Onto the Shroppie

Croxton Flash

We overslept a bit on Sunday morning, and got moving at around 10:30, only to stop again about a mile and one lock (Middlewich Big Lock) later. There's a Tesco close to the canal, and we had a short shopping list that had grown out of what we'd forgotten in Lymm.

photo - www.tripadvisor.co.uk

The stop, brief as it was, turned out to be rather unfortunate, for we now found ourselves ascending the narrow locks behind a hire boat. A boat from Canal Club (name and shame time), who had shamefully allowed a woman with an invalid father and two children to ascend the locks without having had any useful basic tuition. The mother was clearly very stressed because she was struggling to drive the boat, her little boy of about five was out of control (her fault, not Canal Club's), the teenager hadn't a clue about operating locks, and the old man, though he claimed to have “done the whole system” seemed to know little more than anyone else in the crew.

My biggest concern was their safety. The little boy was sidling up and down the gunnels, the teenager was dancing on the roof, juggling the windlass, and the old man, overweight and breathless, looked fit to expire at any moment. None of them wanted to take any notice of my advice. It was all very sad. At best, they were not going to have a very enjoyable holiday, and at worst, one of them was going to die. I helped them all I could, gave instruction and advice, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears, and their very slow progress to Middlewich Junction caused a great deal of distress amongst other boaters. Feelings were running high.

photo - www.waterwayroutes.co.uk

The last we saw of them was as they drove into Wardle Lock, with a young man, possibly from Middlewich Boats, now at the helm. He'd heroically jumped aboard when it became quite clear that the poor woman was not going to be able to make the 90 degree turn onto the Shropshire Union Canal.

Meanwhile, we'd passed the other boats that were waiting their turn to turn off the Trent and Mersey, and pulled up outside the chandlery there – only to find they close on Sundays. Grace reversed Kantara away, and across in front of one of the waiting boats.

After a boat had entered the scene from King's Lock, there were no fewer than six boats waiting to enter the Shroppie. When two craft from Middlewich Boats came onto the scene in reverse, wanting to wind and reverse back to their base, the whole pound took on a rather chaotic character. It reminded me of this video, though not nearly so bad!

Here we stayed for some time – time enough to make and eat a light lunch – until finally our turn came and we started up the Shropshire Union Canal.

It was only then that I realised that, having not taken any photos when we went down the Middlewich Locks because it was raining, I'd not taken any this time, either, having been rather distracted by the Canal Club Boat.

Standthorne Lock; photo - canalplan.org.uk

It had taken us 4½ hours to travel the 4½ lock-hours from our overnight mooring. Standthorne Lock was slow, the two miles after that were fine. But come bridge 22, where there's a perfect visitor mooring, we'd had enough for the day, and we moored there. 

The Shroppie's looking beautiful. The spot where we moored overlooked Top Flash and the River Weaver. We sat back and enjoyed it.

Favourite boat name of the day – NB Nomad Rush. Very appropriate, don't you think?

A visit to the Anderton Lift

The Saltersford and Barnton Tunnels were first on Saturday morning. The first winding, one-way-at-a-time, and timetabled; the other dead straight, and “enter if there's no-one coming towards you!” It involved a half-hour wait at Saltersford, where we were first in the queue, and an impatient know-it-all boater behind us trying to bully Grace into leaving some minutes too early. If he had known-it-all, he would have known that you can't “see the other end” from the entrance, as he suggested, and that there are people – just like him – who like to flout the time regulations and end up leaving the tunnel just as others are starting to enter. Someone did that to us when we were coming the other way through!

At Barnton Tunnel, there's a sharp left turn immediately before you get to the portal, so, although the tunnel's dead straight, you don't get to see if there's someone coming till you're almost in. And as we turned in at our end, so someone came in at the other end, sounding their horn as they did so. We backed out. We thought his intelligent decision to sound his horn earned him the right!

Shortly after leaving the tunnel, we pulled over and moored at the amazing Anderton Lift, and spent almost two hours there. We watched the lift in action, we discovered more about it in the visitors' centre, and we had lunch there. It's a Heritage Award-winning site, and a must-see for all. We look forward to returning – next year, perhaps, on a cruise to Llangollen – to go down on the lift, and spend a few days on the River Weaver. We're told it's delightful.

Boats enter the right channel...

pass along...

into a caisson (think "bath") at the end of that huge multi-legged structure.

Spare parts?

The bottom gate opens to take boats up
off the River Weaver onto the canal...

two at a time.

The gate closes behind them...

and the caisson starts to rise...

as the other starts its descent.

These boats have just come down...

and they drive out onto the river...

as the other leaves onto the canal.

It's all very clever. And amazingly simple!

Yesterday was juvenile heron day. Today was kingfisher day, with several sightings and one much-zoomed photo. And a first for us was a crested grebe with three young.

After a stretch of gentle countryside through Marston and Wincham came Northwich and its ugly salt-processing plants, steam and noise.

But this gave way to wooded countryside again, and we found a perfect mooring past bridge 76, just before the stark yet picturesque Croxton Flash. As yesterday, only one other boat shares the mooring with us.