Cheshire, county of cheese and invisible cats, is supported by two strata of salt. Salt been produced here since Roman times. Where an aquifer met the salt and then came to the surface the result was brine springs. The Romans diverted these into lead pans with a fire underneath. The salt crystalized out as the water boiled off. As you probably know, our words salary and salad come from the Latin word for salt. Over the years, the pans got…
We started the day with a run towards two short tunnels, about a quarter mile each. Normally with a short tunnel, you just look in and make sure nobody is coming the other way when you enter. The first one, Saltersford tunnel, had timed entry. We found out why when we got there. There is a gentle S-bend in the middle, so you can’t see the other end when you go in. The first couple of hundred yards there is…
A guy with a really bad migraine. Today we visited the National Quince Collection. Now, quince is not the most fashionable of fruits. People have been discussion getting rid of it for hundreds of years. I have collection of old jokes from 18th century chapbooks, and one of the more comprehensible ones is, “Oh, Paddy, I wonder what this apple and quince pie would taste like without the quince.” But biodiversity is important. When all the bananas die off from…
It’s a sunny and warm day today. We continued along the Bridgewater Canal, and stopped off at a chandlery to pick up some odds and ends: paint to match the blue color of the hull so we can touch up some of the scrapes, a new shorter chimney to replace the one that viciously attempted to dismantle a bridge the other day. We passed an old style narrowboat. A whole family would sleep, eat, cook, and live in the tiny…
This is a portrait of Catherine Grey (née Cox) in bedding plants. In the early 1850s she was a trick rider with Astley’s Circus in London (the first modern circus) but she married George Grey, the Seventh Earl of Stamford. They were married for three decades, and she survived him for another two, dying in 1905. Today she is commemorated in the gardens at Dunham Massey, a house that they lived in briefly after they married. Our guide to the…
We took our first bike ride of the trip today, four miles mostly uphill (except for the bits that were uphill in the other direction) to Tatton Hall. The estate is enormous. At the gate we were told we have another mile to cycle to the hall. There is a huge herd of deer in the grounds, and according to my research assistant (Paula) the house once had a private airfield. The Egertons (pronounced EJ-ur-ton) owned Tatton from 1598 until…
The day started out warm, sunny, and still. I wanted to take advantage of the weather, so I got the boat started while Paula was still in bed. We stopped in the pretty village of Worsley. The canal comes in from the left, and that little channel off to the right is where the coal barges used to enter the canal from the underwater canals. We are now on the oldest part of the English canal system. The Mock Tudor…
We made a later start this morning as one of the lift bridges we wanted to go through doesn’t lift during the rush hour. We passed this sculpture, called Unlock. The artist, Thompson Dagnall, says, “Unlocked is a book holding the secrets and stories of the canals.” But really, you don’t need a bloody great sculpture to tell the secrets and stories of the canals, you just have to read this blog. It was a short cruise to Leigh (pronounced…
Given that there is a book by George Orwell called The Road to Wigan Pier and being artlessly vague about northern geography, I assumed that Wigan was a dismal seaside town, and that Wigan Pier was some Victorian cast iron erection probing the Irish Sea. I imagined some cut price version of Brighton Pier but without the rides or the gay guys, attempting to convince Northerners that a few days getting their wind and rain direct from the ocean rather…
We started the day early with a couple of hours cruising, and then a flight of seven locks. More lock free cruising through the early afternoon, till we got close to Wigan. Canal aficionados don’t talk about Wigan in the same hushed breath as Tardebigge or Caen Hill, but there is still a huge flight of 21 locks plus a couple of bonus locks at the bottom just when you though you were done. It’s just that they are in…