Going down

Red flag is where we are, blue where we’ve been

We’ve come down the Anderton Boat Lift on to the River Weaver (or the Weaver Navigation as it’s more properly known). The river is some 50 ft lower than the canal, however they pass close to each other at Anderton, and before the lift was built in 1875 goods (salt from Middlewich for example) had to be transhipped from narrowboats on the canal level to barges on the river below. The lift was built to enable one barge (or two narrow boats) to go down, whilst another barge (or narrow boats) went up.  In each case the boats were in large caissons (water tanks) that were hydraulically operated using water.

The Anderton Boat Lift

After 33 years the polluted river water corroded the hydraulics, and a series of electrically operated gears and counterweights were installed.  The lift operated for a further 75 years, but then needed extensive work to restore it.  Finally in 2002 it reopened after a £7 m investment, this time operating on oil hydraulics.

View from the boat at the top of the lift

Once inside, it’s like being inside a giant machine. The actual descent only takes around five minutes, however there’s a bit of water pumping and gate closing/opening too – the boat floats all the time in the tank of water.

Inside the lift

Looking up as we descend – we are in a caisson (tank) like the one on the right of the photo which is above us

Once down, we turned right (going downstream) although it hard to tell as there isn’t any apparent flow on the river. It is beautifully rural and peaceful, and it’s hard to imagine as a busy commercial waterway. It’s much wider than the canal, and the locks are manned – just as well when you see the size !

The locks are rather big !

They were originally designed to allow ships of up 200 ft in length, and 37 ft wide. We went down on our own and apparently used 560,000 gallons of water !  No ships visit any more sadly.

Lock signals

Curiously the locks have signals on them like railway signals – they’re not used now but would have originally been to guide ships into the right lock (there are two at each location).

We found a nice walk part way along the river accessible from the Barnton Cut moorings – see the ‘Walks’ tab for details.