My narrow escape (Home)

At the northern end of the Macclesfield Canal there is a short section of about 6 miles that goes further into the Peak District - the Upper Peak Forest Canal. Instead of taking the boat there and back (swing bridges and low headroom on this stretch) I decided to cycle this canal to the end. This canal was built to transport lime and limestone from the quarries in the mountains to the rest of the canal network. Where the canal ends there are inclined planes and railways where horses pulled wagons from the quarries to where they could be loaded onto the boats. Going along this canal means going deeper into the hills with fantastic views. The canal clings to the hillside without any locks here. Often it goes through wooded areas that smelled heavily of wild garlic. I wish I had been here a few months ealier to harvest that! Except for the stretch where it didn't smell of garlic, but suddenly strangely sweet and delicious. Google reveals that this is a sweet factory called Swizz...

Once we had cleared the Harecastle tunnel the junction with the Macclesfield canal followed in less than a mile. Here my crew Carsten left me, so I was on my own again. Not so bad, because the Macclesfield canal has only one lock flight with 12 locks and otherwise lock-free cruising. This is going to be a rather long post covering the whole length of the Macclesfield canal. The junction with the Trent & Mersey is interesting as it isn't really a junction, but rather the Macclesfield is carried over an aqueduct, while the Trent & Mersey goes through locks below. Macclesfield going over the Trent & Mersey below Macclesfield Canal History The 26 miles long Macclesfield canal dates from the 1830s, so is quite a lot newer than the Trent & Mersey and most of the other canals I have been on. It is very obvious that canal engineering had progressed by then as the canal despite going through very hilly terrain is fairly straight without a lot of locks or tunnels...