Not as old as it looks

The magnificent old Post Office, now a Wetherspoon's

Stroll through the centre of Northwich and you'll be impressed by the numbers of beautiful medieval timber framed buildings. Except they aren't! Most are barely a hundred years old.
There is a reason – they were designed to be jacked up and supported - or moved - in the event of subsidence. And subsidence, as we know, has always been a major issue because of the underground salt workings. Timber framing, with its inherent flexibility, doesn't suffer the same disastrous cracking as stone or brick, if the ground moves and is also lighter and therefore easier to prop up or move.
The most remarkable of the town's timber framed buildings is the 1914 built three storey, Elizabethean style old Post Office, now a Wetherspoon's pub - The Penny Black. But there are plenty more: here are a few and a couple that aren't but still caught the eye.

The Brunner public library of 1909

An estate agent's office, complete with gargoyles

The Plaza Cinema of 1925, now a bingo hall but still an eye-catcher

And some wonderful old cigarette advertising on a shop wall

Weekend on the Weaver

Barnton Cut amid the mellow colours of autumn

We have dawdled our way to Northwich this weekend – there's something about the Weaver which makes you dawdle rather than rush.
Yesterday we returned through the two locks we'd gone down through, at Dutton and Saltersford. Mac is the resident lady lockie at Dutton. She's lived at the pretty lock house and worked the locks for over 20 years, starting in the days when big coasters regularly made the run up to the Brunner Mond works at Winnington. A board at the lock displays some fascinating stats about the ships that have been through – including the fact that the lock uses nearly half a million gallons of water per fill!

Big boats on the Weaver

And the biggest of them, the St Michael (c. http://balmaha.net)

We moored last night in Barnton Cut just beyond Saltersford in a tree lined stretch where the sun was beautifully highlighting the first hints of autumn in the leaves. It is here that the canal and river come closest together and just a short walk up the hill brings one to the canal between its two tunnels. The village of Barnton is just across the canal and had a shop for some emergency provisions and an SOS ice-cream.
This morning Brian managed to fall in once again while leaping for the bank from the moored boat – I think he needs a stronger pair of glasses. It wouldn't be so bad but the little chap is such a feeble swimmer. I think we'll take him to our grand daughter's swimming classes.
After wringing Brian out we carried on upstream, past the Anderton Lift and towards Northwich. Along the way we kept passing bags of rubbish floating in the water. After the first few we realised this was more than just a few lazy boaters or fishermen and as we came into the town we saw the cause: Saturday night scrotes had pushed a 'dumpster' - one of those big wheeled rubbish bins - into the water and it was slowly leaking out bags of litter. Wish I'd seen them, I'd have done a Brian on them and sent them overboard with the rubbish.

Local heroes: a salt miner, Paula Radcliffe and Gary Barlow

Northwich owes its existence to salt which has been extracted from the ground below it since Roman times. Unfortunately salt extraction almost killed off the town too. Originally the salt was mined but in the 19th century the extraction was made quicker and cheaper by pumping hot water underground in which the salt dissolved. The brine was then brought out and the salt extracted. Unfortunately this seriously weakened the land: the salt mines had been kept structurally sound by careful extraction but the brine process dissolved everything. Serious subsidence appeared in the countryside, creating 'flashes' or water filled lagoons and areas of Northwich too started to subside.
But a £28m project has now stabilised four old mines under the town, pumping them full of a cement based mixture, and enabled new development to begin. We are moored tonight opposite the first of these – Hayhurst Quay, a 40 boat marina, Waitrose and leisure area.
We were moored further upstream just across from Macdonalds but moved a  bit further from the temptations of the Golden Arches!
As well as its salt mines, Northwich was the shipbuilding centre of the Weaver. W J Yarwood's yard here built large numbers of working narrowboats from the 1900s onwards and the yard built many larger craft - tugs, barges and coasters - before it closed in 1965. Unfortunately all that remains these days is a small mooring basin; the rest is a neat little housing estate which at least has a memorial plaque.
We passed it on our afternoon walk along the town's 'water heritage trail'. It's a pretty walk along the Weaver and its subsidiary the River Dane,  but it's still a little sad to see some of the old navigation buildings now empty and sliding into disrepair.

The quirky Edwardian sewage pumping station house

And inside, its immaculately restored pumping engines

Much more cheery was the little Edwardian pumping station in Weir Street, in its quirky circular turreted home where a couple of jolly volunteer enthusiasts were running the pumping engine. This Crossley single cylinder four-stroke, powered by gas rather than petrol, and its stablemate, drive lift pumps that, in their day, pumped sewage from parts of the town to the treatment plant. Electric pumps do the job today but will people be coming to visit them on a Sunday afternoon in a hundred years time? I don't think so.
PS Found my Christmas present on the walk too: a quadcopter. What a great device; radio controlled and computer managed and with a built in HD video camera, it flies, hovers, manoeuvres at the flick of a switch.

All I want for Christmas is ... a quadcopter

The Weaver weaves its magic

Moored at the Devil's Garden

I've never known anyone have a bad word to say about the River Weaver and after two days on it I know why. It's charming, fascinating, easygoing and – for a river – no problem to moor on. What more could you ask.

Handsome and huge - the Weaver swingbridges

Coming into one of the giant double locks

The Weaver came into being as a navigable waterway to serve the local industries and though the commercial traffic has sadly gone, everything about it is still to a commercial scale. The locks are huge, the river is crossed by massive swingbridges, that rarely need to swing these days, there are huge factories on its banksides and there's even a commercial sized wrecked ship.
There's an elegance to the locks and the black and white painted bridges that recalls the golden era of the waterways. The water's edge factories are far from handsome – they never were and now as they slide into disuse and dilapidation they are a sad reminder of the Weaver's better days. The massive chemical works at the Runcorn end which we reached today might be unsightly too but at least they are very much functioning still.

The Brunner Mond soda ash works faces you as you leave the boat lift

The massive Brunner Mond chemical works is your first sight exiting the boat lift. This was a forerunner of ICI, then became independent again and now is part of the giant Tata group. It produces soda ash, used in washing soda and many products, and was also where polythene was discovered in an experiment 'which went wrong'.
Ww turned right in front of it and headed west towards the Mersey. The factory is soon left behind as the river threads through a steep sided tree-lined valley before passing another, equally large, derelict factory and heading to Saltersford Locks. The locks on the Weaver are huge and paired, with a lock-keeper at each to operate them for we fortunate few boaters.
The river itself is extremely gentle natured, with just the mildest flow on its deep water. It brushes briefly with habitation at Acton Bridge where there is a caravan park, a smattering of houses and a couple of accessible pubs, then heads into the countryside again. Until now it has run almost parallel with the canal up at the top of the hill but from Dutton Locks it moves away, still in lush, tree filled countryside.
It's here at Dutton Locks that the MV Chica lies sunk and slowly mouldering away. It's been here since sinking more or less overnight back in 1993 and being abandoned by its owners. At the time of its demise it was operating, without much luck, as a hotel boat on the Weaver but its prior history is still something of a mystery. It could be a wooden sail powered cargo boat built in Norway, it may have done gun running in the Med and smuggled booze across the Gibraltar Straits, or maybe that's al folklore. For more info, take a look here.

The wreck of the mysterious MV Chica at Dutton Locks, 

Last night – and again tonight after today's trip – we moored at 'Devil's Garden', a spot entirely the antithesis of its name; a quiet, sheltered bend with a hillside running up behind us. The only devils here were probably the lads who had created a BMX course that looked like a deserted Max Max encampment in a field at the top of the hill.
From the boat we looked out at bar tailed godwits feeding in the water opposite as well as some small, mysterious grey/black birds that defied identification by diving underwater every time we came near. We reckon they are little grebes. Elsewhere today we've seen buzzards, a tufted duck, golden eye ducks and a still to be identified hawk on the ground with some prey.
But we haven't seen any UFOs though some kids back in 1978 did claim to see a spaceship and some aliens here at the Garden. Wonder what they'd been smoking?

Beer and BMX at the Mad Max style encampment at Devil's Garden

Today we headed downriver toward Runcorn, the steep valley slipping away into open, flatter countryside as we neared the estuary. The last stretch is fully canalised, by-passing the river's original route, and suddenly after a trio of bridges – swing, rail and motorway – the country was gone and we were into the sprawling industrial belt of Runcorn where a vast chemical plant, or is it plants plural I really couldn't tell, lines the bank. For the best part of two miles a myriad of pipes, towers, cables and  huge curiously shaped containers runs along the riverside. The real strangeness is the near stillness of it all: aside from the occasional hiss of escaping steam, an occasional whiff in the air and one solitary person you wouldn't know if it was closed down or about to erupt. I wish I could tell you what was produced there but even Google doesn't seem to know.

Just what is going on inside those myriad pipes and towers?

We moored at Weston Marsh Lock where craft can exit onto the Manchester Ship Canal. The original River Weaver swings in here too to create a sizeable estuary with the Ship Canal in the distance and the Mersey estuary beyond it. The Weaver Navigation carries on for a further mile down to Weston Point docks but we'd had enough chemical plants by then.
We've back-tracked and are moored again in the Devil's Garden. Tomorrow we will re-trace our path back past the boat lift and head into the eastern half of the Weaver to Northwich and Winsford.

Down and down we go

Looking back at the lift. The side braces and pulley gear were added later

It is one of the wonders of the English canal system, a scheduled monument and a 'must do' for any serious canal enthusiast. But until today we hadn't been on the Anderton Boat Lift. We've passed it by, visited the exhibition centre and watched boats go up and down between the Trent & Mersey canal and the River Weaver below, yet never used it.
But now we have. And a very enthralling experience it was too. Not thrilling; the descent is too smooth and gentle for that but fascinating to be using a system that dates back to 1875 when it was a prodigious feat of engineering.

Entering the caisson at the top of the lift

The boat lift came into being to solve a problem: salt excavation was – still is – a major industry in this part of Cheshire and the salt was transported by canal boats from the mines to Anderton where it had to be loaded onto barges to take it down the River Weaver to the Mersey estuary. Snag was the Weaver was fifty feet below the canal: the salt had to be shovelled out of the canal boats and onto salt chutes running down the steep hillside to the river basin below where the river barges waited.
To solve this time consuming process Edwin Clark was commissioned to design a lift to bring boats up and down between the two waterways.
His solution was elegantly simple. Two huge caissons – water filled tanks – were each supported on a single water filled ram and the rams joined by a pipe that allowed water to pass between them so they counterbalanced each other. Slightly increasing the water level in the upper caisson would increase its weight, moving it down while the other moved correspondingly upwards.
It all worked sublimely for a time, until the cast iron rams and the pistons began to suffer serious corrosion. In 1904 the whole lot was replaced by an electric motor powered system using pulleys, cables and massive counterweights to balance the caissons. These changes created the lift as it looks today – a new top deck carrying pulleys and motors was added above the original framework and large A-frame braces installed at the sides to take the load.

The descent begins inside the maze of girders and columns

The electric lift worked usccessfully for 75 years until extensive corrosion closed it in 1983. In 1997 a £7 restoration programme began, going back to the original hydraulic power (this time using oil and with ceramic coated stainless steel rams) and the restored lift was opened in 2002.
So what's it like? Each caisson takes two narrowboats and our companion boat, with an unpronouncable name, joined us to wait as the entry gate to the caisson was raised; we motored in and the gate closed behind. It looked a long way down. We were surrounded by a maze of massive diameter riveted cast iron columns and beams, built to the if-in-doubt-make-it-bigger philosophy of pre-computer age engineering.

As we go down the Anderton tripboat rises to meet us

And carries on up towards the canal

The descent started with some gentle bouncing before the caisson settled down into a slow, almost imperceptible sinking earthwards. Just before halfway the roof of the Lift's tripboat started to appear as its caisson rose from below and continued to rise as we dropped. It looked impressive, suspended on its single central ram rather like a waiter balancing a heavy tray on one hand. (To be fair, the caisson also runs in a locating guide at each corner but it's the ram and of course us in the other one that take the load.)

While we reach the river and the caisson door opens

Soon we were down, where a C&RT man gave us a little chat about the history and technology of the lift while the water levels were balanced and the exit gates opened.
And then we were off onto the River Weaver where I swung a right and headed down river. But the Weaver is for tomorrow.

Heading south

Into the Preston Brook Tunnel and onto the Trent & Mersey

We are back on a narrow canal and our bows are pointed southwards. After a summer spent largely 'oop north we are finally heading south.
That said, we are still very much in the north, having just exited the Preston Brook Tunnel and emerged onto the top end of the Trent & Mersey canal.

Through a tree lined cutting on the Bridgewater

About to pass a pair of widebeam workboats

Brian enjoys a spot of luxury hiding from the chilly morning weather

Today's run took us from the chic little town of Lymm on a picturesque and largely tree-lined country route broken by the occasional pretty village and the glimpse here and there of some very smart houses. It's a pleasant run though not an especially memorable one: I couldn't recall any of it from our couple of previous trips until, every now and then, a scene stirred a memory – the distant view of a Ship Canal bridge that we walked to on a previous trip; the old canal building of Thorn Marine, now seemingly spared from the threat of demolition; the little hamlet of Moore where canal meets road briefly at a handy little local shop.

Daresbury Laboratories with its 'Keep Away' warnings

Or, standing in starkly modern contrast to the rural nature of the rest of the canal, the ultra-modern buildings of Daresbury Laboratories – spread further still since our last visit – and so many 'No Mooring, No Fishing, No Access' signs you wondered what sort of dangerous or top secret processes were going on there. Disappointingly for the conspiracy theorists and spy novel enthusiasts among us, according to the website it's more high tech than sci-fi, listing computer science, accelerator science, medical technology and electron microscopy among the work that goes on. I still expect armed guards in SWAT paraphenalia to come running if I ever tried to moor there.

Picturesque traditional cranes to handle stop planks are a regular sight

The Bridgewater Canal is generally in good nick: the bridges are sound, the water deep and the towpath perfect. The traditional stop-plank cranes are a regular sight along the canal and presumably practical as well as pretty since they have to close off the water flow in case of a breach or for maintenance.
This is all as it should be – after all the owners – Peel Holdings not Canal & River Trust – have only a couple of canals (this one and the Manchester Ship Canal) to look after among a staggering £6bn of corporate assets, from Salford's Media City to Pinewood Studios. And the Bridgewater doesn't even have any locks to maintain.
The previous day we'd seen stretches of towpath being relaid and today spotted a couple of big work barges clearing offside trees.
The Bridgewater actually runs through to Runcorn where it used to link through to the River Mersey via a flight of now defunct locks but we, like most boaters, veer left under the huge M56 bridge for the final mile down to the tunnel. And here, at the tunnel entrance, the Trent & Mersey officially begins.

Dutton Dry Dock, the attractive hundred year old structure still in busy use

Fifteen minutes later we exited and went through the shallow Dutton Stop Lock where we stopped to say a brief hello to Tim Leech at his dry dock and show him the engine whose assistance in rebuilding the water pump and providing other bits for we are very grateful. A couple of bends later and we tucked up for the night on some quiet moorings in front of a handsome old working boat with the rather less handsome name of 'MSC Co Works Tug No2'. I preferred its original name of Ceres before it was sold to the Manchester Ship Canal Company in the 1940s.
Tomorrow we are hoping for a first for us – a trip on the Anderton Boat Lift.

No locks whatsoever

Moored in the attractive canalside of Lymm

To paraphrase Danny Baker's 'sausage sandwich game', do we want broad locks, narrow locks or no locks whatsoever?
Well after all those broad locks of the past few weeks, we would prefer no locks whatsoever and that's what we've got today. We are heading out of Manchester on the Bridgewater Canal, a waterway notable for being the first industrial age canal built in England and also for having no locks at all. So, it's been a quiet day of standing at the helm: ironically on a chilly day when a bit of lock wheeling would have warmed us up.

More Banksy than banks on the canal out of Manchester

The run out of Manchester hasn't changed a lot in the 4-5 years since we were last this way. The smart new blocks of canalside apartments soon give way to a battered industrial wasteland that has ben claimed by graffiti artists(?) who have covered virtually every accessible surface with their multi-coloured work. The big landmark along the way is Old Trafford where huge posters of Alec Ferguson holding up trophies remind fans of happier days!

Old Trafford – those were the days, eh

At Waters Meeting the line out of Manchester reaches the main Bridgewater and it's turn right for Wigan and Liverpool or left – like us – for Preston Brook and the top of the Trent&Mersey Canal. The sprawl of Manchester's suburbs continues for several miles, some of it smart, like Sale, others less so.
Not long after Sale the canal passes a pair of very striking 'boat shaped' apartment blocks, somewhat poignantly sandwiched between a couple of what must have been in their day equally striking commercial buildings now in ruin.

This striking old canalside ruin...

...flanks these dramatic apartment blocks on one side...

...while the famous Linotype building lies derelict on the other side

Quite suddenly Manchester's suburbs are left behind and the canal is out into the Cheshire plains, passing the National Trust's Dunham Massey Hall and running along a heavily embanked stretch with far reaching views all around.
Finally we reach our destination for the day, the pretty and pretty posh little town of Lymm where even the moored narrowboats seem suitably spick and span. It's a likeable little spot and, despite its chic appeal, co-exists happily with the canal and the boats that run through its heart.
PS But what is it about Kiwis and canals? Having spent the last week in the company of two New Zealand crewed boats, we find ourselves moored next to another one, Tane Mahuta

Dirty old town

The final lock with the impossible looking Beetham Tower behind

After a delightful weekend of being spoilt by one of our daughters it was back to reality with a bang today with a trip down the Rochdale Nine, the last of the 92 Rochdale Canal locks that would bring us into Castlefield Basin in the heart of Manchester.

Into the underworld at Lock 85 – and no lewd acts please

The first of the Nine is not so bad but the tone is set by the second, located in a dimly lit underworld below an office block. It stinks of pigeon shit and urine and along the shadowy towpath lurk various dubious looking characters. In case you're wondering what could be going on there's a sign warning that it's an offence to commit 'lewd acts'.
Fortunately for Mrs B's delicate constitution none of that was actually going on at 11 o'clock in the morning and we headed on down to Lock 86 at the start of Manchester's famous gay village of restaurants and bars along Canal Street. Well, Mrs B got to the lock; I found myself in Canal Street with no way of reaching the lock landing except by a trip through a private car park and climbing over a fence.

The canal runs beside the Canal Street Gay Village 

At least there's a sign at this lock telling you to stay on the boat because there's no towpath down to the next one either. And no towpath means there's no rubbish. Manchester seems to be awash with the stuff. I haven't been through a lock on this flight when I wasn't crunching broken glass underfoot and walking past plastic bottles, bags of litter, beer cans and stuff I didn't want to look to closely at.
After the lively street scene of Canal Street, Lock 88 is back in old Manchester, hemmed tightly in by dingy high rise commercial buildings. Here water from the pound was pouring over the top gates and on over the bottom gates without the lock itself ever reaching a level that would let me get it open. A bit of diy balancing by fiddling around with the paddles at either end eventually got the water levels balanced and in we went.
From the gloominess of this lock we emerged onto the smartest on the flight: it sits between a modern pub and smart offices with benches for workers to eat their lunches on while watching the boats. It's also the filthiest with the remains of take-away lunches everywhere. Rubbish bins? All rammed full and overflowing – I don't think I've seen an empty one in Manchester. I'm starting to wonder if they do actually empty them.

Revamped Deansgate railway arches with twin level shops and restaurants

At Lock 90 we got our first glimpse of the impossibly unbalanced looking glass Beetham Tower that dominates the city centre skyline. If you were in the mood to be philosophical you could reflect on the juxtaposition of the ancient lock, the Metro trams behind it, the high rise glass tower and the old brick canalside buildings that were under redevelopment. You could, but by this stage my mood was more bad than reflective.

This medieval chain and drum system pulls the lock beam in tight space

The run down to Lock 91 took us past the cleverly redeveloped Deansgate railway arches which feature two level shops and restaurants. The lock itself could be equally charming but the broken glass and carpet of fag butts does rather detract from the appeal.
And finally to Lock 92, the one that all the tourists to Castlefield Basin see and therefore the cleanest and tidiest of the lot. You do get plenty of time to admire the surroundings as it takes the best part of half an hour to fill up thanks to a combo of slow filling and fast leaking. We stopped for a lunch break and a cup of tea before locating a couple of volunteers from the adjacent pub to join me to heave on the lock beam and finally forced the beggar open.
It's notorious for these slow filling antics; the rest of the locks get a bad press too but I found they work well enough – a bit on the heavy side but, hey, this is the Rochdale Canal it's got a reputation to live up.
Tonight we're in Castlefield but tomorrow we are back on our way and frankly I won't be sorry to leave the dirty old town behind.