Making Tracks
Finally the prep work is done and the long trip south can begin. It is early June 2023 as Murphy’s Game slips back into the cut and for the first time in two months the engine is primed and fired.
The weather is overcast as we start the trip south, the big project and I; accompanied by Willow who will attempt to wrest some alternative storytelling from time to time over at padlet. Providentially, clouds soon part as Hesford Marina slips into the distance behind, and the heat of summer soon brings fish to the surface and smiles to lips. First Lymm and then Stockton Heath fall to the thump of the little Lister engine, and our parade is lined with a healthy mix of anglers and newborn chicks, the latter dabbing enthusiastically at waterside weeds in their best of all possible worlds. The science park rises incongruously off to the nearside at Daresbury by early afternoon, and as a child of the 1980s I am immediately filled with a sense of military foreboding at the sight; these places are to me perpetually loaded with the tones of late Cold War television drama, every one a Porton Down in its own right regardless of actual function. Unused moorings slip past and ‘Keep Out’ signs line the waterfront in cold rebuke, while manicured lawns remain untroubled by staff or visitors. There is an air of deliberate emptiness about the site, as a sentinel Heron watches us from the tilted Heras fence; aloof to the boat but laser-eyed on its busy wake. In the middle distance a fleet of hired excavators lounge motionless in freshly scarred earth. Another new build coming here, presumably to provide more bland offices and unused green space. In a moment the spectacle has passed by to rest in memory alongside the modern canalside apartments of the town; fresh apples and raspberries exciting the palate in contrast to the featureless concrete of the edifice behind. Sun on face, breeze inside shirt. This really is the life.
At the base of the Bridgewater Canal the Preston Brook Tunnel nestles almost apologetically in the hillside as you approach. Surprise is compounded by the low, almost invisible mooring bollards on the offside. Looking at them from the ledge of the boat they resemble compressed iron mushrooms as much as tie-offs, and I’m pretty sure they trip as many unsuspecting walkers into the cut as they provide mooring. These tunnels are single passage only, with tight progress at points along the 1239 underground yards that separate the Bridgewater and the Trent and Mersey canals. Passing through and back into the June sun seemed to mark the real beginning of the adventure. This canal was where I first took to the water proper in 2003; first with a friend’s boat and then with my own craft- a 35ft tub called Lady Eileen with a Bridgewater index number and far too little steel on her belly.
From this point I feel I belong; the Bridgewater is a private canal to us common boaters. Our licences do not apply there, and the leafy Cheshire villages that line it are home to more GRP river cruisers than old metal cigars. It is a beautiful stretch of water without doubt, but I feel an interloper there. South of the white arch however, I begin to relax. I’m heading towards the lowlands of the midland navigations, and from this point on my stress begins to dissipate.
Through a mix of more pristine lawns and lusciously fecund summer grassland we pass to Barnton, a village of 5 and a half thousand people which grew from a farming community to a dense settlement for workers of nearby salt and chemical works, in the peak of Industrial Britain. Most famous for a resident’s co-operative formed to buy their houses in the 19th Century it got the nickname “Jam Town” owing to a local saying ‘people in Barnton eat Jam Butties so that they can not only buy their houses, but their neighbours too!’. Today a wooden carving of a boy eating a jam butty stands in the village to commemorate the social enterprise.
It’s also worth noting for the Historians among us that in 1659 at the crossing of the River Weaver here a Parliamentary force beat Royalist rebels at the Battle of Winnington Bridge; often referred to as the last battle of the Civil Wars. Unlike many of the previous fights the battle was a modest affair, with many taken prisoner and only around 35 fatalities; not least because the Royalist General Booth had left much of his armoury in Chester by mistake!
For us however, the village is noted only for it’s crooked tunnel, a short dash underground at a little over 570 yards. Coming out you round a large basin and immediately comes the 424 yard Saltersford tunnel, which although itself not straight is at least a look-through portal, the daylight focused into a moon-shaped beam as you ease round the bend and into the dark.
As the boat slides out into dappled light for the third time, we round the village high on the valley side and on into Anderton, the site of the eponymous boat lift. Twice I’ve passed this this year, and twice I haven’t had time to stop and give it the time it deserves. It seems a shame not to mark this point of the trip, if only for a tenuous link. Many moons ago there was a wagon driver who worked with my grandad on the machines. Planning a change of life, he was so keen on buying a boat that he got buried in the classifieds, and our old man told him what he thought of his lack of attention at work. A few words passed, and it was forgotten, as is the way on site; though the thought of my relatively diminutive grandad scolding this giant always struck me as foolhardy. That man and his partner went on to buy a pair of coal boats, and it was from them I would often buy my stove fuel when I first lived on the Grand Union in the early 00’s. Eventually they sold up and moved up to Anderton to work the boat lift after its refurbishment, and I never heard from them again. They aren’t here now, many years having passed, but I always felt some affinity with the place through this link. Ivor and Mel Bachelor, in case you are wondering.
And so, that too fades into the background as we plod on out of North Cheshire to the stooping, looming hulk of a still-industrial part of England. Next stop, Northwich and Middlewich.
(Thanks to Barnton Parish Council website for the local history lesson)
All images Copyright Richard Grove and Willow Langdale Smith
