26th of June 2016. The winding road to Gargrave.

It was five and a half miles and eight locks into Gargrave, a very pretty little village with a nice tea shop. We encountered this bridge called, imaginatively, Double Arched Bridge and it was so winding that at one point that we could almost reach out and touch a boat coming along where we had just been.

Double arched bridge.

Over the back wall is the roof of the boat following us.

The views at the locks are some of the loveliest we have seen and there was a  very pretty lock cottage at the bottom of the Bank Newton six flight.

The best lock view on the canals?

The locker in action.

The date above the door is 1797 so it was built with the canal.

Welcome to Gargrave locks; the rain is coming.....

We moored in Gargrave just as the rain started. It continued all evening and we dug in for the night.
On Monday we visited the tea shop and local co-op and admired the river Aire which goes through the village. We'll meet it again in Leeds. We went for a rather perilous bike ride along the tow path in a heavy and un-forecast shower. There were oyster catchers with young in the fields. This one wasn't happy about us even though we were on the other side of the canal. He dive-bombed us and generally gave us what for from his fence post as we went past.

This is the most northerly point of the canal. We will turn south east as we come out of the village.
There's more rain forecast for tomorrow (surprise!) but we'll push on to Skipton.

24th and 25th of June 2016. We hit Foulridge but miss Barnoldswick.

After not much sleep we spent much of Friday morning watching the news unfold. Eventually we set off to the Foulridge tunnel, arriving fortuitously just as the light turned to green and we could enter.

In Foulridge tunnel.

We emerged at the other end to pelting rain and decided to stop at the visitor moorings by the old Wharf. In between downpours we visited the wharf café and explored the village which is a nice mixture of housing styles, including the terraces typical of around here. In the evening we walked around the Foulridge  lower reservoir which was framed by low hills and reflected the sky most dramatically. 

Foulridge lower reservoir.

There were a few small sailing dinghies out but not much wind.

On Saturday the weather was better and we decided to go to Barnoldswick and see the old Mill engine which they would be working on Sunday. However, we could only find mooring for two boats in Barnoldswick, both of which were occupied. We found out later that we should have moored by the marina before we reached the town. So no engine for us. The pitfalls of exploring new places. We have been at the summit of the canal so that at the three Greenberfield locks, we were going down again. We went through with a friendly couple who are planning to move onto their boat when he retires from the army later this year. They know this bit of canal well and gave us some tips. We moored at the bottom and walked back up for a late lunch at the Top Lock café. Sandwiches for us and a sausage for Scooby. We liked the mooring so much we decided to stay for the night.
 

The view from our mooring.

Harold (on the left) in his mooring.

Tomorrow we head for Gargrave via many winds and a few locks. This stretch of canal is really most beautiful :)     

23rd June 2016. Fishing, witches and chocolate cake.

We just went up the seven Barrowford locks today, stopping at lovely visitors moorings at the top. We caught up with a hire boat from Sowerby Bridge at the second lock and went through the rest together, two lockers making it a much quicker and easier process.

From the road, looking up the flight. The hill in the distance has a tower on top but sadly no footpaths.

The road  goes to Barrowford and right across the top of this lock.

The Barrowford reservoir is next to these locks and is a key part of the watering system for the canal. We thought it seemed quite low and then we got a notice from CRT advising users of the Leeds and Liverpool canal to take care with water; share locks etc. as there may not be enough to last all summer.

The locks and the reservior, looking back towards the terraces of Burnley (sorry about the thumb!)

It was warm and sunny and so lovely at the top that we decided to revert to our usual slow pace and stop for the day. Jo cycled off the nearby Barrowford village and heritage centre to learn about Pendle witches and eat chocolate cake. After deep cleaning our Elsan tanks (don't ask!), Robin got his rod out and caught half a dozen decent sized roach.

The captain in action.

Ah! this is what we came for!

Harold in his lovely mooring.

Tomorrow we may do as much as two miles and get through the Foulridge tunnel. The tunnel is 1640 yards long and held up the completion of the canal for a long time as it was so difficult to build. Until it was finished, a tramway took goods across the top of the hill so the canal at either side could be used.

22nd June 2016. Burnley.

A short distance from our mooring there was a sign naming the hills we could see in the distance, including Pendle Hill, very nostalgic for Jo as she and her children had had wonderful holidays around there many years ago.

The beautiful Pendle Hill

And (for this short stretch anyway), the beautiful canal.

We made an early start on Wednesday morning, aiming to get 17 miles through Burnley that day. The implications of this sign contrasted rather with the lovely scenery.

As did the M65 motorway which ran alongside us for some distance and which we crossed over twice during the day. 

The day was, like yesterday, a mix of urban and rural; a bit of smart and a lot of run down; litter and debris in the canal alongside glorious moorland views. There were also some different things.

This group of ponies and their foals happily living together was a reminder of the very different lives their ancestors

would have had down the pits.

And goodness knows what this was.

We stopped on the long embankment above Burnley town centre and Jo went to explore. She found a  cliché: a generally grim environment with very friendly people. The older buildings in their soft coloured stone, often in some disrepair, are in sad contrast to loud and nasty modern edifices. Its places like this which give architects a bad name. After disentangling the boat from yet another shopping trolley we set off again. The canal leaves Burnley and skirts the edges of Nelson and Colne. There were no locks today, just a few swing bridges. Occasionally we had a glimpse of more lovely views to the west. We stopped at the bottom of the Barrowford lock with two other boats. The flight is currently being managed by CRT as one lock is being repaired and closed at 4pm, so we'll head up in the morning.  

Views over Barrowford to the west as we approached our mooring.

20th and 21st of June 2016. Blackburn.

Harold was indeed safe on our return and we set off again from our little boatyard in Chorley on Monday morning. More rain, although it was clearing. We passed this sign. Only 79 miles to Leeds!

After just a mile and a half we reached the seven Johnson Hill locks. We followed another pair of boats through so it took a while. Jo's fancy new pedometer said it took 5962 steps and 2.2 miles to complete! The actual distance up the flight is about 3/4 of a mile, so almost triple the distance walked by the locker.

Looking up the locks, about halfway.

And looking down.

At the top there were facilities so we dealt with rubbish and loos and filled up with water. We have learned that secure moorings are rather few on this stretch of canal, so we decided to take the last free mooring spot by the top lock and make a dash through Blackburn the next day.

The top lock (Harold is on the left filling up with water and eventually moored on the right)

We went for a circular walk suggested on a sign by the lock which we almost managed to accomplish with the aid of phone technology and then settled down for an evening of frustrating football.

On Tuesday we travelled 13 miles through Blackburn and out the other side. The town covers a valley and its sides and the canal is raised up, travelling along the contours of the hill to one side. We travelled mostly through housing and industrial estates in varying states of repair but got glimpses of the town itself now and again.

Looking across the valley and the town.

Rows of terraced housing going up the hill.

 We followed two pairs of boats up the six Blackburn locks. The pair in front kindly left the bottom paddles up when they left so the locks were empty for us, which made it a bit quicker and easier for the locker. At the bottom lock we were assisted by a drunk and paramedics were collecting another inebriated man and taking him away. At the rest there was less drama but just as much broken glass and litter. The canal water itself is quite clear and there are lots of fish and families of geese, ducks, moorhens and swans, but also lots of rubbish and debris floating about and stuck on the banks. There was also quite a lot of stuff on the bottom of the canal causing various scrapings and bangings on the hull as we went along. The perils of urban boating.

Most of the mills and wharves we saw were derelict but these two had been restored.

Eventually we emerged from Blackburn and into countryside, with hills appearing in the distance (although much of it still fairly built up and the M65 remains within earshot). The canal winds along the contours with no suitable mooring until Rishton Bridge where there is a visitors mooring for one and a half boats. As it contained two boats already we (and the three boats which came after us!) made do with being slightly aground on the bank next to it. We were going to go on to moorings at Church but people already in the mooring who had come from there said it was dodgy and they hadn't fancied it.  They also said Burney (next on the agenda) is not great, but after that its all lovely!

14th and 15th of June 2016. The Worst Locks in the World... (probably!)

On Tuesday morning we set off early again in pouring rain. Robin made a few calls and we identified a boatyard in Chorley which could look after Harold while his crew has a few days home. There were two locks in the approach to Wigan to get us in the mood. The banks were high and ragged with shallow patches which made it difficult to moor and the locks deep and heavy. Just an inkling of what was to come. Fortunately the rain turned to drizzle and then stopped for the rest of the day. We took the right fork at Wigan (the left goes to Liverpool) and met the first lock. There were no other boats about and no CRT staff or volunteers so we braced ourselves and headed up the main 21 lock flight on our own. The grass had not been mown and by the second lock Jo's feet and legs were soaked and remained so for the rest of the day and she muttered darkly about trench foot.

Some way up we met 2 boats coming down which were being helped by a volunteer lock keeper, on Tuesday they will do assisted passage for the ill or disabled if booked in advance (something we may be glad to know for later). He couldn't help but he did give us advice on how to manage the (even more) difficult locks numbered 75 - 70 for which we were grateful. We got into a bit of a routine which shared the heavy locking work between us (many of the gates Jo just couldn't shift on her own anyway). The locks are an inconvenient distance apart and there are no mooring posts so we left Harold safely stowed at the top of the previous lock while we got the next one ready and then Robin drove him across to the next lock while Jo closed the previous lock's gate and walked up to join them. It took 7 hours to get to the top (including 2 short tea/dog walking stops - both with Harold left in the lock as there's nowhere to moor) and it was extremely hard work. We had some help from a group of young Polish people near the top, and a few times on the flight people walking passed stopped to help Jo with a heavy gate. This help was most gratefully received.

About 3/4 of the way up we got this view as some reward for our efforts.

The flight raises the canal by 214 and a half feet.

A relieved Harold in the top lock.  Note the mowed grass up here. Too late now! 

At the top.

We eventually moored at Red Rock Bridge, a way out of town and spent the evening nursing very sore backs. Scooby, who hates the banging in the locks and who was shut in while we went through them, came out on the back for the last couple of miles and had a nice walk in the evening as some compensation. We would certainly not do this lock flight again without more crew to help.

The next day we made our way  through Adlington to Chorley, going past the sign welcoming us the Lancashire on the way. We saw hills over to the East, a reminder of why we chose to cruise this canal and, hopefully, a sign of good things to come. The boatyard is very small and a bit tatty but Harold should be safe enough and it's cheap. We'll be back to collect him on Sunday.

13th June 2016. A long day.

Robin had identified a mooring about 23 miles away, around the outskirts of Manchester and on the approach  to Wigan. We got an early start in hammering rain, which didn't finally fizzle out until the late afternoon. The canal went through Sale and then Stretford, where there is a junction which takes you either east into Manchester city centre and the Rochdale canal, or west towards the Leeds and Liverpool.

There was lots of canal-side redevelopment along the route.

But also some green corridors through the city.

The canal goes right past the Trafford Shopping Centre, where we moored for Robin to drip dry and get some lunch and Jo to go (successfully) in search of sandals. If it ever stops raining, she may get to wear them!

The Trafford Centre.

 We went under the M60 (twice) and over the Manchester Ship canal. The aquaduct is in fact, or was at one time, a swing bridge which could be moved out of the way for tall ships to pass underneath.

The Manchester Ship Canal looking West

The Manchester Ship Canal looking East (towards the city)

The 'swing' Aquaduct which took us over the MSC.

After all that excitement, the rest of the journey was a bit of a slog. The canal went a very vibrant orange for a few miles, caused by iron ore in the soil.

The orange canal

We saw this lovely house in Worsely which rather stood out from the other architecture on this journey.

And then the canal went back to its normal colour and as clear as day, with lily pads and shoals of fish.

In Leigh the Bridgewater canal miraculously changed again, this time into the Leeds and Liverpool canal and we are safely back in CRT territory. We had to stop at the Plank lift bridge, waiting until 6pm and the end of the rush hour before the bridge could be lifted. The start of the Pennines appeared in the distance.

A distant view of the Pennines.

We moored at the previously identified visitors moorings at Dover Bridge at ten to seven to find the pub kitchens closed. Ah well! Pasta and bacon for tea :)

Altogether a day of passing through a great variety of surroundings: rural, industrial, redeveloped and run down. Tomorrow the 21 Wigan lock flight. Double width locks too. Another long day then!

 

12th of June 2016. To Lymm.

17 miles, 3 tunnels and one stop-lock today. Still warmish but wet at times. We negotiated the three narrow and winding tunnels, each only one way and two with time limited passage (between the hour and twenty past going one way and the half past to twenty to the hour going the other). A family of swans were also making their way along the canal and we met them at the end of the first tunnel and in the middle of the second. The third tunnel, Preston Brook ,was particularly winding so that half way through the light at the end disappeared for quite a while.
.

No light at the end of the tunnel..

Looking up into an air-vent from the middle of the tunnel.

Meeting swans in the dark

As we emerged from the Preston Brook tunnel the canal miraculously became the Bridgewater Canal, the first canal built in the Industrial age by the Duke of Bridgewater to take coal from Liverpool to Manchester. The Bridgewater canal is not owned by the CRT but by the Manchester Ship Canal (which was eventually built to replace it) and we only have 7 days on it before we need to buy a separate license. We went under the M6.

The M6

Under the M6!

We eventually stopped for the night in Lymm, a small and rather posh town which managed to avoid being industrialised by not having any coal or soft water. It did however have a useful Sainsbury's local open late on a Sunday evening. We'll need to push on again tomorrow to get to the end of this canal before need to go home on Wednesday.