We've just returned from a one-week Easter jolly up and down the Severn. We were hoping for a slightly longer trip, but a broken lock (again... though this time up at Worcester) put an end to the original plans. It's been a most relaxing week. Tom even saw his first live badger in the wild! Here are some of the highlights...
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Our perfect idyll steering down the Severn was almost over - we were already navigating the East Parting with Gloucester Lock only a meander or two away - when all was rudely interrupted..
In spite of this Dara had no intention of leaving her family to join these unusual floating strangers, and yet as she began to tire, Davy Jones' locker started to appeal rather less than Leviathan's stern deck. With a heave and a ho, the hound was hauled aboard by a now-very-wet Becky and Tom. Worried that the drenched and dripping Dara might dive once more into the depths as she heard her family's familiar strains upon the bank, they restrained her until they reached Gloucester Docks, the colossal lock navigated safely once more. Shivering and not a little embarrassed, Dara was soon reunited with her loving family, who treated the crew of Westering to some lip-smackingly good Chicken Marathi toasties from their favourite dockside eatery!
Today we enjoyed a beautifully warm cruise down the Severn in blissful late summer sunshine, including a stop at Ashleworth, somewhere we've never before managed to moor... Okay, so it would be absolutely impossible to get any boat, let alone a 60ft narrowboat, anywhere remotely near the actual source of the Severn, which lies in the Cambrian mountains in Wales (Tom walked there for his Gold Duke of Edinburgh expedition...) - but it would be amiss not to reach the absolute navigable limit of the Severn, which lies a mile or two upstream from where the Staffs & Worcs canal meets Sabrina at Stourport. So after a lovely night on the river moorings (having first picked up our friend Connie at Kidderminster), it was time to head north... It's time to head homewards to Gloucestershire. Having moored the boat at Great Haywood Marina for a week whilst away in Shropshire at a work conference, it's time to return to southwards to our Severnside stomping ground. That's not to say the Staffs and Worcs (our familiar friend this week) has been without its surprises...
We're heading for Great Haywood Marina, not far from Stafford, where we can leave the boat safely whilst we go off to a work conference for a week. That means getting through Stoke in all its glory, and then to the curiously named Stone, where the first sod of earth for what was then known as the Grand Trunk Canal was cut by potter Josiah Wedgwood in 1766. With our second Covid-19 vaccines booked in north Stoke this afternoon, the recent bad weather can no longer be an excuse, so we've been braving the autumnal August weather to traverse the southern stretch of the very pleasant Macclesfield Canal.
After ascending 32 locks on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal we reach Summit Lock and moor at Diggle. It looks idyllic with the Pennines stretching ahead of us - finally we are close as narrow boats can be to feeling mountainous! But the sound world does not suit a remote rugged escape - a reimagined canalside warehouse now hosts crossfit classes and local band rehearsals which go on in to the night... From the top of Pule Hill you can see how the moor was reshaped by the canal burrowing beneath it - reservoires, spoil heaps and air shafts punctuate the scene where the pack horse routes once slowly wended. In order to dig the tunnel whole communities of navvies camped up on the moor - not a cosy spot for dangerous work! After abandoning the Rochdale and escaping our pursuers we found ourselves back at Manchester Piccadilly at noon. We hoped that the guidebook's advice about only tackling the Ashton canal early in the morning was now outdated so we rang Droylesden Marina to ask if they would advise us to set off up the Ashton or stay put for the night. Clearly the book is not outdated - we were firmly advised to stay where we were as groups of forty children can line the locks and bridges preying upon passing boats during afternoons. We did as we were advised and passed a quiet night in the Thomas Telford Basin before getting up at 6am to tackle the Clayton flight before the little tykes were out and about for the day.
Near the top of the 'Rochdale Nine' the locks enter a nasty dark tunnel with police signs warning against lewdness etc, and several characters loitering in a manner that made us both unusually uncomfortable. One feels very vulnerable on a canal boat bobbing around waiting for leaky locks to slowly slowly fill and empty. Pearson describes this 'subterranean gloom' with a 'seedy reputation' as doing a 'passable impression of what the Styx would have looked like if Brindley had ever been called in to make it navigable'. With some relief we reached lock 84 which was to lift us out of the twilight zone, only to find CRT had padlocked its gates and paddles closed... apparently they had just enacted a stoppage on the 'Rochdale Nine' and we were stuck in the worst part of it. Tom got on the phone and after about an hour we were set free into Piccadilly Basin, very glad to be joined by Alex Hanna shortly afterwards. 'Castlefield is pure drama: where steel, iron, glass and brick are softened by flower beds, lawns and water'. So says one of the many signboards which enriched our exploration of Castlefield. There is an old Roman fort (Mamucium), loads of canal history, and the excitement of trainlines and tramlines overhead. Lovely visitors too! We had a good spot to moor, even if it did smell of chlorine and Becky was kept awake by men shouting at boats.
One question though - where does everyone get their water? There were a lot of boats, but the first tap we sidled up to didn't work, and after some virtuosic manoeuvring we started filling up our tank at a tap on the other side of the basin, only to find that City Cruisers stop at the water point with their regular cargo of passengers and we were in the way of a floating hen party. We got out the way and decided to give up on water for the time being and headed up the Rochdale... Salford Quays is not the end of the navigation... Our overnight mooring in Salford Quays. It was very cool to boat through Media City. Dinner was disturbed by a man climbing onto the boat but Becky scared him off. His face was similar to the face of primary school children who have been caught playing the tambourine when their music teacher has specifically told them to be quiet, 'what? me?' We thought the lock keeper was joking when we were halfway up Barton lock and he said, 'the bad news is that you are going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future', but he wasn't! An alarm was sounding which meant they had run out of water and they needed an engineer to come and refill a tank of water which filled the lock and powered the gate. Then engineer was about a 20 minute drive away, but when he arrived it turned out he didn't have tools with him... thankfully it wasn't a nasty place to be stuck and it gave Tom Jesty and Becky another chance to play some flute and piano music together! It just isn't the sort of thing one expects on an international shipping lane.
We've reached the business end of the Weaver. All grit and grime and heavy chemical industry in Runcorn. And yet also another railway viaduct, this time at Frodsham, and what happened to be passing over it this evening, but a steam train! |