Tag: Narrowboat

Is the Wardle Canal the shortest in the country?

This week we have been travelling up the Trent & Mersey to Middlewich and then across to join the Shropshire Union at Barbridge. It has been a lovely week, with more sunshine than showers, lots of wild flowers on the towpaths, and a good mixture of industrial history (there were lots of salt mines in the area) and open countryside. As part of the journey we went through what is claimed to be the shortest canal in the UK – the Wardle Canal.

The Wardle Canal

The Wardle Canal was opened in in the early nineteenth century by the Trent & Mersey Canal Company, connecting the T&M to the Middlewich branch of the Shropshire Union. Its sole purpose was so that the T&M could claim full ownership of the junction, and could charge tolls for using it.

It is just 154 feet long from the bridge at the junction, to the bottom of Wardle Lock, and there is a commemorative sign on the bridge claiming it as the shortest canal. But is it?

There are three problems with the claim. It is not 154 feet long, there are shorter competitors, and it is not a canal anyway!

In my view the length should include Wardle Lock, because that was built at the same time, giving a total length of more like 330 feet, according to the Trent & Mersey Society

There are other similar examples of short stretches of water joining canals for the purpose of raising tolls. For instance the Peak Forest is joined to the Ashton by a short aqueduct over the River Tame, that was built by the Ashton company.

I think the biggest challenge to the claim is that it is not really a canal. To be a canal it needed to be authorised by parliament, and built by a private canal company. Stretches off that canal, built by the same company, are called branches. For instance what we call the Middlewich, where we are now, is actually the Middlewich branch of the Shropshire Union. Similarly, the Caldon Canal, which we visited a couple of weeks ago is really the Caldon branch of the Trent & Mersey. So this should be the Wardle branch of the Trent & Mersey.

But…

Mandy says I am frequently unnecessarily pedantic. The bridge at the junction is dated 1829 and clearly calls this “Wardle Canal”. And many boaters for many generations have enjoyed the story of the shortest canal in the UK. So OK, maybe it is.

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Should I be grumpy that Canal & River Trust have not fixed Bosley Locks?

In early May a boat crashed into the bottom gate of Bosley Locks. Bosley are a flight of 12 locks on the Macclesfield canal that raise a boat 118 feet over just half a mile, taking you from the bottom of the canal to the top. They have been closed since then and I am becoming irritated by Canal & River Trust (CRT) not fixing them.

Going down Bosley Locks two years ago

The problem with the locks being out of action are that boaters like us cannot get up to Macclesfield and the Peak Forest Canal without them. There is a theoretical alternative route through Manchester but the Bridgewater Canal is closed due to a breach a couple of years ago, and the Marple flight of locks at the other end of the Macclesfield has just closed due to a broken balance beam.

I have some sympathy with CRT. The damage to the gate was extensive and exacerbated an existing problem with the gates leaking. However, they took weeks before deciding to drain the lock for a proper examination, and then a while to install scaffolding and fix the issue.

As you probably know, we pootled along the Caldon Canal for a while and had a lovely time, but last week they said it would be open at 4pm on Tuesday so we set off. Then, at 1pm on Tuesday CRT sent a notice that they had found another issue and would not be opening. Next update is Friday but I am not holding our breath. We have winded (turned around) and come back to Kidsgrove.

I don’t have a problem with the gate failure. Stuff happens, especially with two hundred year old locks. But I think they should have found the second problem when they examined the lock weeks ago. And I think their communication should have been a lot better throughout.

But we do not live on a boat to get grumpy. We enjoyed our trip up to Congleton, and I had a lovely afternoon looking at the museum and town hall there. It must have been such a dirty smelly mill town a hundred years ago, but is now bright and feels optimistic. And we are currently moored in one of our favourite places, just north of the Harecastle tunnel, where iron ore in the soil makes the canal run red, and the birds seem to sing all day long.

There is another lovely route down the “heartbreak hill” flight of 31 locks towards Middlewich, so we will probably head that way when the rain stops. A good friend is visiting us next week from New Zealand via South America, so we do not want to get too far anyway.

And who knows, maybe on Friday they will tell us Bosley is open again. Life’s too short to be grumpy.

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Is the Caldon Canal the most beautiful?

In last week’s blog I pondered whether we should take Narrowboat Thuis along the Caldon to Froghall, along the Macclesfield and Peak Forest to Whaley Bridge or up the Trent & Mersey to Middlewich. Our answer was to try to do all three. This week we have been cruising the Caldon, and it is one of the quietist and most beautiful canals we have visited.

We left the Trent & Mersey in Stoke at Etruria. This is where Josia Wedgewood had his china factory and it has much industrial history. When we passed through there was a canal festival going on, so the canal was lined with historical boats and maybe a thousand gongoozlers (people who like to watch boats).

The first few miles of the Caldon are notorious and you are advised not to moor if you don’t want to meet dodgy characters. So it was no surprise when the boat suddenly stalled with a duvet wrapped around the propellor. Fortunately I have recently purchased a bread knife to keep in the engine bay for things like this and after a few minutes I had cut myself free.

A few miles later, the character of the canal changed completely. Surrounded by trees and plants it meanders through Staffordshire. We cruised up the Leek Branch first and moored for a couple of days by a lake. It was very peaceful except when the cows decided to visit.

Then back to the mainline and through the Churnett valley to Froghall. At times the canal is only wide enough for one, but not many boats come down here so it was fine. There is a tunnel at the end of the navigation but it is too low for NB Thuis so we turned around.

The strangest thing for me about this lovely canal is that it was not always this way. It was built for heavy industry and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it would have been filthy with effluent from lime and flint kilns, coal mines and colour mills, feeding the factories of Stoke on Trent and further afield. We are currently moored next to a Flint Mill museum, which is absolutely fascinating. Who knew that fine china was made with more ground flint than clay. I did not even realise that bone china is actually made with 50% cattle bones.

So is the Caldon the most beautiful canal? I’ll let you know when we have been back on the Peak Forest!

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Where shall we go for our next narrowboat trip?

We are back on Narrowboat Thuis for the next six weeks. Earlier this year we took a couple of months to go south to Oxford and back. So for our next trip it will be north. Despite the heat this week, the canals still have plenty of water so all options are open.

We could visit the Caldon Canal from Stoke. We had one of my best canal days there a few years ago, when we moored up near the end of the navigation in the countryside but within a walk from a steam railway holding a beer festival. The Caldon also has a lovely branch heading towards Leek.

The Macclesfield and Peak Forest are two of our favourite canals. The Macc has loads of history and a good mixture of town and country, while the Peak Forest has two of the best mooring spots in the UK. One overlooking a beautiful valley in the Peak District. The other, Bugsworth Basin, at the end of the canal with a lovely walk on an old limestone tramway.

Or we could head up to Middlewich, with Heartbreak Hill stretching my lock muscles, and the best fish and chips on the network,

Our preference is the Macclesfield and Peak Forest, but the Macc is currently closed at Bosley Locks, after a Narrowboat sank in a lock, getting stuck on the cill. The boat has been recovered but it damaged the lock gates. Fixing them has already taken a week and could be quite a while longer.

So what shall we do? Any thoughts?

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Is Blackpool just pubs and B&Bs?

We are back living in our Lancashire house this week. We are not so far from Blackpool. Blackpool has a terrible reputation, not all of it justified. It is true that there is a fair amount of crime there, but no more than most UK towns. It is true that it is a bit “chavvy” in the summer, with stag and hen dos wandering the streets in various states of inebriation. It is true that some of the shopping areas are looking a bit run down. But it also has some lovely areas.

I took Lulu for a walk this morning to Marton Mere, on the edge of Blackpool. It is a lovely tranquil nature reserve, based around a lake, with pretty paths snaking round the reed beds and bird hides. During our walk we heard reed warblers, Cetti warblers, wrens, robins, white throats and many more.

It is amazing to be so close to a town and still be in nature. Narrowboating can feel the same. Sometimes I know we are travelling through the middle of a big city, but perhaps we are in a cutting, surrounded by trees, and it could be in the middle of the countryside.

I think anywhere you are you can find peaceful spaces, as well as noise and excitement. I know which I prefer.

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Which is better – a lazy week or a busy week?

This was the final week of our two month trip to Oxford and back. Most of this adventure has been pretty busy. There are usually lot of jobs to do – moving the boat, filling with water, checking the engine, visiting a new town, shopping for groceries. You know the sorts of things. I like to be busy. Mandy laughs at me because when we have a day off, I normally make a list of things to do, and enjoy ticking them off. So for me this has been an odd week. We found ourselves well ahead of schedule and so had lazy days, with maybe an hour cruising, and including three days when we just stayed in one place doing nothing.

It was a good place to be. The sun was shining and at this time of year the nesting birds are all calling to their mates. Using the Merlin app I listened out for them and in one five minute period I could hear about twenty different species, from willow warblers to robins.

I went on some walks, cooked some food, watched some TV, read a couple of books. A thoroughly lazy time.

It was nice to be lazy. We are, after all, retired. We are allowed to be lazy. But I don’t think I am very good at it. I found myself twitching and needing to find urgent tasks. I touched up the paint on the outside of the boat. I cleaned and painted an old windlass, and the “napppy pins” we use to moor up against Armco on the towpath. I found a stately home to visit.

One morning when I woke up, I found an angler set up just in front of the boat, staring at the canal, lost in his own thoughts. He left about 4pm. I don’t think he spoke to anyone. I don’t think he caught any fish. I expect my son would tell me he was being “mindful”. My idea of hell.

So yes it has been a lovely lazy week, at the end of a lovely couple of months travelling on Narrowboat Thuis. But enough now. We have to return to the house for a busy month of May, filled with weddings, reunions and trips. I am looking forward to it.

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The ducklings are back!

Just over a week ago, Mandy and I were commenting that we had not seen any baby birds this year. It is lovely to pootle along on Narrowboat Thuis, watching for the ducklings, goslings, cygnets, cooties and moorhen chicks. I am not sure why moorhen chicks don’t get a cute name like the others.

Well this week the ducklings have started arriving and I have seen new families every day.

This group of ten ducklings were so small we wondered if they had ever been in the water. Mummy duck jumped into the canal in front of us, and one by one the ducklings followed, kicking their legs to try to work out how to stop going in circles.

I learnt something new about ducklings this week. Apparently the mother only lays one egg a day, but does not sit on the nest to incubate them until she has a full set of eggs. That way they all hatch at about the same time. Very clever.

I took Lulu dog for a walk to a bird sanctuary yesterday. The geese were being quite aggressive. I reckon that may be because they also have eggs coming up to hatching. Now we have the ducklings I look forward to seeing the other birds. It is a great time of year for nature and a great time of year to be on a boat.

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Is Nuneaton the saddest town in the UK?

One of the joys of cruising on a Narrowboat is spending time in the places we visit. For instance on this trip I had a fascinating day uncovering the history of Banbury, and a wonderful afternoon immersing myself in the delights of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

So on Wednesday when we were moored near Nuneaton, I hopped on a bus to find out more about the town. I asked the lady sat next to me on the bus what I should see and she laughed. Others around us quickly joined in, and told me that there is nothing to see in Nuneaton anymore, except a statue of George Eliot in the town centre.

Nuneaton used to be a thriving market town. Situated near Coventry and Birmingham, and with good canal, train and road links, it was one of the largest towns in Warwickshire. Originally based around ribbon weaving and coal mining, it was also famous for hat making and leather work (especially shoes). The town centre was largely destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, and was completely redeveloped in the 1960s, with an inner ring road, shopping mall and department stores.

And it has pretty much all gone. The factories and mills have closed. The department stores have gone bust. The beautiful mall is full of boarded up shops. The market is a shell of what it once was. Such a sad town.

But the people I met were friendly and positive. I found a great café for breakfast, and all the locals wanted to talk to me about life on a boat. So, possibly the saddest town but not the saddest people. Good luck to them.

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Is it summer already?

What a great time to be on a Narrowboat. The week with some pretty rough weather, and narrowboats do not like wind. The wind blows the boat sideways and we had to moor up to avoid getting stuck. But by Tuesday we had wall to wall sunshine.

It has been like summer. But better. We wake up to cool crisp mornings. The sun builds through the day and if we moor up at lunchtime, we have a relaxed afternoon in the warmth before the temperature drops again in the evening. In the summer it stays hot all the time and sleeping can be a challenge.

The forecast for the weekend is back to typical April temperatures, but I have enjoyed this week. There are not too many positive sides to climate change but on the canals this is one of them. Spring is the new Summer.

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What is the best name for a Narrowboat?

Our Narrowboat is called “Thuis”. It attracts much comment on the cut, because it is such an unusual name. People try to pronounce it and usually get it wrong. It is actually a Dutch word and means “home”. You pronounce it to rhyme with “house” but beginning with a “t” instead of an “h”. It is a good name but perhaps there are better ones.

“Toblerhome” has been moored just up from us in Oxford this week. Other favourites of mine are “NotaYot” on the Staffs and Worcester, and “Flat Bottomed Girl” which I think is on the Leeds & Liverpool.

The most popular Narrowboat names reflect the peace and quiet of boating life. There must be a hundred boats called “Serendipity”, and plenty more called “Moon Shadow”, “Blue Moon” and “Dreamcatcher”. There are also many “Dun” names, reflecting retirement, such as “Dunworkin” and “Dunstressin”.

Then you get the hire boat fleet names. Usually these follow a pattern. For instance Balck Prince use women’s names on all their boats, while College Cruisers names all theirs after Oxford university colleges.

I think the most annoyed owners must be the ones with a boat called “Narrow Escape”. This is quite a clever name, but since the “Narrow Escapes” TV series, it seems very obvious.

Unfortunately it is not easy to change a boat name. Superstition says that if you just change the name and continue using it, Poseidon will come from the depths of the oceans and drag you and the boat down. You can change the name when the boat is out of the water for maintenance, or you have to perform a a ceremony involving chanting to the sea Gods, and casting an ingot with the old name on, into the water. This is what we did when we named our boat “Thuis”.

Have you seen any great boat names on your travels? What is your favourite?

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