These days if you hear the word urchin, you may think of a ragamuffin kid, probably painted on black velvet with eyes that are too big. So why is the sea urchin, with no eyes at all and too spiky to look good on velvet, called that? The answer is that urchin is a old word for hedgehog… … and a sea urchin looks a lot like a curled up hedgehog. I saw this little fellow beetling through a churchyard….
Our engine was reinstalled this morning, and tested early this afternoon, and by mid-afternoon we were back on the canal. The weather was warm but windy, so I was only wearing shorts and a light shirt when a sudden rainstorm drenched me when we were going through a lock. Luckily it was as brief as it was heavy. The sun came out again, and I was dried out by the time we moored for the evening. Managing the boat in…
We’re spent the past couple of days in Aqueduct Marina on the Middlewich Branch. It’s a pleasant modern facility, with everything you need to live aboard except a grocery store. There’s shore power, water, elsan facilities, garbage, diesel, propane, chandlery, laundry, toilets, shower, repair facilities, and slipway. There’s also a cafe, and an old barn building which hosts a large colony of barn swallows. Unused tillers make a handy perch. I love watching their aerobatics as the gobble up flying…
Yesterday we turned into the Middlewich branch which connects the Trent & Mersey Canal with the Shropshire Union. We could not have come this way last year. The Macclesfield canal was closed for lack of water, the Marple locks on the Peak Forest Canal were too narrow to be used due to the lock walls shifting, and the Middlewich canal had washed out one of the embankments resulting in a six million pound repair bill. Here’s the brand new repaired…
Today we went from Anderton to Middlewich through the old salt mining area of Cheshire. The salt was extracted by pumping water down to the salt bearing strata, and pumping brine back up. However with all the salt gone, there was nothing to hold the land up, so the whole area is prone to subsidence. In several places the canal opens up into a wide pond where the ground has sunk. Salt brought the chemical industry to the area, and…
That is the sound of a big heavy alternator falling into the bilges as it’s recently engineered mounting succumbed to metal fatigue. Luckily I had just run the bilge pump, so there was not much water there. The alternator is probably fine, we just need to get the mounting rebuilt one more time. Or maybe buy a generator. This pretty much sums up my feelings on the issue. I got up early this morning and checked the weather forecast. It…
Two years ago we visited the Dunham Massey Hall, and I posted the story that we got from one of the guides of Catherine, Countess of Stamford and Warrington, a former circus performer who married the seventh Earl of Stamford and Warrington. I received a comment on the blog from Lynne Cox saying that much of this was wrong. At first I defended the National Trust. Look, The Guardian says the same thing. However, as Lynne pointed out to me,…
I was woken around 4am this morning by the boat crunching against the side of the canal. After two days of heavy rain the canal had reached the level of the towpath, and the fenders had nothing to press against. Round the corner in Piccadilly Basin the towpath was entirely submerged. About half a month’s worth of rain fell in the past 24 hours. Manchester canal flooding was mentioned on the BBC news. I was responsible for some of it….
I will say this for the Pre-Raphaelites, they had great pictures frames. That one looks like a doorway to a temple… a temple of bad art, but a temple none the less. Don’t bother with the picture though or you will be stuck wondering how Eve in the Garden of Eden managed to shave her armpits. How about this frame? It could be the doorway to an up-market brothel. Then there’s this. It’s a frame so humungous that it has…
Today we slogged down another eighteen locks through the grungy industrial outskirts of Greater Manchester. No more foxes (or cows) but a suspected mink sighting. Sorry, it was too fast for the camera. The Ashton Canal is not the most scenic, but not as bad as some accounts. I did not see any used condoms, needles, or prostitutes under the bridges. The locks were a bit of a challenge, as they all the paddles were locked to prevent vandalism, and…