Late Monday Afternoon, September 19 & Tuesday, September 20

We arrived in Nantwich about 5pm on Monday afternoon & had a snack in our boat’s galley before walking into the town. The town center is very close to where we were moored for the night.

The main commercial area is predominantly classic architecture & is so compact that it’s perfect for walking & sightseeing. Tuesday morning we were up early & headed to the town center for some more sightseeing & shopping for some light groceries.

One of the shops was a combination tea room & bookstore. We had a delicious snack there & bought some roadmaps of England & Scotland for the next phase of our adventure after we rerun the boat to Preston Brook.

A predominant part of the town center is St Mary’s Anglican Church. It dates back to the 1700’s & is really well preserved.

The church is a focal point in the town center & its spire can be seen for several miles around.

We finished off the afternoon by picking up some groceries for snacking on each day & a few more bottles of wine. Then we returned to the boat to settle in for the night. But before we could settle in we had to take the boat a little further down the canal to a spot that was wide enough for us to turn the boat around so we could start our journey back to Preston Brook early the next morning.

The photo below shows the aqueduct that we crossed as we headed to the turnaround point – or “winding hole” as many of the seasoned narrowboaters call them. As you can see in the photo many sections of the canal are above the local landscape.

Cheers!

Monday, September 19

We got up early on Monday morning to set out for Nantwich which was about 8 hours traveling time including passing through 7 more locks and under 30 bridges.

We passed through a lot of farming country & the traffic over the bridges was often quite heavy.

The canal narrows to just a few feet wider than the boat at the majority of the bridges we passed under, and the approaches to the bridge are often on a slight bend. As a result we have to slow down a lot and take extra time to line the boat up before passing under.

Fortunately we only met boats coming the other way a few times & there was enough distance between us that one boat could slow down to let the other pass under the bridge first.

Shortly after 3pm we stopped at The Barbridge Inn at Barbridge Junction & had a fantastic lunch & a pint, of course. The parking for boats on the canal is even closer to the pub than the parking lot for cars!

I asked our server for a draft pint of something local & she asked me where we were from. I replied “London, Canada” & the two couples sitting at the table across from us said “we’re from Stratford & Port Perry, Ontario”. They were on a narrowboat as well & headed back to a marina in Wales where they had picked up their boat the week before.

It never ceases to amaze me how small the world can be sometimes!

After our late lunch we got back underway & continued our journey to Nantwich.

Sunday, September 18

After passing through the 2nd & 3rd canal tunnels on Sunday morning we headed for the Town of Middlewich. The cruising guide we bought the day before recommended stopping at the canal junction for the Anderton Lock Lifts & then a little further down the canal to the historic Salt Works in Marston.

We did not realize how busy the canal would be at the Anderton Lift Locks on a Sunday. Boat traffic was thick with all of the “locals” headed home to get ready for work on Monday morning. When I tried to pull up to a vacant “parking” space on the canal wall I totally flubbed my approach & had to abort that effort as there were lots of boats headed in both directions & I did not want to be the cause of a traffic jam – especially if people were trying to get into the lift locks. Nothing worse than a “Colonial” on the canals in a rental narrowboat, eh!

Over the years I have learned how to handle Ananda quite smartly in marinas & around docks so I figured the same techniques that worked for me on Ananda would work well on a narrowboat. That strategy did not turn out very well. With my ego slightly bruised we continued on to Marston to have lunch at a local pub & then take a quick tour of the salt works. And, as you can guess, when we found a good parking spot on the canal wall at Marston I had no problem pulling right in to the available space. It’s amazing what you can achieve when there’s no audience to judge your abilities. 🙂

We had a great lunch (& a pint) at the Salt Barge pub & then walked across the street to see some of the exhibits for the old salt works (circa early 1800’s).

After a nice break we got back on board the boat & continued on our journey to Middlewich. Traffic on the canal had lightened up quite a bit & we were going through some relatively wide sections of the canal so Catherine decided to take a turn at the helm. She did great!

All along the canal the landscape was lush. One side was often left to “go wild” while the side with the towpath was trimmed to accommodate foot traffic. The towpath side also generally had a hard wall formed of large solid concrete blocks that reinforces the canal wall.

We finally arrived at “The Big Lock” at Middlewich around 6:00pm. After passing through the lock we found an empty space on the canal wall just a few meters from the Big Lock Pub so we quickly tied up & headed to the pub for a well earned pint & supper.

Cheers everyone! 🍻

Saturday & Sunday (Sept 17 & 18)

We decided that we would travel from Preston Brook to Nantwich. Our route would take us southerly down the Trent & Mersey Canal, southwesterly down the Middlewich Branch & then south at Baybridge Junction towards Nantwich.

Our route follows yellow dots

This trip does not cover a great deal of distance but it goes through a variety of rural & urban locations & involves 3 tunnels and 9 locks in each direction.

A surprise for us was that we encountered our first major tunnel & lock less than an hour after we left the dock in Preston Brook! Thankfully Shea was good enough to to take us through these parts.

The Preston Brook tunnel is 1239 yards from end to end. It is only wide enough to accommodate boats going in one direction at a time. Boats headed south are allowed to enter the tunnel from the top of the hour to 20 minutes past. Boats headed north are allowed to enter the tunnel at the bottom of the hour to 10 minutes before the next hour.

It was a real treat to go through the tunnel but we were sure glad to reach the other end!

On Sunday morning we passed through the next two tunnels, at about 500 yards each. We knew what to expect while traveling through these. A fun part of our passage was that the boat following behind us cranked up his stereo & was playing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah while we were in the tunnel. The sound was fabulous.

…… and we did think “Hallelujah” when we exited the tunnel back in the daylight!

Saturday, September 17 – Preston Brook, UK

We took a 20 minute taxi ride from our B&B in Runcorn to Claymoore Canal Holidays in Preston Brook to pick up our 48′ long narrowboat named “Walton Hall”.

Up until this day we had only seen photos of narrowboats on websites & videos of them on British drama TV & YouTube. It’s hard to appreciate how long & how narrow these boats really are until you see on for real!

Ananda is 36′ long & 11′ wide. At 48′ long Weston Hall is a pretty good sized boat but there are lots of these boats that are between 60′ & 70′ long! Due to the width of the locks on the the majority of the canals & the narrow passages under most of the bridges, narrowboats are never wider than 7′

Prior to officially picking up our boat we walked a short distance down the canal to Midland Chandlers, the local boating supply store. I love these places & could spend hours looking at all of the neat stuff they have!

Anyway, Catherine refocused me on our mission & we talked with the proprietors Tom & Geoff about our trip & possible routes.

Tom & Geoff were a great help to us in deciding upon a suitable route – given our lack of experience & the 7-day time limit. We would set out for the Town of Nantwich, which is about 18 miles (by canal) from Preston Brook.

After buying a canal guide & chart/map from the chandlery we were ready to cast off & headed back to the boat dock.

Shea, from Claymoore gave us a tour of the boat & tutorials of how everything worked & how to handle the boat. The route we had chosen involved a small lock and a canal tunnel that were just a few minutes from our dock so Shea offered to take us through those first few parts of our journey & were we ever glad that he did!

The canal lock was pretty straightforward – with a level difference of only about 3′ but the canal tunnel was a completely different story!

Cheers!