No locks - Bridgewater Canal to Trent & Mersey (again)

Yes. No locks for more than 40 miles. That's unheard of. This is the leg from the Waters Meeting junction near Manchester all the way more or less along the southern side of the Mersey to the junction with the start of the Trent & Mersey Canal at Preston Brook.

Bridgewater Canal history

A little bit about the history of the canal: the Bridgewater canal, whose first part was opened in 1761, is actually the oldest canal in the whole system. It was built on the initiative of the Earl of Bridgewater to transport coal from his mines at Worsley to Manchester and eventually to the Mersey near Runcorn. James Brindley, the canal pioneer who built a lot of the earliest canals and also the already mentioned (and travelled) Trent & Mersey Canal in the vicinity, also played a crucial part in the design here. In fact the Trent & Mersey connected to the Bridgewater Canal for the last stretch to actually reach the Mersey.  In 1776 the connection between Manchester and the Mersey was completed. Sadly today the canal is not navigable anymore all the way to the Mersey, but ends at Runcorn.

Later in 1795, the Leigh Branch of the Bridgewater was completed. This branch connected the canal to the newly built Leeds & Liverpool Canal at Wigan. This route made it possible to go directly into the Liverpool docks via canal rather than via the Mersey river.

My lock-free journey

I keep reiterating that the canal is lock-free as this is so unusual. What is even more unusual is that this is not achieved by meandering around the contours of the land. The canal is very straight all the way. I am not sure how they actually achieved this in those days. I guess the land is simply quite flat.

The Bridgewater Canal is under private management and quite different to the CRT managed canals. It is a bit .... manicured. It is mostly very wide and the towpath is often gravelled and well maintained. There is not much overgrowing vegetation either on the towpath or over the canal. To be perfectly honest, I found it a little bit boring because of all this! For me it was mainly a connection to get back onto the Trent & Mersey Canal to go south again.

A typical landscape

Subsidence of the land due to the coal mining

I was looking forward to having a little look around Worsley as this is where the canal started and there is an underground canal system into the coal mines here. Worsley is very pretty and there are information boards, but sadly none of the coal mining is accessible or even visible today.

Carrot soup near Worsley - iron leaking from the coal mines into the water

Workshop in Worsley

This way into the coal mines - all fenced off

A quarry of sandstone used to build the canal

Buildings in Worsley

The canal goes through Sale, which is quite an urban setting in places. It also has some interesting apartment buildings by the canal side.

Canalside pub in Sale

Apartment buildings over the canal

A manicured wonky hedge

I met Willum's big brother!

One interesting area near Sale (Altrincham) is the Linotype factory grounds. It is a very large area, where some of the old buildings seem to have been demolished, but others are in the process of being either restored or at least bits of them saved. I don't know what is planned there, but it looked like an interesting development.

A glimpse of Runcorn in the distance

Preston Brook junction and three tunnels

Finally I reached the junction with the Trent & Mersey Canal at Preston Brook. There is a tunnel of about 1km there, the first proper tunnel in many weeks. It is too narrow for two-way traffic so operates in one direction only, open on the full hour south to north and on the half hour north to south.

When I arrived there were a number of boats already queueing waiting for the half hour to go into the tunnel. At the last minute when I was about to go in behind the narrowboat in front of me, a little cruiser (called a yoghurt pot by narrowboaters as it is as easily crushed by a heavy steel boat) came from behind. As they were already underway, I waited for them to pass me and then cast off. We approached the tunnel mouth at a normal speed and a decent distance between us and entered the tunnel.

The eyes always need to adjust for a few seconds when going into a pitch black tunnel. As soon as I could see again, I realised that the cruiser had almost stopped in front of me as I couldn't see them anymore! Due to a boat length of 60ft and my flower containers on the roof I have a huge blind spot directly in front of the boat. And this cruiser was right in it. I panicked slightly and shouted to them to speed up as I was already on tick over speed, which is the slowest I am able to go. The alternative is stopping the prop completely in neutral, which is not great in a tunnel as the boat will drift and hit the walls.

They speeded up for a bit and I could see their little headlight on the tunnel wall, which gave me some bearing. Then they slowed down again and disappeared from my sight in front of the boat once more. I shouted again. They went a bit faster. The tunnel took maybe 15 minutes and we kept repeating this the whole time. I was really worried that I would run into them.

When we emerged the other side, we all had to moor up, because there is a small stop lock which marks the junction with the Trent & Mersey Canal. The woman on the cruiser apologised for going so slowly, but said they didn't have much choice as when they were going faster, they were getting too close to the narrowboat in front of them. I don't know why that boat went so slowly, but I know that it is much easier to go at a normal speed in a tunnel. I knew that there were two more tunnels ahead and I definitely did not want to repeat this situation. So I took a break and let them all go.

The next tunnel (Saltersford) about 3 miles on is also timed as it is also only one way. I set off again with plenty of time to reach it for the time slot of ten minutes starting at the half hour. When I came round a bend I found a boat in front of me which had just gone into the reeds somehow. After some manoeuvring, the guy got the boat out of the reeds and pottered off ... very ... very ... slowly. As there is no way to overtake on a canal usually, I went very very slowly behind him, time ticking away. I was close to giving up hope that we'd make the hourly slot when suddenly he speeded up, after having looked at his watch I presume. So we just made it to the tunnel on the last minute we were allowed to go in.

This tunnel was not very long, but very hard to navigate without hitting the walls as it had a number of bends. This is difficult in a tunnel, because the only part that is well illuminated is an arc of tunnel wall and ceiling at the front of the boat. If that arc is somehow off to one side, you have to half guess how exactly that curve goes all the 60ft to the back of the boat and try to steer round that. I did not hit the walls once (but it was close a number of times). It showed me that I have improved my steering a lot on this trip. And here it was a real advantage to have a boat ahead of me (with a lot of distance between us) as I could vaguely see from his headlight how the tunnel curved ahead of me.

The last of the three tunnels was a doddle in comparison!

Waiting for Preston Brook tunnel

This is about as much as you can see in there

South entrance of Preston Brook tunnel

Going back onto the Trent & Mersey somehow felt like the transition from the North back to the Midlands. Maybe it was the familiarity of the bridges and mile markers or maybe it was the fact that there are now once more only narrowboats around. The canal also felt very different immediately as it was curvy and in places overgrown. I find it much more interesting to cruise on a canal where I cannot see for miles ahead where I am going.

A familiar mile marker, this time from the very end of the canal

This stretch of the Trent & Mersey had another canal highlight in store: the Anderton Boat Lift. I will cover this in the next post.