Monthly Archives: March 2022

Thursday 24th to Saturday 26th March 2022 Matilda thought she was having olfactory hallucinations when she woke to the smell of seasonal baking. Knowing that we planned to moor at Anderton, famous for its boat lift, where there is a visitor centre and café, Matilda planned to have a coffee and a hot cross bun at the end of the journey. Over the last few days we have seen several swans sitting regally on nests and are hoping that before this adventure is over, we will see cygnets and ducklings on the waterways. On our way out of Lymm, we saw a heron swooping and circling above the boat. For a while it seemed to be following us, one moment ahead of us, the next moment behind, perhaps hoping the movement of The Duke would make the fish rise and therefore easier to catch. Sadly, Matilda never seemed to have her phone at the ready when it came particularly close. This part of the journey along the Trent and Mersey Canal included only one lock but three tunnels, all of which operate a one way system. Boats are allowed into the Preston Brook Tunnel at specific times: travelling southbound we could start […]

Monday 21st to Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Having received updates on the state of the canal from Martin the day before, Robert decided that he needed to check whether it was navigable before we left as we did not want to become stranded in “bandit country”. He set an alarm for 06:00 and set off on a reconnaissance mission down the towpath. There were so many empty cans and so much broken glass that Robert swiftly decided that it was not a suitable place for us to walk Ralf. Vandals had opened both the top and bottom paddles on Lock 77 so there were stretches that were almost totally devoid of water. Robert managed to close and lock the top paddles but without a windlass could not close the bottom ones. Robert walked down to Castlefield looking for suitable mooring spots then, having revived himself with a hot beverage, caught the tram back to Lock 77 to see whether his closing the top paddles had made any difference. Nothing had noticeably changed so we had to accept that we could not possibly travel any further until the Canal and River Trust staff managed to open sluice gates and send more […]

Friday 18th to Sunday 20th March 2022 It was a misty start to Day 31 in Todmorden. Lock 19, on the Rochdale Canal, is right by the main road through the town of Todmorden and when the road was widened in the 1920s the traditional gates were replaced with a guillotine gate at one end to save space. Matilda is unaccountably always a little anxious at guillotine locks in case the mechanism goes wrong. Unsurprisingly, we negotiated the Todmorden Guillotine Lock No. 19 safely and, on the other side, The Duke was dwarfed by the Great Wall of Todmorden. Built in 1881 as a retaining wall to support the railway as it enters the town from Lancashire it is said to contain some four million bricks. We could well believe it. After the Todmorden Guillotine Lock 19 and the Great Wall of Todmorden, we were beginning to realise that hereabouts, the place names are very literal. Research could not provide the background to Shade Lock No. 21 but presumably it is, at least for some of the time, in the shade. Matilda was particularly impressed by the splendid railway bridge with ornate castellated turrets between Locks 21 and 22. This is apparently […]

Tuesday 15th to Thursday 17th March 2022 The Jack of the Locks sculpture [see feature image] in Sowerby Bridge depicts Richard Tiffany, the town’s lock keeper in the canal’s final days of carrying commercial goods. A sign by the wharf says that Richard Tiffany was a well-known local character and his great grandson modelled for the figure of the boy beside him. The stove has been playing up again and proving very difficult to relight after it goes out. We have not been able to pinpoint exactly what causes this but it fails with unpredictable regularity. Attempts at relighting it invariably result in the cabin filling with diesel fumes and sometimes also smoke so that windows and doors have to be left open to clear the air and the atmosphere becomes even fresher. Henry has heroically been doing overnight duty, trying to keep it alight through the small hours with varying degrees of success. The Wainhouse Tower in Halifax is visible from various points in Sowerby Bridge. It was originally built by John Edward Wainhouse as a chimney for his dye works. The 275ft tower was to be connected to the factory 350 metres downhill by an underground tunnel in […]

Saturday 12th to Monday 14th March 2022 The “Dash for Diggle” to make the booking for Standedge Tunnel had a knock on effect for the rest of the schedule. Robert had hoped that the planned works at Hebdon Bridge would be finished by the time we got there. Regular checks on the website continued to show the completion date as Friday 18th March. With time to spare, Day 25 was therefore declared a day of rest in Brighouse. As this was a Saturday with two Six Nations matches on Robert didn’t feel this was too much of a sacrifice. Robert and Henry fortified themselves for the day ahead, this time with a Wetherspoons cooked breakfast at a very reasonable price. Matilda, Sue and Henry took a stroll round the town in the morning. The Ship Inn, was built in 1926 using timbers from the HMS Donegal built in 1868. When we told a friend that we were staying in Brighouse she exclaimed that it was “brass band country and lovely up there”. Matilda was therefore not surprised to see the street art celebrating the mill band. As we are currently on the route known as the Cheshire Ring she also bought […]

Wednesday 9th to Friday 11th March 2022 Sue and Henry joined us on Tuesday afternoon and were surprised by how cosy it was inside The Duke. Matilda and Robert explained the vagaries of the stove and the lengthy process to light it and persuaded them it would be better to leave the stove going overnight, rather than wake up cold in the morning. Having spent their first night aboard, sleeping in an oven with most of the windows open, Robert discovered that he had not turned down the diesel supply to the stove after lighting it: once this was adjusted the temperature became more bearable inside The Duke. Day 22 promised to be bright and sunny and following an evening of planning in The Railway Inn, we set off as a team of four [see Selfie of the Day] to tackle the flight of locks out of Marsden. Sue and Henry have both been on a narrowboat before but not together and not for a while and had a brief practical refresher course on operating the locks. We noticed the Blue Peter logo on the balance beam at Lock 37E and discovered that, in 2016, presenter Barney Harwood had helped carpenters […]

Sunday 6th to Tuesday 8th March 2022 Day 19 was the last day in our dash to make it to Standedge Tunnel in time for our booking on Monday. Sunday was not all plain sailing and we suffered a series of lock disasters. At lock 23W only one paddle worked and the lock was taking ages to fill as more water was leaking out than was flowing in. However, Matilda has discovered that sometimes, when the water level changes, a paddle which was impossible to raise will become more readily mobile. This turned out to be the case and after finally opening the second paddle, we were able to progress. Having experienced very high water levels previously, on this stretch of canal the level was very low. At lock 24W we grounded in the tunnel coming through under the bridge and Matilda had to let water through the lock with the aim of refloating The Duke. Despite passing some beautiful buildings our troubles were not over. At lock 25W when he inspected the water level Robert declared it would be impossible to cross the pound without grounding and once again we needed to let extra water through. This took some time […]

Thursday 3rd to Saturday 5th March 2022 Having booked our transit through the Standedge Tunnel, we now had to ensure that we reached Diggle in time. We knew this would involve some long days travelling and plenty of locks. Day 16 started well as Martin kindly picked Matilda up, took her to his house to use the newly installed shower and then to do some grocery shopping before we set off. The Macclesfield Canal took us past the mill where the wheat was originally ground to make Hovis bread between 1898 and 1904. When milling had to be moved to larger premises, the old mill became the site where the paper wrappers were made. Now converted into apartments, you can still see the archway which led to the wharf where boats could unload their cargo under cover directly into the mill. And so began our eight hour journey. The Puss in Boots commands a prime canal side position and would be a good spot for an evening sundowner by the canal. We saw several herons on this canal each standing so still that at first we both thought it might be plastic. We watched the third heron we saw plunge into […]

Monday 28th February to Wednesday 2nd March 2022 As we left Stone at the start of day 13 we passed the old warehouse and bottling plant for Joule’s Brewery which was established in 1780 but ceased brewing in October 1974. A little further on Robert gazed enviously at a canal-side property by a bridge which not only had its own private mooring but also had a signal box installed in the back garden. Clearly a fellow enthusiast on several fronts. We also passed The Plume of Feathers, owned by Neil Morrissey but it was too early for it to be open and it was not a stop scheduled on the spreadsheet so we carried on. The canal often rubs shoulders with the train tracks and it is easy to see why the waterways were superseded by train as a means of transporting freight swiftly around the country. The route also took us past The World of Wedgwood which Duncan and Phil had recommended the day before. Having moored up, Robert encouraged Matilda to take in some culture whilst he was tutoring and she set off, despite the forecast of rain, to find The World of Wedgwood which includes the V&A’s collection […]