The Broken Cross
On Tuesday morning I did a bit of light touching up on the hull. We still had a couple of things to do in Middlewich, at places that had not been open over the Bank Holiday weekend, including a trip to the chandlery to get a replacement bow thruster fuse to keep as the spare. It was about noon by the time we were ready to set off and as we untied, a couple of people walking past let us know that CRT were working on Big Lock, the next one up, just around the corner. We went up anyway, to see what was going on. They were working on the balance beam and top gate but were letting boats through intermittently. We went straight in with "Cadenza", who had been waiting for a little while and we were hardly delayed at all. Big Lock isn't particularly long or particularly deep. However, it is a double width lock, which is odd because those above it are narrow locks. The idea that this was to accommodate wider beam traffic between Middlewich and Northwich via the boat lift rather fails because half a mile below the lock the Croxton Aqueduct barely accommodates a narrowboat. As far as I can find out, they had planned to build the canal to take wider salt barges and ended up changing their minds after Big Lock had already been constructed.
We thought that, if there was space, we would stop at Bramble Cuttings, a lovely little mooring on the offside, with no access from the land outside, where we had stayed once before. Sadly, it was full up as we passed so we carried on a bit further.
The Bramble Cuttings Mooring in 2019 - Sadly, Full Up This Time
"Burslem", a hire boat from Sherborne Wharf in Birmingham, came hurtling round a sharp bend so fast he ended up on the wrong side of the canal. It was lucky I had seen his bow coming and started to reverse hard so the inevitable collision was just a bump, with no visible damage. I guess we've all done it!
We found a mooring at Broken Cross. It's hard to say why the village is called Broken Cross. The best guess I could find is that it arose from the nature of the crossroads, which did not form a regular intersection but a staggered junction. Whatever the origin, The Old Broken Cross pub now stands on the south side of the bridge, right by the mooring rings. The Broken Cross Boat Club, formed forty-five years ago, by boaters moored near the pub, has taken on the maintenance of Bramble Cuttings. They keep it tidy and are working to keep improving it for the enjoyment of boaters, so more power to their elbow.
Half an hour after we tied up the wide beam "Belleza Negra" arrived. She may have been a black beauty but she was a big old girl and I couldn't see how they were going to squeeze in between us and the next boat. Nevertheless, as he insisted on trying, we took a line and helped pull him in. The other boat had a small canoe trailing behind it but he managed to put his bow over the top without actually crushing it, while mooring up with his front button against the rudder and he seemed happy with that.
Archie and I went off for a walk but it wasn't a great success. The whole area is heavily industrialised with large, very busy roads that have no provision for pedestrians to cross. We eventually arrived at a footpath across some scrubby farmland that took us, through a field of moody looking cows, to an industrial plant with a footbridge over the canal. Despite the public footpath sign, Tata Chemicals had the bridge firmly barricaded, so we ended up having to walk up the main A530 until we could cross the canal further up.
We decided that the Old Broken Cross had a good menu and we would go and eat there that night. We went across at seven-thirty, only to find that food service had stopped at seven o'clock. A clear indication that we were heading further north, where dinner is at teatime and we would need to remember that in future. Instead, over a drink in the pub, we ordered a takeaway Chinese meal from The Golden Gate. They had their own take on some old classics but the food was hot, plentiful and cheap. While I was there, the really popular dish of the day appeared to be the chips & gravy meal.
Anderton & The Boat Lift
The first of June was not exactly busting out all over, at first, with grey and overcast skies. The sun started to burn through quite quickly and by noon it was blue skies and sunshine all the way. When we returned to Stoke On Trent from our trip away Spring had clearly sprung at last and it was beginning to feel that we were already heading straight into Summer.
We moved on towards Anderton and Sue started some washing before we left. She came back to check on it as we were cruising and opened the door, which demonstrated a number of things. Firstly, the safety mechanism to prevent the door being opened if there was water in the drum was clearly not working. Secondly, the moisture detection alarms I had installed a couple of years ago definitely were working, which was good news. Finally, the endless, high volume, repetition of a few phrases of Für Elise, when you can't leave the tiller to shut it down, grows old very, very quickly.
Having finally pulled over, shut the damn thing up and mopped up the flood water, we were able to access all the services at Anderton and then cross the canal to get diesel from the ABC hire base, at their helpful, canal side, wharf before finally mooring up. A short hop but a busy one.
The lift had been closed since July last year due to a safety issue identified in routine inspection. Apparently it ended up in needing to completely re-design some elements of the mechanisms that open the gates into the two caissons. Despite extensive refurbishments it is still a very old and unique structure. New parts have to be designed and manufactured specifically, so it had only recently re-opened for regular, scheduled trips.
We weren't planning to use the lift on this trip but we took a walk along the canal and down to the River Weaver, to approach it from the bottom and intending to enter the big Visitor Centre there and have some tea.
The Anderton Boat Lift From The River . . .
We arrived at a solidly closed gate, which meant some back tracking to get to the top. We discovered that the lift was not running on Thursdays (we do always seem to be in the wrong place on the wrong day). It turned out that the Visitor Centre is closed when the lift is not running, which seemed surprising, as it is a popular attraction even for non-boaters, with lots of nice open woodland to walk through. You would have thought they would still want to make some money from anyone who did want to visit.
. . . And The Impressive View From The Canal Entrance
We moved on a few miles the next day, that took us through Barnton Tunnel and then Saltersford Tunnel. The first has quite an awkward twisty approach for a boat of our length. Once you are lined up, you can still barely see through the single track tunnel to know if something is coming and once inside, it is very twisty as you go through. We saw at least one report of it having been closed a few years back because two boats, approaching from opposite directions, collided and got wedged inside.
Strangely, considering that it is shorter and easier to approach, Saltersford Tunnel is a timed entry, so that a boat entering at the right time can get through and be well clear before any traffic from the other direction can start through. In this case, boats from our direction could enter from the top of the hour to twenty past the hour. Of course, we arrived at twelve twenty-five so we had to wait half an hour before we could proceed. Again, the tunnel is far from straight so you have to concentrate quite hard as you drive through.
We pulled in just past the Black Prince base at Bartington for lunch and decided that it really wasn't worth moving on again. I took Archie out and we had a great walk, firstly across the canal and then back over to drop down into the Weaver Valley so that we could follow the river past Dutton Locks and along to Acton swing bridge before climbing back up to the canal at the end.
Dutton Locks On The River Weaver
A Summer Walk By The Weaver
The Bridgewater Kerfuffle
About an hour ahead of us was Preston Brook Tunnel, beyond which the Trent & Mersey meets the waters of the Bridgewater Canal, owned by Peel Holdings and so not covered by the standard CRT License. The Bridgewater runs all the way to Castlefield Basin in Manchester, where a deep lock takes you up onto the Rochdale Canal, which is CRT managed again. the. Before it gets there, a branch of the Bridgewater goes off to Leigh, where it meets a branch of the Leeds Liverpool Canal, which is also back into CRT ownership and control. Originally, the Bridgewater main line ran down to Runcorn, where the locks once gave access to the Mersey and later, to the Manchester Ship Canal. The link to the Trent & Mersey via the Preston Brook branch came later still. Today, the main line really appears as the Preston Brook branch and there is a clear junction onto the stretch that runs down to Runcorn. This is a dead end at present, although the currently defunct locks are the subject of a restoration effort, starting with a new boat lift!
A reciprocal agreement with Peel Holdings allows a CRT license holder to enter the Bridgewater for a period of seven days and to then make a return journey, if required, lasting no more than three days. These must be within a twenty-eight day period and the boat is not then allowed to re-enter the Bridgewater for a further twenty-eight days period. Within this restriction no further payment is required but if that does not meet your needs you have to buy one of a bewildering variety of additional licenses from Peel Holdings, direct.
Since, if you wanted to, you could do the whole length in about eight hours and the whole Leigh Branch in less than four this isn't as draconian as it sounds, despite much moaning on Faceache. However, the latest agreement comes after Peel Holdings had threatened to demand a license for any CRT vessel wanting to use the canal. One outcome of the negotiations that followed is that users must formally book their passage online, in advance, through the CRT website, which is very simple to do. We had booked our entry for Saturday the third of June and planned our journey beyond that accordingly.
The Runcorn Arm
Since we were in no hurry and were passing through the junction at Preston Brook, if only to say that we had done it, we had decided to go down what we will now call the Runcorn Arm. The tunnel is another single track, timed entry affair. Longer than Saltersford and Barnton combined, the entry slot to Preston Brook Tunnel is only ten minutes each hour and our timing was good, as we only had a ten minute wait to go in this time.
Beyond the tunnel the junction for Runcorn is just past the M56 bridge. Just before that is a large branch of Midland Chandlers. It always seems wrong to just cruise past a chandlery, rather than have a nose around inside. As it happened, we were running out of Marine 16, something that we add to the fuel tank to try and prevent diesel bug developing, so we pulled in and picked some up. Midland still have a number of big branches on the network, despite recent closures, as well as a substantial online operation, so they seem quite corporate and impersonal. When you actually go into a branch, however, the staff are always very relaxed, keen to chat and mostly own or have owned boats themselves. In this case, the assistant was admiring our boat and particularly the paint job. He knew Aintree Boats and Robin Wagg, our sign writer. Having explained the name, it turned out that he had also been a keen compound archer and a five minute stop quickly stretched to fifteen before another customer turned up and I could leave.
Pulling away from the Midland wharf we moved through the motorway bridge to turn left into the mouth of the Runcorn Arm, only to find a boat coming towards us where the channel narrows for an aqueduct. Sue was up front, spotting, so we were ready for it and there was no problem but it was classic narrowboat timing, bearing in mind that this was the only moving boat we saw all the way to the end.
Presumably because it is a dead end, there is very little traffic down the Runcorn Arm, although there are a few boat clubs and a marina where boats are moored. It is a shame as we found it a lovely side trip on quite a wide canal, with no locks and within an hour and a half we were approaching the outskirts of Runcorn, itself, where the usual sprawl of new development was making itself felt right down to the water.
Building Down To The Waterline
We had initially planned to moor in Runcorn for the night although, not knowing quite what we would find, we had been keeping an eye out for promising mooring spots along the way in case we didn't fancy it. For no particular reason, without even having seen it, Sue had been developing an increasing antipathy to the town of Runcorn all the way down the arm. By the time we reached the basin above the old locks we had pretty much already decided that we would not stay overnight but it seemed worth having a look round the town as we were here. We winded above the locks at Waterloo Bridge
End Of The Line At Waterloo Bridge
and made our way up under the next couple of bridges, past some colourful wall art,
Street Art In Runcorn
to moor up outside the Brindley Theatre, where there were convenient rings and a view of the town.
Moored Outside The Brindley Theatre
Runcorn did feel a bit run down. There was a large Co-op supermarket but not much else seemed to be flourishing. A lot of fast food and takeaway places, a good sprinkling of nail bars and hairdressers along the High Street, the inevitable Wetherspoons. A few places seemed to be coming up but apart from a rather sad Costa, with severely limited stock, there were no nice cafés or coffee shops and there was no vibrant bustle on a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon. There were quite a few new and expensive looking cars driving around but they somehow looked out of place and presumably came from the estates being built up around the town.
We made our way down to the signposted Promenade,
Runcorn Promenade
an open space with a vast view over the Manchester Ship Canal, the impressive Silver Jubilee Bridge and upstream, the Mersey Gateway Crossing, opened in two thousand and seventeen.
Runcorn's Silver Jubilee Bridge
With better links to the motorways and following closure of the Silver Jubilee Bridge for improvements the new crossing seems to have drawn most of the traffic away from Runcorn, which may not help it in the end. This promenade area did seem popular and well used as we spent a few minutes getting our bearings, looking out over the estuary.
The Mersey Gateway Crossing Over The Mersey And The Manchester Ship Canal
Heading back to the boat, we called in at the Co-op for supplies and on the way saw this contrast between the dilapidated buildings on the right, rather typical of what we saw and the well maintained solicitor's offices on the left, which must be an echo of how the town was in its hey day as an important gateway to Manchester and later a spa and health resort.
Run Down Runcorn
We set off again around half past three and made our way back to a spot we had seen on the way down before Green Bridge. It was near Phoenix park, opposite Norton Priory, which we planned to visit on Sunday morning. The park was a large, open, green space with lots of amenities and very well used. From the water, it looks quite remote and peaceful. Once on land, you realise just how many houses are clustered around it. The benches by the bridge were a magnet for successive groups of teenagers on a sunny Saturday evening and where we moored turned out to be beside a small fishing lake, where, just as we arrived, a group of anglers started setting up tents and setting out the six packs ready for a night's fishing. After a very long day, for us, we weren't about to move again though.
In the end, none of these things caused us much disturbance, unlike the massive firework display that suddenly kicked off just as I had taken Archie out for his bedtime constitutional. As usual, he took it in his stride and just went about his business but the noise was incredible. I hope whoever paid for it had a better view than we did, though. We couldn't see a thing. No rockets or whizz-bangs. No flashes or comet trails. Not even a glow in the sky behind the trees.
A similar think happened to us at the Old Broken Cross. Apparently the landlady’s cat had died and therefore (?) they weren’t doing food that day! Just like you, we ended up getting a meal from a Chinese takeaway.