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.
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.
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