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)