Weaving along ...

Dear Motley Crew,

As we moved out onto the Trent and Mersey Canal, we were so fixedly focused on the Anderton Lift and the River Weaver that we had little thought for anything else that the canal may have had to offer. Indeed, I suspect that we thought that the Lift would be the highlight of this leg of our travels and that nothing else could possibly compare. But once again, we were proved wrong and to our delight, we found that Tim Minchin was correct when he noted that if you focus too far in front of you, you won’t see the shiny things out the corner of your eye. And what shiny things we encountered.

Whatever we thought that we were going to encounter, this certainly wasn't one of them. One minute we were cruising along through the outskirts of a suburb, and the very next, we were chugging our way through the middle of the Tata chemical works – and I mean right through the middle!

Signs along the boundary of the canal forbade mooring near to the factory but you’d have to wonder who in their right mind would want to pull up anywhere along that stretch. We were almost inclined to hold our collective breaths for the duration as we passed under and alongside huge pipes and belching smokestacks.

As the industrial zone slipped behind us the canal took on a more rural aspect and we became aware of a church spire silhouetted against the skyline at some distance from the canal. The spire appeared and then disappeared in our line of sight so regularly and tantalisingly that we just had to track it down.

It turns out that this church is a star in its own right

We discovered that it sits atop the church of St Mary’s in the village of Great Budworth and a bit of googling revealed that the village had been used as a location for the 2018 filming of “War of the Worlds”. It seems that the entire village was taken over by the film crew for nearly a month whilst the Martians began taking over the Earth.

Although we’d planned to cruise straight through to Anderton, a worn, mossy sign on the canalside, advising that we were entering Marbury Park tempted us to moor up and pull on our walking boots. We spent hours wandering through dark woods of towering trees (you really can't call it "bush") that eventually opened into a large, cleared area bordered on each side by an avenue of deciduous trees.

Many of the trees were beginning to show the first signs of autumnal foliage

We found the remains of an old ice house,

and a mere that borders the village of the aforementioned, and now famous Great Budworth.

And the Lift? Well, it was an amazing experience. From the canal, however, it seems somewhat innocuous. A holding bay for the boats (left) leads off the canal, beyond which the caissons are only just visible. Looking back, again, it all seems fairly unassuming.

As the caissons begin their descent to the river, you start to get an understanding of just how remarkable is this piece of engineering, and a peep over the edge to the two boats that are on their way up gives a perspective to the size of the Lift.

These two boats are in the other caisson that rises up as we go down

It’s only from below that the Lift reveals its true engineering magnificence, rising up from the river like some gargantuan Heath Robinson creation. The gears that can be seen on top of the Lift no longer operate for which we were grateful as apparently they were horrifically noisy and used to drop great globules of grease down onto the unwary boaters.

And the river itself? Simply stunning. Everything about it is of mammoth proportions – it’s deep, allowing for speeds of up to 6 mph; it’s wide – about eighty feet; and the locks are the largest we’ve ever encountered – about 200 feet by 40 feet.

Thankfully they’re manned fulltime which eliminates the very real possibility of someone screwing things up badly!

There is also very little traffic as, surprisingly, the river is little used by comparison with the canal. Most boaters simply come down in the lift, turn about, and then head back up again. Anderton Lift: tick!

The bridges are also immense structures and were made to swing in order to accommodate the passage of the larger commercial vessels that used to ply the waterway

The downstream arm of the river is crossed by the stunning Dutton viaduct – a 20-arch sandstone construction that is 391 metres long and 18 metres high

There always seem to be cows near our moorings!

You've got to love a canal that has bridges, especially for cows!

Our plan was to explore the Runcorn arm of the Bridgewater canal – which was the canal that we were now travelling along. Thought by many boaters to be unworthy of consideration its five miles of lockless waters end abruptly and somewhat ignominiously at the town of Runcorn which apparently has something of “a reputation”. Undeterred, we turned off the main canal and were immediately met with an uninspiring marina on one side and an overgrown wasteland of concrete on the other. Not a great start we thought, but we pressed on regardless. Another bend led us onto one of the most extraordinarily beautiful canals – if not the most beautiful canal – that we have ever cruised along. High on the hill, we spied this imposing water tower. Why are the functional things that we now build, in the main, so utterly ugly by comparison?

The tower has a Latin inscription that runs above the arches and reads;

"This water, derived from the sources of the Severn, is brought to the City of Liverpool, a distance of eighty miles, through the mountains and over the plains of Wales and the intervening country, at the cost of the municipality, in the year of Our Lord 1892".

Now that's classy

Beautiful stone or brick bridges and a wide, deep canal thickly bordered by the healthiest rhododendron bushes that I’ve seen anywhere.

The canal meets its Waterloo, so to speak, at Waterloo Bridge. (sorry, I just had to say it – it was irresistible). Until the 60’s, a flight of ten double locks and a river lock connected the Runcorn arm to the Mersey, 82 feet below. Now it's merely a dead-end.

Although the locks were dismantled, the course of the canal was never built over and there is a strong push to re-instate the locks and link the canal once again with the River Weaver. In the event of that becoming a reality, this rather peaceful and beautiful arm would become an integral part of a ring of canals and hugely popular once again.

Thankfully, our stay in Runcorn was uneventful. A passing local boaty suggested that we moor up in front of the Arts Centre where we'd be under the ever-watchful eye of the CCTV camera. We took his advice. Perhaps as an indication of the town's shady reputation, we noticed a plethora of funeral directors. After counting six within a kilometre radius of the canal, we decided that that was far too many for a town of its size and thought that it might be time to leave!

On the way back down the canal, we paid a visit to Norton Priory, the site of a 12th-century abbey. After the dissolution of monasteries, the remains were incorporated into a Tudor house and then later, into a Georgian residence. An astounding array of original pieces are on display in the museum and a reconstruction of parts of the abbey, incorporating original stone, is also on display.

As we walked back through the gardens towards our mooring on the canal, we came upon a plant with the largest leaves I had ever seen. The Captain, who clearly knows about these things, put on his David Attenborough cap to instruct those of us who clearly know nothing about these things, just what is what!

The Captain, The Commodore and The Cat