After spending some time in Marple it was time to head down into Manchester. As I was quite high up on the Macclesfield Canal, it was a long climb down over 43 locks, some of them in some not so amazing settings.
There are three locks flights:
- The Marple flight with 16 locks. Really beautiful but with very low bridges (again!)
- The Ashton flight with 18 locks. This is going through the suburbs. Perfectly fine.
- The Rochdale flight with 9 locks. This is going through Central Manchester and it's not nice. It really isn't.
I planned to do the first two flights, spend a few days in Manchester, then do the last 9 and meet my new crew at the bottom at Castlefield. That didn't go entirely to plan.
Marple flight - 16 locks
Knowing now that headroom can be an issue I read up on it and discovered that some of the bridges over the Marple locks were supposed to be really low and also that there was supposed to be a
really low bridge (lower than the Harecastle tunnel!) in the middle of the Ashton flight the day after. So once more, off with the flowers and the bike. This was starting to get a bit annoying.
The Marple flight on the Lower Peak Forest Canal is in a beautiful setting. The locks are initially set through a residential area in a really picturesque way. Further down, they go under a busy road and then through a park with picnic areas. So all very pretty, but I had looked at them all beforehand and found that some didn't have a proper towpath and also it was not always possible to get back on board after closing the gates. It didn't help that all of the locks are very deep, a drop of 64m overall. It might not sound much, but a height of 4m in a lock is quite intimidating, especially when you have to climb the slimy ladder.
So I started the flight on my own with some trepidation, pacing myself carefully so as not to wear myself out too quickly. At the top there was a CRT worker doing some maintenance work on the towpath and he asked me whether I was alone. When I said yes, he phoned his lock volunteer collagues who were helping somebody further down the flight. They came up and helped me for a few locks, then went off and came back to do the last 9 or so for me. That helped greatly and I was through much faster than expected.
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| Locks between the houses |
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| A redeveloped mill in the middle of the flight |
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| A deep lock |
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| A deep lock from the inside |
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| Lock going under a road |
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| Some locks leaked quite badly |
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| Free boat wash |
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| Lock flora |
Marple aqueduct
One of the highlights of the whole journey came right after the Marple flight. The Marple aqueduct is the highest stone aqueduct on the canal system, opened in 1800. It is the second highest overall only superceded by the Pontcysyllte aqueduct in Wales, which is an iron construction. The aqueduct carries the canal 27m high over the river Goyt. One side has a towpath and a stone wall, the other side has about 70cm of gravel, then .... the drop. It is a bit scary for somebody with not a great head for heights like me.
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| The aqueduct from below |
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| Willum on the aqueduct |
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| Looking into the abyss |
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| The railway viaduct runs right beside it |
After the aqueduct it was a few more miles to Portland Basin, the recommended stopover before tackling the Ashton locks. Portland Basin is the junction of the Lower Peak Forest and the Ashton canal.
The mooring was OK, but there were quite a lot of teenagers in hoodies walking by in the evening. I wouldn't have left the boat alone there. Fortunately there was another boat with me there overnight.
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| Somebody else doing the lift bridge for me, hurrah! |
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| A clear sign that we are getting close to a big city |
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| First sign for Manchester! |
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| Some pretty ducks for a change. |
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| Moored in Portland Basin |
Ashton Canal - 18 locks
The next day I set off early as I had 18 locks to tackle, more than I had ever done on my own before in a day. I had asked CRT if I could get some help in the locks as they are not regularly manned by volunteers, but nobody was available.
The 18 locks are not really in a single lock flight, but spread out over a few miles. I got stuck immediately at the first one, when my anti-vandal key that is normally used to unlock many of the locks up there did not work. Fortunately a crew member of the boat that went through before me informed me that the paddle was actually broken. This was the case on many of the locks. It was very slow going having to walk round and round to find out which of the paddles actually worked. Also every single paddle had to be unlocked and then locked again after use.
After about 2 hours and 6 locks, a hire boat with six people on caught up behind me. They staid behind for a while, but eventually one of the crew walked over and told me that he was now going to help me through the rest. They were on a mission to make it through the 18 and also the 9 Rochdale locks further down on the same day. I thought that this was very ambitious, but I was delighted obviously. I also had a nice chat with my helper. He was a big boss at Oracle in Reading and we had a good natter about how people don't understand data security.
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| This was the lowest bridge ever. No chance for the flowers here. |
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| Ashton locks, different to any I had seen before. |
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| Through the industrial suburbs |
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| Picturesque dereliction |
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| My Oracle friend |
At the end of the day after about 7 hours I arrived in Picadilly Village. This is a new residential development very close to Picadilly station, so right in the centre of Manchester, but it doesn't feel like it at all. However, these pretty houses are surrounded by quite a bit of industrial wasteland waiting to be developed.
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| Below the Ashton locks |
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| A great mooring in Picadilly village |
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| Just around the corner it looks like this! |
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| The only issue in the area were large numbers of ferocious Canada geese. |
Rochdale Canal - 9 locks and then some
I moored for a few days in Picadilly Village while I was visiting Manchester. My plan was to go down the Rochdale locks a few days later, then moor at the bottom in Castlefield to wait for a friend joining me for the leg to Liverpool.
So I set off into the Rochdale locks, which started right after my lovely mooring at the junction of the Ashton and Rochdale canals at Picadilly Basin. After two locks I saw a distinctive building that I had seen on the way down the Ashton canal. My spatial awareness told me that this was not plausible at all. After some more thinking I realised that I had actually turned the wrong way at the junction and was heading for the Pennines rather than central Manchester! And there was no space to turn around right there and then either. I had to go on for another mile, through another lock, turn in the winding hole beyond (the wide bit of canal made for turning boats in) and come straight back down the three locks. About 3h after setting off I was back to where I had started.
I considered my options and decided that for various reasons it was not feasible to now start in the correct direction and do the 9 locks. These were the first wide locks after the Grand Union Canal many weeks ago. Wide locks are harder to work alone in any case, but these were made even harder by the fact that some had very awkward towpath access (or no towpath at all) and some were located in cramped conditions under bridges. Also the locks were very dirty and smelly, the canal full of rubbish. I didn't want to have to leave the boat alone there to close a gate or set the next lock.
Therefore I waited for my friend a couple of days later and we did the 9 locks together. On the day to top it off it was pouring with rain all the way. We did at least manage to share the locks with another boat, but that boat's crew was not very competent, so everything took quite a long time.
Because of the rain, there are no pictures of the lock flight unfortunately. To give you an impression I am including some pictures from google. Imagine the same, only with more rain and more rubbish.
We finally emerged from the locks at Castlefield and continued on to the Bridgewater Canal. For some more miles the setting was mainly industrial und the travelling uneventful. But the day still had a real canal engineering highlight in store: the Barton Swing Aqueduct.
Barton Swing Aqueduct
The Barton Swing Aqueduct is a real feat of Victorian engineering and completely unique. It is an aqueduct of the Bridgewater Canal crossing the Manchester Ship Canal. In order to enable big ships to pass through the whole canal bridge can swing in line with a central island in the Ship Canal. To achieve this, both the canal trough and the canal on both sides are sealed off with manually operated gates. It was opened in 1894.
We didn't see it in operation as the canal was open, when we crossed it. But it is still in regular use today. Here is a
time lapse video where you can see how it works.
Finally after all the bad weather and the industrial landscape we arrived in the suburbs at a nice park and a beautiful sunset later. The only downside to this mooring was the fact that the local teenagers all hung out on the two benches right next to the boat! But they were well behaved fortunately.
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| Sunset on the Bridgewater Canal |
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| The meeting point for the local teenagers |
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