Actually it was Midwich, not Middlewich, where space aliens impregnated all the nubile women with silver skinned telepathic children (see The Midwich Cuckoos aka Village of the Damned). Still, they sound the same so we’re locking the door and wearing tinfoil hats tonight just in case. All those -wich towns are the same anyhow, or at least they have one thing in common. No, not space aliens, salt.

Droitwich, Nantwich, Middlewich, and even good old Sandwich were all centers of salt mining or production. (Yes, Sandwich is a place. It’s not where sandwiches were invented, that would be too simple, but it is where the first elephant in the UK landed, in 1255.) Salt was an important commodity in times past. “Salary” and “salad” are both derived from the Latin word for salt. Apparently the Ancient Romans did not have the concept of a low sodium diet.

Middlewich, however, attempted to diversify from salt into gravy. It was the home of Bisto, the UK’s leading gravy brand, until 2008 when the factory was closed by the superbig megafood conglomerate that had bought it out. Bisto was named because it “Browns, Seasons, & Thickens In One” and BSTIO is unpronounceable, even if you are Welsh. It still dominates the UK gravy market, but in the Middlewich days they were expanding into other exciting products such as Bisto Crispies. Those were a miserable failure that only lasted a few years but I did not make them up. Bisto ice cream is entirely imaginary, however, but it might have happened if they had not closed the Middlewich factory.

I have no idea what Bisto Crispies were, but I’m guessing a breakfast cereal that you poured gravy on rather than milk. So apparently Middlewich is being run by space aliens. Have you ever noticed that the Bisto Kids never get any older?

We got to Middlewich along the Middlewich branch of the Shropshire Union canal, a pleasant enough cruise through cow infested countryside, with only two locks. The second one had the longest queue we have seen at any lock, about a dozen boats waiting to come up. Happily we were going in the other direction, and did not have to wait at all. Once again, we were dodging rain showers, and haven’t seen the sun all day. Even the San Francisco summer gets more sunshine than this, in spite of Karl the Fog.