The Rochdale 9 are something else

Our overnight location was definitely gentrified.

Coming out of the basin and down the rest of Piccadilly village hardly prepares you for what's to come.

Under the office block…

round the corner…

and you're faced by a wide lock with yet another arrangement of gates, paddles, locking and winding mechanisms, and ways of getting (or not getting) from one side to the other.

The first lock takes you down, down underground between the concrete pillars supporting the tower block above…

where someone has provided pictures in case you're bored.

Actually, no chance of that in this eerie place.

The lock gates were overflowing, to the point where we wondered whether we could ever empty the lock enough to be able to open the bottom gates. It was also our first experience of windlass-operated gates, where you crank a creaking chain which hauls a gate open or shut.

Eventually you emerge into some of the less picturesque parts of the city…

with occasional glimpses of something grander along an alleyway.

You pass more evidence of what the noble citizens of Manchester have decided to contribute to the canals…

and finally are greeted with signs of more legitimate activity and habitation,

… including a number of these duck-houses!

And so, at last, it was round the corner to moor up in one of the mini-branches at the renovated Castlefields complex.

It's been quite a day – just as challenging as the Ashton locks yesterday, but in a different way. Have we enjoyed it? It's good to face and overcome a challenge, but the enjoyment is completely different to that of finding our way to Bugsworth Basin. At the moment, after a nice meal in the Castlefields Hotel, we're not sure how anxious we'll be to repeat the experience. Still, here we are in the middle of Manchester, where we plan to stay for a day to see some of the sights.

Down the Ashton

18 locks in one go, and don't stop on the way – that was the general advice for coming down the Ashton canal into Manchester, though some had been very reassuring that this canal is (for the better) not what it was. So off we set, and here we are tonight, in Piccadilly village.

But straightforward it was not. Coming down behind a hirer, meeting only one boat on the way up, so having to fill all the locks before we could come down them – that's par for the course. But this was not par…

which came out of here…

which, for those who don't recognise it, is where the propellor lives.

It happened about half way down the flight, as I was gently manoeuvring to be ready to get into a lock once my best beloved had opened the top gate. Suddenly, there were horrible noises from down below. I put the gear into neutral, and then tried again. But whether forward or reverse, trying to engage the gear threatened to stall the engine. So we poled and pulled Erin Mae into the bank, turned off the engine, and went exploring down the weed hatch.

Still not sure what it was, even though we now have it all bagged up – it completely fills a New Forest District Council re-cycling bag. We thought at first it was a tent – strong black woven plastic outer, and a white, zipped inner. But "tent" didn't quite match the black outer. Be that as it may, it took about half an hour to cut it off the propellor – I'm just thankful I could do it all from the top, and didn't have to get into the canal.

There were other items of interest on our adventure today:

A dead rat on a lock gate.

An Asda trolley that didn't make it into the canal.

A buddleia that did – and was removed with our boathook.

 The Manchester Velopark: "home of British cycling".

The Etihad stadium – home of Manchester City.

We also met two boys who should probably have been in school, and may have been from the traveller community. We enjoyed chatting with them, and they were fascinated by Erin Mae.

And we encountered our first "handcuff" anti-vandal devices, that you have to unlock before you can work the paddles. The paddles were mostly hydraulic, which meant they were easy enough to turn, but they took 20 turns or more to get the paddle up or down.

One more day's adventure  – glad to be sitting quietly in the warm at the end of it.

Sunshine and bridges

After all the cloud and rain of the last few days, it was good to have some sun today, though the Met Office forecast had changed overnight from dry throughout to occasional rain – and so it proved. But the sun brought a welcome out of this chappie who came to say hello…

the gaggle saluted us beneath a patch of blue…

the spire seemed closer and more homely as we passed Romily…

and we encountered some interesting bridges on our way up the Peak Forest Canal to Ashton-under-Lyne.

The more unusual ones seemed to owe their more-unusualness to having been widened in some way. So the view from one side was rather different to the one from the other.

Nicholson's guide calls bridge 6 "a pretty roving bridge, grown wider over the years".

It has a plaque commemorating its restoration.

This next bridge is unlikely to be a candidate for any plaques…

It took us under the M67.

And what day would be complete without one of these?

It's Bridge 1 on the Peak Forest Canal…

– though the numbering is rather upset by there being one more bridge to come before the junction, labelled Bridge A!

So now we're off the Peak Forest. It's been a great, if wet, visit. We'll be back. Tonight we're tied up just round round the corner, on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, though facing in the right direction to start down the 18 locks of the Ashton Canal towards the centre of Manchester. They advise you to get through them early and in one hit, cos' this is bandit country. But we'd also like to have another quick peep at Ashton's Social and Industrial History Museum just across the water, and that doesn't open until 10 a.m. Decisions…

Cheshire Ring or Circus Ring

The decision was made – we'd do the Cheshire Ring. This meant, since we'd moored up just through the bridge where the Macclesfield canal starts, we'd have to reverse back through the narrow section and the bridge, before starting our way down the Marple locks. Simple enough idea on a wet morning in September. Except…

First a single boater came up the Macc just in time to get through the bridge and turn left before us. He chatted cheerfully, not apologetically, as he passed – how was he to know we were facing the wrong way? Then a windlass wielder came through the bridge on foot to say that his boat was coming up the last lock. He thought there'd be time for me to do my reversing before then, so I pushed out to get in position. Suddenly, with a blast of horn, another boat swung in under the bridge from the Bugsworth direction. "Oh," said the windlass wielder, "where did he come from?" Because of how I was set, the new boat didn't realise I was manoeuvring to come back through the bridge, and thought I should move out of his way so he could get to the water point. Once he'd passed, I was able to get into the channel and reverse back through the bridge, but I was also getting signals from the 70 foot boat for disabled people that moors just opposite where we had spent the night. He apparently wanted to follow us through and wind in the junction. As I came out I found the boat waiting to emerge from the lock, the singlehander alongside the towpath waiting to go in, and another boat coming down from Bugsworth wanting to go down the Macc. There's not a lot of space at the best of times for turning, and the water is shallow enough to make manoeuvres difficult. So I turned to face the lock, invited the boat from Bugsworth to back up a little and reversed up after him towards Bugsworth, the singlehander followed me backwards, the boat coming up came out of the lock and tied up on the towpath, the singlehander went for the lock, neatly avoiding the 70 footer that was coming out of the Macc. The 70 footer winded nicely and went back through the bridge, followed by the boat that had come out of the lock, followed in turn by the boat behind me, and I was at last able to get into position to go into the lock myself. By now, of course, it was down, and it takes a very long time to fill!

It's the first of 16 dropping 216 feet in about a mile. You can work out the average – these locks feel deep! Between numbers 10 and 9, you come across Lockside Mill, which used to be "Samuel Oldknow's Warehouse".

The gated water entrance reminded me of the Tower of London's Traitor's Gate – if you went in, who knows whether you'd ever get out! Whatever, I'm sure Dave would help you – he's one of those nice CRT volunteers and gave us a hand down the second half of the flight.

After the locks, it's the aqueduct.

Quite a relief that they didn't make you lock all the way down to the bottom of the valley and up the other side! To one side the railway gets a similar lift.

Tonight we're moored up just a little after, in the middle of nowhere – blackberries and elderberries for picking, sheep bleating, no-one else on the cut. And, 100 yards away, that railway line with a huge goods train every 5 minutes!

Bedraggled

One thing you can say for the herons on this stretch of the network – they're not cowards like the ones on the Shroppie. Those Shropshire cousins look at you nervously until you're about 20 yards from them, and then it's up, up and away to a new perch (ho-ho!) 100 yards further on. Apparently not realising they're going to have to repeat the exercise in however long 100 yards takes at 3 mph.

The Peak herons just look at you scornfully, as you pass, for daring to disturb their patch. However, they're no lookers!

Perhaps this one had just given up for time being, or was feeling as drenched as we were coming back to Marple from Bugsworth Basin today. One minute the sun was shining bright, and the next freezing rain was being blown straight into our faces. However, we had pleasant cruising company in the shape of NB Oakfield, so were able to share the work on the two swing bridges and the two lift bridges.

Now we have a decision. Is it back down the Macc the way we came? Or is it straight on along the Peak Forest, which would result in our doing the Cheshire Ring before we return to base? It's out with the guides tonight, to see what doing the Ring might feel like at this time of year, and with the weather that's in store.

Bedded down at Bugsworth Basin

As everybody in the UK must know, with the possible exception of those working underground, today has not been a day for boating, unless you have to get somewhere. We stayed put. It's been the first significant weather test for the new hood for our cruiser stern, and so far it's done really well. It's meant we've been able to leave Erin Mae's stern door open for fresh air, so that the wonderful fire we've had going didn't create too much of a sauna in the cabin. The wind has been directly on to the boat's stern, and I suppose a greater test of the hood's stability will come when it faces a serious cross-wind.

Bugsworth Basin has seen its fair share of visitors, in spite of the appalling weather. It's much more impressive than we realised before we came – a relic of the local lime industry, surrounded by more than a dozen lime-kilns and, at its peak, loading up to 80 barges a day with the stuff. Today, following a dedicated restoration project it combines a fabulous boating destination and mooring spot with an educational historical site. It's formally designated as an "ancient monument".

Last night's photos (today is not a day for getting the camera out) show it in the still of a September evening.

Goldberry

We were past her today before I could get the camera out, but NB Goldberry was added to my roll of Tolkien-based narrowboat names. The list gets longer – and I'm still open to sightings from others:

Arwen Evenstar
Aragorn
Brandywine
Gandalf
Goldberry
Hobbit
Lóthlórien
Many Meetings
Shadowfax
Smaug

It was a wonderful day for meandering gently up the top part of the Peak Forest Canal. The shallow water meant we could just relax in going the only speed possible. It gave us time to appreciate the quality of this canal and its surroundings.

On the way we encountered some wonderful places to live,

a couple of these,

and a couple of these!

Near its end, the canal splits. We went down the Whaley Bridge branch first, and decided not to stay. We came back out and down the second branch to Bugsworth Basin, which looks a whole lot nicer if we have to sit out the wind and the rain tomorrow. But I think it merits a post all of its own.