Flat land and big skies - from Manchester to Liverpool

Having already covered part of the way out of Manchester, the journey continued on the Bridgewater Canal's Leigh Branch up to the junction in Wigan, where it meets the great long Leeds & Liverpool Canal which took us all the way into Liverpool. I will be returning via the whole length of the Bridgewater Canal, so will write a bit more about it then.

Leeds & Liverpool Canal history

Both the Bridgewater and the Leeds & Liverpool Canal are wide canals with big locks fitting two narrowboats side by side like on the Grand Union down south. Despite being wide, both canals are amongst the oldest in the system.

The Leeds & Liverpool canal was started around 1770 to create a connection over the Pennines between Liverpool and the emerging industrial centres of Leeds and Bradford. Through various rivers in the East, it also connected Liverpool and Hull by canal. As is the case for virtually all of the earliest canals, it was the brain child of James Brindley. Strangely initially the canal didn't have a direct connection to the Liverpool Merseyside docks. Only in the middle of the 19th century a lock flight (Stanley locks) was built down to connect the canal to the docks. More on that later, as this is now part of the newly opened Liverpool Canal Link.

A big canal

On these wide canals, the locks feel even bigger than on the Grand Union with there being a foot of room either side in some of them when two narrowboats share a lock. But the boats on these canals are big too. Where on the GU you mainly encounter narrowboats and widebeams (a boat in style like a narrowboat but up to twice the width), up here you encounter all different types of boats. The most impressive are the big working barges, which are similar in shape to the old narrowboats, but much much bigger. We saw only very few of these sadly.

I had seen widebeams pretending to be narrowboats. But the most interesting boats here were boats of the size of a narrowboat pretending to be dutch barges.

A liveaboard barge

A narrowboat pretending to be a Dutch barge

And another one

A converted big barge

Two working barges selling fuel

Another workboat

The route into Liverpool

From Manchester Castlefield up to the junction in Wigan we cruised on the Leigh branch of the Bridgewater Canal, lock-free until just before Wigan. The wide canal and lack of locks makes it feel much more modern than it is.

Bridgewater Canal - another canal motorway

Conversions of old canal buildings

The canal in Leigh

Another impressive mill in Leigh

In Wigan the Leeds & Liverpool Canal joins directly into the infamous Wigan lock flight. To the left (to Liverpool) are four locks spaced out over a few miles, to the right (to Leeds) are 21 in short succession. Fortunately we went the correct way this time! After our experience in the Rochdale locks in Manchester and having been told that Wigan can be a bit rough in places, we braced ourselves for the experience. But it all went really well and Wigan seen from the canal had a lot of impressive buildings if a little run down. More on Wigan later, as I visited it in a bit more detail on the way back.

Wigan Pier

Having a crew to work the big locks was very helpful too. We also got help from some people by the lockside. Everybody was super friendly here. If the rough bits exist, we didn't encounter them on our journey through.

Welcome to Wigan

When I did my research of the route for this trip I had considered going on the Leeds & Liverpool canal all the way over the Pennines to Leeds. However, there are lots and lots of swing bridges on this canal and they are really hard single-handed. You may recall my first attempts which were not entirely successful. So I had abandoned that idea. But even just the short stretch to Liverpool didn't disappoint in that respect as it had about 15 swing bridges as well, most of them - you guessed it - with the bridge mechanism not on the towpath side, but on the off-side.

With a crew this is not a problem at all. Moor up at the towpath side, crew walks over the bridge, opens it, boat goes through, moor up at towpath again, crew closes bridge, walks back over and off you go. I looked at each bridge assessing how I would do this on my own, as I will need to retrace my way back out of Liverpool alone. Fortunately almost all of them had bollards on the off-side so that it should be possible to do it all from the correct side. Fingers crossed ...

As a bonus almost all of the swing bridges were road bridges with barriers operated electrically on the press of a button. It is a great feeling to push a button and stop the traffic of sometimes quite busy roads to let a little slow narrowboat through.

And ... another one

Picturesque Burscough Wharf

After the Wigan locks there are no locks anymore all the way to Liverpool, so it makes very enjoyable cruising. After the hills of the Macclesfield the land here is very different. It is almost entirely flat and largely agricultural. The canal is covered in reeds and water lilies here. This is not a busy section of canal with Liverpool being a dead end, so often there is just a narrow open channel through the water lilies. The canal amongst the flat lands and wide skies reminded me a bit of the Netherlands in places.

Wide land and big sky

Only a narrow channel through the reeds and the lilies

The water lilies are very pretty, but if you need to pass a boat you need to steer through the lilies and end up with a ton of them round the propeller. We got completely stuck at one point. Ah well, better than clearing plastic bags off the prop all the time.

Waterl lilies in the canal

Water lilies round the prop

When going into Liverpool, it is necessary to pre-book a day for going in and out as this part of the canal is tightly managed. Only six boats are allowed either way on any one day. Boats get given a time and meeting point to be guided into the city centre. I knew this and had booked it, but not read all the instructions properly. We found out coincidentally from another boater that there was a bridge several miles before the meeting point, which is operated by CRT staff and only opened twice a day to let the boats through that have a booking for Liverpool. Fortunately this worked out OK for us, as we arrived about an hour before the bridge was due to open. The CRT staff promptly arrived. They were super friendly and also explained where we should stay overnight.

The place to stay overnight is called Litherland, a CRT maintenance yard with all facilities and a huge Tesco right beside it. This is great as a secure place to stay as the canal goes through the industrial backyards of the outskirts of Liverpool and there are no nice places to moor otherwise.

Approaching Liverpool

The Liverpool Canal Link

We set off the next morning from Litherland around 10:00 to be at the meeting point for 13:00 as I thought that we had to go about 4 miles and tackle 4 locks before the meeting point. Turned out that once again I had not read the instructions properly. When we arrived at the lock flight, we found that they could only be operated by CRT staff. This was actually the meeting point and we were there way too early. Oh well, time to read the rest of the instructions, namely how to go through all the docks into the city centre. They sounded really complicated.

To create a connection between the Leeds & Liverpool canal and the Liverpool docks the Stanley lock flight of 4 locks was built more than 100 years after the canal was built. It ends in Stanley dock, which used to have a sea-going lock to the Mersey, now closed off. I am not sure whether canal boats actually went directly to sea from the canal. I suspect that cargo would have been moved from the canal barges onto ocean going ships here. None of the docks are used for cargo today as the container port a few miles away handles all commercial shipping now.

In order to create a route for leisure boats from the canal into the city centre, the Liverpool Canal Link was constructed in 2008 as part of Liverpool's City of Culture programme. The canal link was part of the regeneration of the waterfront on a large scale. It involved connecting various docks via small new canals, three new canal tunnels under the waterfront promenade, two new locks and new pontoon moorings in Salthouse Dock. The route goes from the outer old and a bit derelict docks, past the waterfront with Liverpool's most famous buildings, Pier Head, Mersey ferry and ocean liner terminal, museum ships and the tourist centre Albert Dock. In Salthouse Dock the visiting canal boats are not only in the middle of the waterfront tourist centre but they are part of the tourist attractions themselves. We must have been snapped in a 100 photographs during our time there.

And all this is free and boats can stay for seven days. CRT staff guide the six boats in and out daily through the locks and docks (no need for the complicated instructions). Every pontoon has free electricity and access to a water point. I think this is simply amazing. Anybody who has the chance should go.

At the top of the Stanley flight - start of the canal link

Massive tobacco warehouse next to the Stanley locks

The CRT staff begin their work guiding us down into the docks

Entering Stanley Dock below the locks

Approaching the ocean liner terminal

One of the new street tunnels

The first new lock with the Liver Building in the background

The "three graces" seen from the canal: Liver Building, Cunard Building and Port of Liverpool building

The second new lock next to the new Museum of Liverpool

The strangest lock ever

Approaching the touristic waterfront

Next to the historic sailing ships

Entering Albert Dock

Traversing Albert Dock

In Salthouse Dock

We are right in the middle of everything!

A few words about the city of Liverpool

I didn't know very much about Liverpool before coming here. My main point of reference were the Beatles! I also had in the back of my mind that Liverpool was virtually abandoned under the Thatcher government. Therefore I more or less expected a city in decline and some derelict parts.

It was not like that at all. The waterfront is a buzzing place and a lot of business and residential development has happened and is still happening in the dock lands and the city centre around it. I am sure there are some deprived areas that I didn't get to see like there are in every major city. But the overall impression I got was of a thriving place, where people are extremely proud of their city. The number of times I have heard that something is the biggest, the largest, the tallest, the oldest, or simply the most of something!

Here are a few impressions of Liverpool: