Boatdate: 16092019
Location: Salwick, Billsborrow
Canal: Lancaster
Heading: N
Weather: Pretty darn good for a homecoming

 (The Road Home)

The Ribble Link was a pretty tiring day all in all and so we chugged up the canal a bit in the evening to find a pretty mooring spot between Salwick Hall Bridge and Wilsons Bridge (Br 24/25). It feels a lot like we're finally home, even though there is a bit over 20 miles to go, but there's no time pressure on those remaining miles and we can take a break and relax at home and have much needed baths, a luxury we don't have aboard Pan, and then return at our leisure to chug the final leg/s of our 200 + mile journey up from Worcester. The Ribble Link will close for the season in a week or so anyway and that will be us for the winter apart from the regular visits to move Pan along a bit as our cruising license requires.

Boatdate: 15092019
Location: Tarleton
Rivers: Douglas and Ribble
Canal: Lancaster
Heading: North
Weather: Grismal drizzle and fog
Visibility: Poor

I walked up to the river lock gates and gazed over at the muddy banks of the River Douglas. It looked like it was going to be a while before the tide came in enough to let boats out onto it. Sure enough our departure was delayed an hour or more from the stated time and we were told to be ready to go at 11.30. Probably just as well as the weather cleared during the morning and by departure time the rain had stopped and the visibility had improved dramatically and there was only a light breeze so the crossing shouldn't be too choppy.  The lock gates opened and we were out onto the Douglas. The tide was quite strong but the river relatively calm so we made good progress over the 4 mile distance to the Ribble whose broad waters opened before us as we made the turn at the Asland Lamp aka The Five Mile Perch. Do NOT cut the corner, you will hit a submerged wall! Do NOT turn left, you will end up in New York!

 (Round the Asland Lamp)

If you don't turn left and go to New York there's another 3 mile to chugg up the Ribble before the turn into Savick Brook which is marked by a lamp. If it's shining green you can proceed into the brook but if red then you will have to carry on towards Preston dock. You are still against time and tide until you're through Ribble Link Rotating Sea Lock 9, so best not hang about as the water level in the Brook is dropping fast by the time you get to the lock. Once through it's champagne time as you've made it safely to the Lancaster Canal and you musn't forget to give your engine a nice drink of oil and a pat on its rocker cover for not blowing up during the crossing. Also give the crew an extra tot of rum or three.

Boatdate: 14092019
Location: Rufford, Tarleton
Canal: Leeds Liverpool
Heading: NW
Weather: Warm, even hot, lovely autumn day.

The River Douglas meanders close by on the starboard side. Tomorrow we will be sailing on her tidal waters which is a somewhat daunting prospect. Today however we have time to pootle up the cut through Rufford canal lock No 7 and stop shortly after to visit Rufford Old Hall which, as it happens, has a heritage open day so is free to visit. Lucky us. It's a bit of a gem and I'm glad we stopped. Late in the afternoon we carry on to Tarleton and moor up after Town End swing bridge and do a spot of shopping. In the morning we will be joined by the 2nd Mate and some friends who are familiar with the Ribble Link crossing and who will stop us biting our nails too much. We have bought good crewsaver jackets for the trip across, just in case. No choice anyway: they won't let you go on the river without them.

Boatdate: 13092019
Location: Rufford 
Canal: Leeds Liverpool-Rufford Branch
Heading:North
Weather: Windy sun and showers

Friday 13th lives up to its name: engine won't start. Spend ages wondering why till 1st Mate points to the engine pull stop in the wrong position. Der. Finally set off and soon onto the Rufford Branch and have a fairly gruesome time with the swing bridge and first two locks which are all a nightmare to work. I believe some maintenance has since been done so maybe they will be better to work next time. The boat ahead of us (Golden Girl) was having trouble too so we paired up to work them which probably saved a hernia or two. Moored up for the evening by Prescott Bridge (Br5) as no need to push on much more that afternoon and fixed a puncture on the push bike front wheel as the sun set over the flat fields.

Boatdate: 12092019
Location: Appley Bridge
Canal: Leeds Liverpool
Heading: NW
Weather: Biscay Grey.

Set off early for the remaining 4 miles to Appley Bridge and as luck would have it there was a mooring available right outside The Boathouse Pub. There was an hour wait before 1st Mate's train arrived so time for a bit of shopping to tide us over the next few days. After lunch it's on towards the Rufford Branch of the Leeds Liverpool but we stopped just short of the turn mooring next to a vast pumpkin field in very windy conditions.

Boatdate: 11092019
Location: Nr Crooke Marina
Canal: Leeds Liverpool
Heading: NW
Distance Remaining: 46 miles
Weather: Not bad all things considered.

Day off here tinkering on the boat and getting acquainted with the River Douglas just a few meters away. At this point it looks tame enough but in four days time I might change my opinion on that, it being the first leg of the Millenium Ribble Link which joins the Lancaster canal up to the main canal network via the rivers Douglas and Ribble and Savick Brook. Until its opening in 2002, (first bit of canal construction in 100yrs!), Lancaster was an isolated stretch of canal as it was never completed. The original idea was a canal linking Westhaughton in Lancashire to Kendal in Cumbria, but they never finished the aqueduct crossing of the Ribble to the south, and then, to add insult to injury, at the northern end, they fucked it all up by throttling the canal building the M6 motorway on its neck. Bastards!

Anyway, the Link cost £6.54 million pounds and costs a small fortune in dredging and other maintenance costs to keep open for the 200 or so boats that use it every year. I hope it stays open, but you never know these days.

After my lazy and mucky day, (I cleaned bilge pumps), I will push on to Appely Bridge to pick up 1st mate who is rejoining Pan 91 tomorrow for the final push up the Rufford branch of the Leeds Liverpool to Tarleton and the start of the Ribble link. EEK!

Boatdate: 10092019
Location: Wigan Pier
Canal: Leeds Liverpool main line
Heading: Go west old fart
Weather: Surprisingly nice really. Bit on the breezy side.

 (Wigan Pier)

Of course there is a pier in Wigan, stupid, there's even a road to it as well as a canal. It's where all the cruise liners and roll-on roll-off ferries dock. But it's nearly 8 miles away and we need to get there so 1st mate can get a choo choo home for an appointment. So we set off from Leigh on the early side and chug along the cut to the Park Lane lift bridge. I have to fess up to a perverse satisfaction in stopping all the traffic on the highway to let our little boat through. We steam on in a pleasant fashion till we get to the flashers - no this is not grubby blokes in raincoats displaying their privates from the towpath, this is a series of bodies of water on the approaches to Wigan which, in order, are Horrocks Flash, Turners Flash, Scotsman's Flash and Pearson's Flash. No idea who the best flasher was, probably the Scotsman.

Passing Poolstock locks we are told there has been an issue with the water levels between here and the Leeds Liverpool main line in Wigan. Probably vandalism, there's a lot if it about round here. Anyway the CRT guys are on hand and are helping people through locks and whatnot and they've been working throughout the morning to bring water levels back up so it doesn't look to bad. At one point we are told there is a grounded CRT barge ahead of us and are asked to proceed past it at full throttle in the hope the wash from our boat will help lift it off, so we do, but it doesn't.

We pause at Wigan Pier so 1st mate can walk to the station for the train home. I hang about for a tea and sandwich but don't plan to stay in Wigan for the night and get vandalised so will continue after munchies through three or four more locks and stop for the night somewhere out of town.

("So if you are told there's a Pier in Wigan town somewhere, don't laugh it off like others do, look round, you'll see it there" - The Ballad of Wigan Pier)

Boatdate: 09092019
Location: Astley Green and Leigh
Canals: Bridgewater and Leeds Liverpool
Heading: NW
Weather: Intermittent wetness and then permanent, ongoing, no-let-up, fuck you and the boat you sailed in on wetness.

Left Worsley in a misty moisty morning and steamed up the cut to Astley Green with the 100ft high wrought iron girders of Astley Green colliery visible from a long way away but looming ever larger as we approach. We will pass within a few hundred meters of it so can't resist stopping to go take a closer look. It's quite a unique site, preserving, or attempting to preserve, (it's underfunded to death), some of the heritage of the South Lancashire coal mining industry. Opening in 1908, the colliery had a relatively short lifespan of only 62 years finally calling time in 1970 and would have been demolished like all the rest had it not been for the efforts of plucky locals. The headgear and engine house with its 3,300 hp twin tandem compound steam winding engine have been saved as well as many of the colliery locomotives and much else besides. It's well worth a visit. We spent a happy hour talking to Eric, an ex miner, now a volunteer on the site, who's reminiscences of the working mine were at once funny, nostalgic, bitter, happy and deeply sad all mashed up together.

 (The engine house and pit headgear at Astley Green Mining Museum)

Didn't get to tear ourselves away from this wonderful museum until 4pm. Better get going though: the Leeds Liverpool canal is calling to us and the sky is darkening. We set of and made it to Leigh where the Bridgewater canal suddenly becomes the Leeds Liverpool. The skies opened and meant to stay open and it's gone 5 so moor up and that'll do for the day.

Boatdate: 07092019
Location: 53°28'04.4"N 2°16'16.2"W ish
Canal: Ashton/Bridgewater
Heading: West
Weather: Actually quite bloody hot
Burrito: Actually quite bloody hot
Water Status: Actually too bloody much of it altogether
Toilet Status: Actually, you don't want to know

A quiet night moored by the National Cycling Centre but I do not see my hero Laura Trott. Shame.

Anyway, we wake to a sunny day and cast off to head into central Manchester. Meanwhile the 2nd Mate gets the tram and walks up from Piccadilly along the towpath to meet us at lock 6. Now we have some serious muscle on board the sail through the city doesn't seem so daunting.  It's a curious mix of post-industrial debris, gentrified (but unaffordable housing), and the ruined lives of druggies, (I lost count), many of whom seem to inhabit and trade in a chemical and alcoholic haze along the more run down sections of the towpath. Through the final lock, Ancoats lock 1, we proceed on passed Piccadilly Village and through the short tunnel under Ducie Street to the sharp left onto the Rochdale canal. There are another 9 locks to get through before we can join the Bridgewater canal, all of them difficult. This becomes apparent as we moor in the Ducie Street basin and watch the massive amounts of water coming down the Rochdale canal and over-topping the lock gates.

(Overtopping at Dale Street Lock 84 in Manchester. Picure taken by Cathy as boat descending lock) 

I contemplate riding up the canal on my bike to see what is going on but the 1st mate rings the CRT to tell them what is happening. They say they will ring back but never did. We look at the lock for a long while wondering if it is even possible to get through it with that quantity of water coming over and the pressure on the lock gates. If it doesn't empty faster than the over-topping water then there is no chance. We decide to give it a go and it is slow going and requires all the muscle we have to get the gates open once the level has dropped. Perhaps after this first one it might get a little easier. Not much, maybe a little. We go passed the Alan Turing memorial in Sackville Park, under Princess St and Oxford Rd, where the 2nd Mate hops off to raid Chango's Burrito Bar for some lunch. Curious, I walk up onto Oxford Road to look at this strange, busy, frenetic world, but it seems like a different universe and not one that I belong in much. We continue on passed Deansgate with its fantastic bridges and through Dukes lock 92 after which the 2nd Mate is to jump ship and meet up with friends. It is doubtful, no...certain, that we could not have made it through that bit of Manchester without his help so we signed his discharge papers with 'Excellent' and with much gratitude bid him farewell until next time.

 (By the bridge that carries Oxford Rd over the canal a sculpted fox and horse quietly chat. The milling crowds above never see them. It's a beautiful though poignant sculpture)

After the battle of Manchester we didn't go a lot further and moored up for the night by Pomona Island, which isn't really an island at all, but is next to the mighty Manchester Shit Canal right next to us. It would be interesting to do that, one day.

Boatdate: 06092019
Canal: Ashton
Heading: In
Weather: Wet, Windy.

The weatherman said it was going to piss down all morning and he was right. Oh well, on the plus side that gives me a doodly morning and on the plusser side that gives Dave enough time to cook his latest victim in his Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber (don't ask), and to come and join me for the afternoon. I should explain that I had given Dave and Donna a short ride on the boat, much to their glee the other day. and Dave was so taken with it he rang in the evening and asked to come and crew for me for the afternoon. Music to my ears as it means I get help dealing with the next shed load of locks and Dave gets some hands on experience of handling a narrowboat which he very much wants as he is thinking of buying one. Update: He since has!!

                      (Pan's new crew member Dave on umberella duty)

So, we have a very pleasant afternoon working our way down the locks into Manchester and I give Dave lots of advice on boat handling, lock management and the like and he turns out to be a natural, and a very entertaining shipmate. He would be a great asset to the boating community so I hope he does get a boat.

By 5pm we have worked our way through a dozen or so of the locks when Dave has to jump ship to do his dog feeding duty. He has been great to have aboard and I hope we can meet up with our boats side by side one day, somewhere or other and have a few beers.  I carry on and do a few more locks solo and then moor up for the night right outside the National Cycling Centre. Tonight the 1st mate signs on again and 2nd Mate will join us in the morning to crew through all the heavy duty locks in central Manchester and see us on our way out the other side heading towards Waters Meet and the Bridgewater canal and ever closer to home.

Boatdate: 04092019
Canal:  Peak Forest & Ashton canals
Location: Fairfield Junction
Heading: Into central Manchester
Weather: Sun and showers
Distance Remaining: 70 miles

Spent a couple of nights in Romily resting up and tinkering with the boat and then on through the Hyde Bank tunnel to Woodley where the plan was to get the train home the following morning to sort out the roofer coming to do some work on our house. That all go thrown into touch when I got a text from him saying he couldn't do the work till early October. Still and all, on consideration that may not be a bad thing as if makes it possible now to make the final crossing of the Ribble Link before it shuts down for the season at the end of September. It would certainly be more convenient to us to have Pan on the Lancaster canal for the winter months rather than somewhere on the Leeds Liverpool necessitating fortnightly trips to move it. Hey ho, we will press on then up passed Hyde to Portland basin. I would have moored there but choc-a-bloc with boats so not much choice but to turn left onto the Ashton canal. I'm reluctant to take on the next 18 locks that will take me into the heart of Manchester so I moor up for the night at Fairfield Junction just outside the marina entrance.

Boatdate: 08092019
Location: Pomona Island and Worsley
Canal: Bridgewater Canal Stafford and Leigh Branch
Heading: West to Worseley
Weather: Lovely

From the mooring on the offside you walk through some shrub onto a little used road overgrown with weeds and whatnot with not a soul in evidence. This surely must be post apocalypse? But no, there are the lights of Manchester in the distance twinkling that all is yet well A short walk up the road and the broad sweep of the Manchester ship canal opens up before you. It's impressive this close up and personal. We stand and look at the big lock gates that join it up to the Bridgewater imagining taking our little Pan onto the broad expanse of water. Of course we can't, you need a license to go on that canal.

In the evening 3 disco boats decked out with flashing neon colour sail by full of jiggling girls who all wave at me in an excited sort of way. That doesn't happen often: they're not really my type anyway, though I do, of course, wave back. It's only polite. Three hours later they sail back in the pitch dark and some of them will clearly be a little the worse for wear in the morning.

Today we sail for Worseley to rendevous with big sis and family at one of the clock (hopefully). We sail through Trafford passing the footy grounds and industrial conglomerations and the Barton Swing Aqueduct across the ship canal and on through Barton on Irewell to Worsley where we arrive bang of the time.  Sis has bought a boat picnic which we munch and then go for a jaunt up to Boothstown Marina a little further up the cut where we stop to turn around and bunker 55ltrs of diesel. We head back to Worsley and moor up there for the night and go to the pub, as you do. A jolly time had by all me hearties.

As you approach Worsley the canal turns orange. This is all the Duke of Bridgewater's fault and his engineer John Gilbert who figured out that he could connect the coal mines of Worsley Delph directly to the canal They constructed 47 miles of underground canal tunnels on four different levels to service the mines and shifted a million tons of coal a year out on 4.5ft wide boats called 'Starvationers'. The orange colour is caused by the iron oxide leaching out of the bedrock and draining out of the the mine. Worsley, once a bustling hive of industry, is now a rather quiet and pleasant burb of Manchester.

(An example of a 'Starvationer Boat' used to bring out the coal from the tunnels in Worsley Delph. This one is in the boat museum at Ellesmere Port)

(Helen opposite the Packet House (a scheduled stop for passenger boats plying the Bridgewater Canal) with the entrance to Worsley Delph and the disused mines in the background)

Boatdate: 01092019
Canal: Macclesfield
Heading: Up
Weather: Storm coming

Back to Macclesfield. 1st mate got train home leaving Capt Maddock to solo it to the top of the Macclesfield canal. There was nowhere convenient to moor at the junction with the Peak Forest canal so reluctantly made a start on the 16 locks of the Marple flight and did 4 of them before the rain came down. Next day was much brighter and made an early start on the remaining 12 locks. They are hard work solo as very deep and much care needs to be taken climbing the slippery lock ladders. As working solo I wore a life jacket and promised to get myself a fall restraint to clip onto the lock ladders when working them on my own. Worked slow and steady through each lock and met nothing coming up until the very last lock no 16, a father and son going to Worcester, the son was going to study there and live in the boat to save money, a fine idea.


I crossed the river Goyt on the Marple aqueduct and as a break was very much in order after a tiring morning I moored up in a pretty wooded spot where the canal runs parallel to the river with the small town of Romily nearby.