Into Town

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

We’ve moved up the Weaver Navigation and are moored for the night in the middle of Northwich, just upstream of the Town Bridge.   We’re planning to stay for tomorrow as well, as Friday is apparently market day, and we need to stock up on fresh veg etc.

Northwich Town Bridge moorings

We’ve gone from one extreme to the other compared to where we spent last night. It was in splendid isolation and on a really attractive stretch of the river near a place called Frodsham. Where we moored was called the Devil’s Garden but we can’t work out why !

‘Devil’s Garden’

On the way back upstream to Northwich we had to pass through two locks, this time going in to an empty lock. The lock keeper passes a rope down for you to tie your own rope to, lifts it up, passes it around a bollard and gives the end back so you can hang on.

Deb earning her crust

The advent of the railways (with steam) in the 1830s or so, brought about many changes in the way the canals and boat people worked at the time, in order to try and remain commercially competitive. However the railway opportunity also brought with it some remarkable architecture. Such as Acton viaduct which crosses the Weaver Navigation near Saltersford lock. Built of sandstone in 1837 for the Grand Junction Railway, you have to admire the skill of the craftsmen who built it – more or less by hand in those days.

Acton Viaduct

Substantial sandstone arches

Other bridges like the one below built more recently (1919) carrying the towpath , interestingly has two curved arches of laminated timber layers, making it really strong.

1919 Wooden bridge near Dutton Locks

Unfortunately not everything made of wood lasts. Near Dutton Lock is the wreck of the MV Chica. Originally built in Norway in 1894, she apparently had an adventurous life, much of which was spent in the Mediterranean. Latterly she had been operated as a cruiser for fare paying passengers wanting to explore the Weaver Navigation and Manchester Ship Canal.  Sadly she sprang a leak one night in 1993 and has remained there ever since.

Hope we don’t end up like this !

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.

More salt sir ?

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

 

Well we really have learnt lots today.  Having moored outside the ‘Lion Salt Works’ last night in a place called Marston, we took the opportunity of taking a look round the the newly opened £9 million museum today. The salt works complex, originally built in 1894, was never designed to last forever – many of the buildings were of timber construction, and after closing in 1988 having been the last open-pan salt works in the country, had become more or less derelict. However the restoration has been entirely sympathetic with the original, and the result looks every bit worth the investment.  Very simply, underlying parts of Cheshire there is a lot of salt, the remains of a dried out sea 240 million years ago. The salt was originally mined, but many of the mines suffrred an ingress of water, leaving underground reservoirs of brine (salty water).  This was pumped out, heated in large rectangular pans with fires underneath, and the slowly crystallising salt collected, and made into ‘lumps’ in moulds. One of the downsides was that once pumped out, the mines had a tendency to collapse, and anything above (buildings etc) would just sink into a large hole !  All that is left nowadays are lakes called. ‘Flashes. The photo below is one of them – possibly 1/2 km across !

This is Neumans Flash.

I’ve attached some more photos from the museum –

This is an ariel view when the works was still going. The canal can be seen in front of it.

This shows one of the original salt pans – the lighting is to make it more dramatic !

Here’s another salt pan – the furnace was underneath

Once produced and moulded, the salt blocks are dried

The crushing machinery makes it granular to go into bags

This shows the typical result of subsidence. Apparently one pub sank into the ground so far they had to move the bar upstairs !

The canal didn’t escape the subsidence either – this was a major breach

One interesting fact was that a large part of their market for salt was Nigeria !

Anyway, we’re moving on to the Anderton Boat Lift now, so that we can get to the River Weaver – more on that tomorrow.

 

 

Salt of the Earth

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

Despite vowing ‘not to do rain’, we spent a second day cruising and getting wet. Last night turned out OK in the end, allowing us to make good use of the front deck for some haut cuisine.

Al fresco

Today we’ve worked our way deep into ‘salt country’. Since Roman times salt has been extracted and processed in Cheshire, and has spawned multitude of chemical industries that use it. Middlewich and Northwich  figured largely in the salt trade (along with Nantwich) – ‘wich’ means salt.  On the way in to Middlewich we occupied around 40% of the length of the Wardle Canal  (it’s only 154 ft long !). I have a feeling it’s the shortest canal on the system.

Wardle Canal – starts where the boat is and ends under the bridge !

It was built so that the Shropshire Union Canal didn’t join straight on the Trent & Mersey Canal (under the bridge), and therefore an additional toll could be charged for passing along it !

Tonight we’re moored outside the Lion Salt Works. Derelict for some 30 years, it has just had a staggering £9 million spent on it to create a working museum. A visit is planned tomorrow after which I should understand more about the salt trade and will try to summarise in a blog.  As I mentioned earlier, many industries grew as a result of the availability of salt and we passed through one such earlier.

Originally a Brunner Mond chemical works, then belonging to ICI, and latterly TATA Chemicals.

Finally, a quick picture of the girls on a more dog-sized narrow boat just outside Middlewich.

Rain stops play

Red flag shows where we’ve got to, blue where we’ve been

We started off in the sun today, but this afternoon just as the canal became shallow at the edges making mooring more difficult, the heavens opened !  We’re a little further along the Middlewich branch now having crossed the River Weaver aqueduct earlier, not that you’d know it was there as it really isn’t obvious from the canal. So we took the dogs for a walk and had a look underneath. Built with the canal in 1833, it is a substantial structure, and Grade 2 listed I believe.  It looks like the river can get much higher than it was today as one of the arches was dried out.

The Weaver valley

River Weaver aqueduct

The dried out aqueduct arch

Most of this canal is rural, with just a few farms, however this ‘Dutch’ looking house rather caught my eye.

The girls on their walk

At last we’re off !

Well, we got away as scheduled on July 4th, and it was sunny !  Not completely knowing who our readership is (if any), for our land-living friends and family the map below shows roughly where we’ve got to :

The red flag is where we’ve got to

We were only cruising for couple of hours from our mooring on the Llangollen Canal, down the four locks at Hurleston and onto the Shropshire Union Canal main line.

Brutus half way down the Hurleston locks

The stretch of canal we’re moored on is the ‘Middlewich Branch’ of the Shroppie (Shropshire Union) and in my view one of the best maintained. It is one of the newest at just 175 years old, but will have seen thousands of boats over the years – I love the social history that goes with our industrial heritage in this country, and the photo below is of steps at one of the locks. My rough calculation shows that over 1 million pairs of feet have trodden on them, maybe even more.

Cholmondeston Lock

Once we’ve stopped there’s no where to sit in the boat as we seem to struggle to get the dogs off the arm chairs.  Some time I’m going to try and do a video tour through the boat so that anyone interested can see how everything fits in !

It’s a dogs life !