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!