Time to return - Liverpool to (almost) Manchester

The journey out of Liverpool

Liverpool was the destination for this trip, so eventually now it was time to turn around and start the long journey back to London. Time to do the Liverpool Canal Link in reverse. I won't bore you with a detailed description like on the way in. Suffice to say that it was still amazing. Did I mention that I loved this? On the way in my friend and I had very nice company in the locks, a couple from Essex with their young neighbour. As my friend had left, I was alone on the way out. In the locks I was paired with Mr. Grumpy Man and his dog.

Me (enthusiastic): Isn't this amazing?! I loved it here. How did you find it?

Mr. Grumpy Man: Nah, didn't like it much. Not dog friendly. I prefer the country side.

Err, a little issue with the route planning perhaps? That was the end of the conversation. We did the next five locks in silence.

Otherwise it was a fairly uneventful trip. I staid over in Litherland again to do my shopping. Now that I knew the schedule for those swing bridges that only open twice a day everything went smoothly. I must give a big thanks to the CRT staff working on the bridges, the CRT maintenance yard in Litherland and on the Canal Link. They were just so incredibly friendly and helpful all the way.

Some impressions from this stretch on the way back:

Canal artist

All ducks in a row on this boat

Dark skies are a constant feature these days

Lavender in a canalside garden

One of the massive barges

Rufford branch and Fettler's Wharf marina

On the way back I had a stopover as I had to go to Germany for a few days for a family matter. I needed a sitter for my very old diabetic cat and of course wanted to leave the boat in a secure location as well. Fortunately a very nice lady in Fettler's Wharf marina on the Rufford branch of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal offered to look after my boy.

This meant turning off the main Liverpool to Leeds line and going north up the Rufford Branch including its locks. As I soon discovered this branch is not made for full length (72ft) boats, but only for 62ft. My boat is 60ft. This was the first time I encountered such short locks. I had to manoeuvre carefully not to hit any gates and not get hung up on the cill (the underwater step at the top of the lock, which can sink a boat if you are not careful). The route to the marina involved seven very heavy locks and two swing bridges.

On the way up I had help from two CRT volunteers (hooray for volunteers!) for the first three locks and the swing bridge over the first lock. The other locks I did on my own. It was like a lock museum, every lock had a different mechanism! I don't know why they built them like that. The strangest one didn't have any mechanism to wind up a paddle. It took me ages to discover how to actually open the paddle, which was by pushing a big lever up.

A Rufford lock

Paddle closed

Paddle open

The Rufford locks are in lovely rural settings

For the second swing bridge I enlisted the help of two walkers as the bridge didn't have anything to tie onto on the side where the bridge mechanism was. Yes, one of those ...

In the marina everything was great. Everybody was very friendly and my cat sitter did a great job of looking after the cat and the boat.

So a few days later I had to get back to the main line of the canal. The day started out sunny but very blustery. So I waited until the wind died down a bit, but that's when the pouring rain started and it lasted until the end of the day.

I had help from one of the neighbours in the marina for the first lock, but was then on my own. The swing bridge without bollards was up next and I actually managed to do the trick that I had seen on youtube to tie the boat to the bridge. It went OK-ish. I did manage to get the boat through without damaging the boat or the bridge, but it took a long time and some back and forth. But I was chuffed that I had finally managed this!

So far so good ....

Not quite so good now

The top two locks are close together with a short pound in between. So I walked up to set the lock ahead so that I could go straight from one into the other. The top lock was already empty so I opened the gate and walked back down to the second one, where my boat was. Meawhile a boat had caught up with me from behind (not surprisingly as I was going very slowly on these massive locks).

A man from that boat walked straight past me muttering "we have to fill the top first". I was confused as the gate was open so it was already set for us. What I had completely missed though, walking past twice, was that the pound betwen the locks was almost empty. There was only a trickle of water in the middle, the rest was mud banks (sadly no pics of this as it was bucketing down with rain at the time). I was glad that these people actually showed up. I am not sure what would have happened if they hadn't come. I guess nothing much, as I wouldn't have been able to fill my lock and would have wondered why. Anyway, they opened the paddles of the top lock at both ends and let the water run straight through for about 10 minutes. We filled up the pound by about 3ft before we could proceed. This was the first time I actually saw active water management in action. I always just assume that water is just there and that it is at the right level to proceed through the locks.

Wigan and Trencherfield Mill

The Leeds & Liverpool Canal goes through Wigan, where it branches off to the Bridgewater Canal. On the way in we had seen some interesting buildings near the canal in Wigan, but had not had time to stop. One of these buildings was another huge cotton mill. On the way back I was pleased to find out that Trencherfield Mill still houses its fully restored steam engine and that it was running on the day that I was passing through. So I went to visit it of course.

Trencherfield Mill was opened in 1906 equipped with a massive steam engine of 2500hp. I found it strange that they still built steam engines at a time when electricity had been invented. But apparently at that time there wouldn't have been a reliable way of supplying electricity to such a huge factory, so it was still common to use a steam engine as a central source of power for the whole factory.

In other ways this factory was very modern in that it had a sprinkler system in the ceilings as the cotton was quite flammable. The big tower is in fact a water tower to house the water for the sprinklers.

Trencherfield Mill with its water tower

The steam engine in operation was very impressive. As we were waiting outside for the engine house to open for the demonstration an ear piercing shriek of a steam whistle announced that indeed the engine was in full steam. This is the biggest working steam engine in its original location in the world. It is an impressive beast powered by four cylinders, which drive a 70 ton flywheel. On the flywheel are thick cotton ropes (up to 56 originally), which drive smaller wheels over all five floors, which would in turn drive the cotton spinning machinery. Amazing to think that this one machine powered the whole factory. But it also means that if anything broke, the whole factory would come to a standstill. When the mill was in operation, the workers didn't work round the clock. The engine would be kept under low steam overnight, so that maintenance tasks could be performed.

Powering it up from cold takes several days now as the keeper of the engine informed us. It's his full time job to look after this engine, hence all the brass was polished to perfection.

The engine house also had some of the old cotton spinning machinery.

Cotton "combing" machine

Yarn spinning machine

Steam engine flywheel

The "rope race" from flywheel to all five floors

The whole engine

Letting off a bit of steam

This is a video of the engine in action. This was when it was still speeding up and much slower than it would have run when the factory was working:

Trencherfield Mill also got its own little canal arm. Not only was it used to bring in raw materials and ship the finished cotton yarns, but the canal also feeds the steam engine's boilers.

Only the engine house is still in its original form. The factory floors have been converted into apartments. It was great to see one of these grand buildings preserved so well, but it was also sad to see the rest of the industrial heritage in Wigan rotting away. Wigan has many more fantastic old buildings, some being advertised for sale, but it seems that there is no money to restore any more at the moment. The old famous "Wigan Pier" (a terminal for coal) is gone for good and most of the warehouses and factories are derelict. Only a few information boards and statues remind visitors of Wigan's industrial history today.

Statue of a coal worker to commemorate Wigan Pier

Old warehouse in Wigan

Derelict mills in Wigan

A canal terminus warehouse in Wigan

Back to (almost) Manchester

Still retracing my steps towards Manchester I continued through seven locks in Wigan. These locks were also really hard single-handed, as they had big very heavy gates and leaked badly. The first two took me 1.5h! Fortunately in the later locks I also had some help. Not always very competent though as one of my helpers whacked the paddles open and almost swamped me with a huge waterfall. I made a swift exit and then took a break to never have to share any lock with him again.

A big lock gate in a Wigan lock

Waterfall alert!

After these locks I had a little cause for celebration: these were the last broad locks until I come back to the Grand Union Canal down south. Hurrah!

Finally I arrived at the strangely named Waters Meeting junction in an industrial area on the outskirts of Manchester near the Kellogg's factory (which smells strangely delicious). One branch of the Bridgewater Canal goes to Manchester here, which is where we came from and the other branch turns south to skirt round the Mersey to the south. From here on it is finally new territory.