MILES. 1 LOCKS.

Voyage: 10:55 HOURS. 25.9 MILES. 10 LOCKS.

 

 

Down the hill

Friday 2^nd August

We awoke this morning to discover we were still afloat, and indeed when I ran the bilge pumps nothing at all came out. That meant that there had been no leakage since I had greased the gland, but I was fairly sure that this was subject to change once we got under way, and the prop shaft started spinning. And indeed so it proved – when we had been going an hour or so, running the pump produced several squirts of water – nothing huge, but a clear sign that there was now some leakage where previously there had been none. This was not an issue while we were travelling – the pump will simply expel any excess – so I left it to be looked at once we were moored.

A fallen branch which has almost blocked the canal

The challenge for the day was simple – the rest of the locks on Heartbreak Hill, twenty left to do before we reached Wheelock. We got away from our moorings just before some people we had seen the day before, on NB Just Joe, which was good news – as I had explained before, following someone through a series of locks is irritating, as they are always against you.

As it was we found almost all of the locks set in our favour, so I only had to fill one chamber completely. Sometimes it worked perfectly so we met another boat coming up and could leave the lock open for them, while they did the same for us. Although they are mostly quite deep the locks are fast and well maintained, and also well designed, with a single gate at the top end and bridges or walkways at both ends, which means you never have to walk twice the length of the lock to work the gates. We met quite a few boats coming up, exchanging a few words as we worked the locks and then said goodbye.

Seems some cows like paddling in the floods

We essentially kept going all the way down. We planned to stop at one point, but there was a boat coming out of the lock, leaving the gate open for us, and we couldn’t resist. We let the girls off for a tiddle just above a lock, and they disgraced themselves, racing off down to the lock and carting about. Minnie even jumped into the water and had to be hauled out before the boat coming up could go past. I got the bicycle off, which meant that I could finish working a lock and close the gates, and still be down at the next lock ready to let Loulie in. We stayed ahead of Just Joe all the way, though they had two people working the locks. Quite a few of the sets on this flight are duplicated, but this didn’t help them, as they were typically finding both locks set against them after we had passed through. It was a nice warm days with plenty of sun and only high clouds – all in all very pleasant.

We finished lock 66 at about 16:00, and we were immediately in wheelock. I dropped Loulie off at the Barchatta restaurant to make a booking, and sailed on a few hundred yards to moor. There are plenty of boats around us (Just Joe is right behind) and houses with dogs opposite but for some reason the dogs have been very quiet all evening.

Once we had moored Loulie took them for a long walk (all except Ruby) while I stayed with the boat. I opened the engine hatch and it was immediately obvious that the stern gland was dripping fast, almost trickling, so I needed to grease it again. Last night I sat on the engine to get down to the gland, but now it was hot after a day’s sailing, but I discovered I could lie on the deck and reach down far enough to get at the greasing screw – helped of course by the fact that it was daylight and I didn’t have to work by the light of my head torch. I put in more grease and happily the dripping stopped dead. So the grease will solve the problem, but only until we turn the prop shaft – presumably the motion and heat drives the grease out of the gaps in the gland and allows the water through. That means I will need to make greasing a part of my end of day routine every day, until we can get it fixed.

We decided to leave the dogs on the boat when we went for a meal at the Barchetta, which allowed us to eat without worrying that they were bothering the other diners. They were quite happy sleeping down below until we came back. It was a very nice meal – the restaurant is in an old canal-side warehouse with floors at various different levels and gaps to allow goods to be hoisted in and out of boats. Back to the boat, and a nice quiet end to the evening.

Moorings at Wheelock 2-8-19

Map at 2-8-19

TODAY: 5:30 HOURS. 5.5 MILES. 20 LOCKS. 0 BRIDGE.

VOYAGE: 74:40 HOURS. 87.3 MILES. 82 LOCKS. 8 BRIDGES

Rain, cold, and feeling flat

Today started at 5am when the dogs kicked off, probably woken by a nearby cockerel greeting the pale dawn. I had to take them out for a tiddle, and Minnie took the opportunity for an early morning swim, so Loulie had to towel her down before we could all go back to bed.

Things didn’t get any better when we got up at a slightly more normal hour and prepared to set off. When I went to start the engine there wasn’t the slightest flicker of response, and looking at the battery control panel in the cabin it was clear that the starter battery was totally flat. After a bit of thinking we realised that I had made a tiny but consequential error the night before. The ignition key starts at top dead centre for Off, then there are three clockwise positions – On (normal running), Heat (to warm the engine before starting) and Start. To turn the engine off you have to rotate the key anticlockwise past top dead centre to activate a solenoid which kills the motor. When I removed the key last night I left it in the 11 o’clock position, and the solenoid was permanently activated through the night, flattening the battery entirely.

We called Matthew at the Navigation Narrowboat Company, who confirmed the cause of the problem, and came out to rescue us. Although it is a week since we left there, we were less than ten miles from Nantwich, on the parallel canal. He came out with a replacement battery which he installed, and all was fine. These batteries are powerful but fragile, and running it down to zero will have permanently ruined it, so the new battery has replaced the old one.

An expensive lesson, but I won’t make that mistake again. Each time we stop Loulie amusingly reminds me to get the key in the right place when I switch off, and I demonstrate, using my middle finger, that I have left it in the vertical position.

So it was after half ten when we set off, and we still had to get to Middlewich for a pumpout. That wouldn’t have been a problem, but it came on to rain, very heavily, with a cold wind. We would have liked to batten down the hatches and sit out the storm, but we needed to keep moving. I was standing on the poop discovering that my hat is showerproof but not rainproof, and Loulie had to get out to work eight locks, so we were both freezing and soaked.

John in the rain

We stopped at Kings Lock to take on diesel. All these things are dead easy when you have done them once, but tricky the first time. There is an odd little key for the diesel filler cap – you have to insert it and then rotate it 90 degrees, at which point you can unscrew the cap. Easy. But it’s not obvious that it is 90 degrees, rather than 180, say. Nor is it clear that you unscrew the cap – you might flip it off on a hinge, or push in the centre like a button. So you try lots of different combinations, hanging head down over the stern rail to reach the cap, until something works.

We then went down the three-lock flight in the centre of Middlewich, made much easier by the team of volunteers helping to work the locks, which took the load off Loulie, though it did slow her down from her normal slick operation. Below those locks we stopped at Andersen’s boat yard for a pumpout – again our first time, and it was useful to have someone else doing it so I could watch. The guy told me all about the effect of the canal breach on their business – very severe, because most of their hirers want to go out along that branch to get to the Llangollen, Chester or Audlem. So he has lots of boats sitting around after cancellations. It has had a bad effect on a lot of canalside businesses, and they get no compensation.

We stopped below Big Lock to take on water and do some shopping, then headed out into the open country between Middlewich and Northwich. We have moored opposite an open flash which borders the canal – though there are lots of warnings that it is too shallow to take a narrowboat onto. Minnie disgraced herself by getting onto at least three other boats when we went for a walk – it’s becoming a bad habit, though so far people have only been amused, as most of them have dogs too.

If all goes well we should be back at Preston Brook tomorrow. We have less that 14 miles to go, and just the tiny stop lock at Dutton, though there are three tunnels. We are very sorry the trip is coming to an end, it has been quite an experience, and the early days going down the Shroppie already seem like an age ago. It will be very odd to be back on dry land again.

A pile of dogs

Today: 6.5 hours. 10.3 miles. 9 locks.

Voyage: 59.5 hours. 100.9 miles. 96 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.