by Nick Corble
The underlying logic of the case, other than the smart alec one, appeared to be that these things should be free, that taxes should pay for everything. It was as if ten years of austerity, and the message that the state’s resources were limited and choices needed to be made, had yet to permeate. A similar attitude seemed to apply to all public services, notably health and education, and I wondered whether an opportunity had been missed to have a proper conversation on what the role of the state was in the modern world. Meanwhile, politicians and the press connived in maintaining a model of informing and engaging people that was stuck in the pre-internet age, something thrown into stark relief by their conduct during the Brexit Referendum so-called debate.
Luckily, and perhaps ironically, I was able to cross the new bridge for free, using a shuttle bus laid on by an anonymous benefactor. This deposited me at a spot in Runcorn that held a dear place in my heart – and that’s not a phrase I thought I’d ever type. It was here, under the Silver Jubilee Bridge and at the terminus of the Runcorn Arm of the Bridgewater Canal, that I’d moored up twenty years previously with my brother and nephew, where our experiences formed a chapter of Walking on Water. These centred on impressions of a Saturday night in the town and a visit to a curry house and its inevitable intestinal aftermath in the confined spaces of a narrowboat. It’s fair to say that my impression at the time wasn’t favourable. I’d described it as ‘a bit of a hole’, and if anything, twenty years later, that hole looked like it had deepened. The town felt flat, existing rather than excited, long rows of terraced housing speaking of a different century. Okay, it was early morning, and maybe the closure of the bridge had depressed trade, but the regular arrival of the shuttle bus appeared to offer the only signs of life.
I resolved to walk on, but immediately got lost following signs for the Trans Pennine Trail (for it was back). It was difficult to escape the conclusion these signs had been designed to indicate a vague direction and then leave the walker to it. After forty-five minutes of wandering around identical-looking houses I spotted two things on the map: first was a series of contours suggesting a climb; and second a shortcut to the canal. I opted for the second, confident that it was pretty difficult to get lost on a towpath.
On reaching the water, I stopped to rehydrate. It was already getting warm and the back of my T-shirt was feeling decidedly moist. The canal was my second of the walk, but by no means the last. Because the canal system had originally been designed as a ‘Grand Cross’, linking the four great rivers of the Mersey, Trent, Severn and Thames, it too had a long diagonal going north-west to south-east, and for long stretches its towpaths were often more or less contiguous with my route.
After a couple of miles, I took a footpath over some fields to hook up with the main arm of the Bridgewater Canal, the country’s first since Roman times, and the brainchild of the civil engineer James Brindley. This clings to the edge of a hill and passes under the M56 motorway linking Manchester and Chester. I felt like I was making real progress as I headed southwards, past the entrance to the Runcorn Arm and the portal of a tunnel.
A black and foreboding hole, whose exit wasn’t visible, suggested that, contrary to rumours, there wasn’t light at the end of the tunnel. This was Preston Brook, marking the point where the Bridgewater meets the Trent and Mersey. A sign aimed at boaters joining the former highlighted the Bridgewater’s unique quality of being privately owned and the licence restrictions this imposed. Like so many canals, the Bridgewater was initially bought by a railway company, but it was sold in 1885 to the Manchester Ship Canal, which now belongs to The Peel Group, a privately owned investment group. Unlike other canals therefore, it had not fallen into public ownership with the nationalisation of the railways, making it an oddity in the system.
Still, I was leaving it, heading uphill over the top of the tunnel, where I spotted the first mile marker of the new canal. Similar to those seen earlier on the Leeds and Liverpool, these marked the distance to Shardlow, near Derby, where the canal linked up with the River Trent. As I climbed up, brick air shafts dotted the top of the tunnel and the scent of wild garlic growing amongst the trees filled my nostrils.
After about a mile of this new canal, I diverted right through some fields on a track called the Delamere Way in order to course-correct onto my diagonal. This brought me down onto another waterway, this time a natural one, the River Weaver, although much of the course was channelled to make what is known as a ‘Navigation’, fit for boats, sometimes quite big ones. This made for a pleasant change of scene. The waterway was much wider, with grand black and white painted locks to match.
This was turning out to be a day of water, and I stopped to take some more on for myself. Having passed through the ‘damp’ stage my T-shirt was now firmly en route to ‘sopping’. Ploughing on past Dutton Locks I came across the wreck of an old boat called the Chika or Chica, according to a nearby man I asked who was carrying out some maintenance on his narrowboat. He hinted at a colourful history, and subsequent research backed this up. The boat was constructed in Norway towards the end of the nineteenth century when she’d been called Flora and was rigged as a yacht. After having a number of owners and operating as a salt fish carrier, the boat was commandeered by the German Navy in 1940, by which time she’d been fitted with a diesel engine.
After the war, some reports say she operated in the Mediterranean, smuggling tobacco and guns, whilst others say she shipped logs for the rebuilding of Norway. This phase of her history is a bit shady, but what is known is that by the 1980s she ended up in Liverpool and was bought to operate a passenger service up and down the River Weaver as well as operating as a gourmet restaurant. In 1993, just shy of her centenary, she started taking on water and as no one was on board to operate the bilges, she listed and there she remains to this day, rotting and rotten, and something of a blight on this lovely stretch of water.
Other than the Chika, the water was populated mainly by mallards and swans. At the magnificent Acton Swing Bridge, which was capable of swinging the A49 out over the water, although thankfully not without stopping traffic first, signs told me I couldn’t continue, but were less forthcoming in providing alternatives. Luckily, my OS came to the rescue, offering a steady trudge up a hill on a minor road, where I reacquainted myself with the canal. The spongy turf of the towpath was welcome after the road, while several tens of feet below, the Weaver tracked a parallel route. The mile markers returned, although they registered only a disappointing four miles since Preston Brook.
Further tunnels emerged as I approached Barnton: the Saltersford and, appropriately, the Barnton. On the far side of the former a small and self-important looking man was busy gathering the ropes of his narrowboat, as it was within five minutes of the allotted time for boats to pass through east to west. I told him I’d seen a boat going in bang on the deadline the other end. He immediately turned to announce to others waiting behind him, as if he alone was the source of this intelligence, ‘Looks like we’ve got a rusher’. In that single moment he summed up one of the characteristics of certain boaters, and perhaps certain people (I didn’t think it was a particularly English characteristic, although a Scot or Welshman might disagree): that of the self-proclaimed expert.
Around half past four I reached my target for the day, the Anderton Boat Lift, and celebrated with a long swig of water. Reports were suggesting these were the hottest April days for seventy years and it felt like it. We’d seen the Boat Lift in the process of being restored twenty years before, when I’d been cynical about its chances of success. I said as much to my brother and he’d told me not to be so pessimistic. I said then that time would tell, and it had. He’d been right. The structure was now one of the waterways’ star attractions.
The lift, consisting of two cassions, or chambers, used to lift boats to and from the Weaver and the canal. It had been built in 1875 to facilitate the transport of pottery and salt. It hadn’t been an amazing success. Problems started w
ith an accident seven years later when one of its cylinders burst, sending a chamber, complete with boat, to a premature rendezvous with the river below. Subsequently, the lift’s hydraulics faced a constant battle with the corrosive effects of salt, causing them to be replaced with an electrical system. The lift finally closed in 1986, but had reopened in 2002, only three years after I’d been so disparaging about its chances. It was, I thought, a prime example of the English talent for taking one of our prime assets – heritage – and converting it to another use: leisure, a bit like the canal system in general. I’d hoped to visit it, but it turned out to be shut.
I wandered into Northwich where my bed awaited, passing a chemical plant with a round blue plaque stating that Polythene was invented on this site in 1933. It was now a sodium bicarbonate plant owned by Tata Chemicals, owners of British Salt and part of the same Indian conglomerate which owned the old Halewood plant I’d seen the day before. A derelict site next door exemplified the wider decline of the salt industry in the region.
Northwich had been voted one of the best places to live in the UK in a Sunday Times survey in 2014 and, superficially at least, it was easy to see why. There are lots of half-timbered buildings, a large and impressive marina and quay, and even a Waitrose, normally a dead giveaway for an affluent area. It is also home to the country’s first electronically operated swing bridge, although I doubted this often featured on local estate agents’ descriptions. Later, however, I was to hear a report on Radio Four of a different side to the story. The town had recently opened an £80 million new shopping centre called Barons Quay, built on the site of an old salt mine (naturally). This has failed in its primary purpose of attracting any shops. A cinema and a restaurant had become established, but these were symptomatic only of a wider trend in high streets across the country away from the selling of things to the consumption of experiences.
As a result of this initiative, Northwich’s traditional high street, where the half-timbered buildings are, was stuck in a sort of limbo, along with the rest of the town. When the development’s original developer, a private company, pulled out after the 2008 economic bust, the council had taken over, allocating a further £1.3 million to kick-start its spanking new showpiece, doubling down on its bet that retail had a future. The jury was out. Northwich’s experience said so much about both the decline of traditional industries and, in turn, the fundamental shift in the nature of the type of employment it had been hoped would replace them.
The next day I meandered on along the Weaver, a cool breeze now taking the edge off the sun’s heat. I made a detour at the spectacular Hartford Bridge, known locally as the ‘Blue Bridge’ because it is, well, bright blue, in order to call in on Jerry, an old school pal I hadn’t seen for decades. Jerry and I used to cycle together to school (remember when children used to do that?), but alas Jerry’s cycling days were ended by a terrible accident which broke his neck, confining him to a wheelchair.
Prior to his accident, Jerry was a fighter pilot in the RAF, seeing service in the Iraq War, and later as part of the Battle of Britain Memorial flight. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of VJ Day, he piloted a Dakota down the Mall, dropping a million poppies over the crowds below. He was flying commercial jets in 2007 when he’d been caught by a freak wave on a Mexican beach during a layover. Lucky to have survived, Jerry had not let his misfortunes get to him, becoming an after-dinner speaker and charity campaigner. A keen runner before the accident, for the past ten years he has organised a ‘Big Push’1 around the Manchester 10k run, raising money for a number of charities. As such, it seemed fitting that after our chat Jerry should accompany me to the top of his road in his motorised wheelchair, becoming the first person to ‘Walk with Me’, metaphorically, if not literally.
It had been great to catch up, but time was ticking on so, topped up with liquid, including some much-appreciated ice, I hit the road again, returning to my route beside the Weaver. This took me through a long ‘cut’, made to ease navigation, and through the outskirts of Winsford, past active salt works, with veins of salt visible in the soil on the opposite bank. A slight detour then brought me back to my diagonal and a new canal, the Middlewich Branch of the Shropshire Union. These towpaths were proving to be excellent for keeping me on track, and it was along here that I ended up having an encounter with a ‘liveaboard’ as those who live on their narrowboats are known, although this individual didn’t live on his in the winter, and I couldn’t blame him. The local landscape was open and I suspected it could get very cold when the wind got up.
His mooring was on a farm, with the farmer treating his liveaboards as a ready supply of informal labour, an arrangement that suited everyone involved. Tall and wearing a flat cap my new friend was happy to talk, probably encouraged when I told him I used to have my own boat, bringing us into a conspiracy of waterfolk. His biggest concern was the number of boats on the canal. On the face of it this came across as incredible, but he was insistent that during the summer holidays you could practically walk across the canal over the tops of boats. His other concern was costs, with it costing him £1,500 a year for the mooring and £800 a year for licences, and that was before he got to maintenance and other odds and sods.
Like many other liveaboards, he lived a life that might be described as semi-off-grid, with wider changes taking place in society barely touching him. For him and plenty like him, life was much the same from one year to the next, with its rhythm of winter on-shore and then the agricultural cycle to get stuck into when he got back to his boat. When I asked if he used the internet, he replied that he had little need for it, so giving him a card would have been a waste of time. He must have been a member of one of the very few groups in society for whom the internet was largely irrelevant.
He was also useful in giving me instructions on how to get into Middlewich, the towpath up ahead being closed. I’d heard about this, a major breach in the canal, which had resulted in a huge section of it now bearing more resemblance to the Somme than Flatford Mill. I followed his instructions and made my way into the town, where I’d planned another day off.
If Northwich was having problems with its shopping, at least it had some shops. Middlewich was distinguished by a complete absence of anything useful other than a Tesco Express and a Tesco Superstore, which turned out to be less than super, tucked around the back of the main street. Combined, these had sucked any life out of local retail scene, leaving in its wake only a string of takeaway fast food outlets and a pub or two.
Middlewich’s population had doubled since 1970 to roughly 14,000, and indeed, my new billet was in a recently built housing estate. Like Northwich, it too had been voted as one of the most attractive postcodes to live in. Its Wikipedia entry though is nicely ambiguous, and hints at a deeper truth, suggesting that with the decline in local employment, many people live there because it is cheap rather than for what the town actually offers. Even an Ideal Standard factory had recently closed. Even toilet manufacturing had gone down the toilet. My Airbnb hostess worked in Salford and spent most of her weekends in Wales. She referred to Middlewich as ‘the village’, rather than ‘the town’, and admitted she had no idea where I could eat, an appreciation of the place that appeared to confirm the Wikipedia entry.
The one thing the town can boast however, is waterways. Not only does it have three rivers, the Dane, Croco and Wheelock, but it is also home to three canals, the Trent and Mersey, the Middlewich Arm of the Shropshire Union (although this was, for the moment, a moot point), and the Wandle. I’d never heard of the Wandle, and when I eventually found it I didn’t feel the need to reproach myself. At around fifty yards long, it is the smallest canal in the country, capable of fitting into one photograph. It was cut by the owners of the Trent and Mersey to retain control over the junction with the Middlewich Branch. Clever.
The next day I was back on the towpath, coming up to a series of double locks and the flight of twenty-two deep locks boaters know as Heartbreak Hil
l. I’d been there and done this twenty years before and remembered being pleased when it was over. At least we’d been a crew of three. As I was wandering, I caught up with another liveaboard I’d spoken with in Middlewich the previous day, and he was taking on the locks alone. Unlike the first liveaboard I’d spoken to, this one was what was known as a continuous cruiser, which meant he had a licence which required him to move on every two weeks. He was on his way to Cambridge – eventually, as he put it. We’d spoken previously when he was negotiating the notorious three locks on an elbow of the canal in Middlewich, when his conversation had consisted mainly of griping against the Canal and River Trust, which he called the Cyclists and Ramblers Trust. This echoed a complaint I’d heard before from liveaboards, that the CRT didn’t have the boaters’ interests at heart.
‘God, we thought British Waterways was bad, but this lot …’ He left the sentence unfinished.
The CRT was created in 2012 with the remit to become self-financing. This meant taking a more commercial approach to its property and other assets and, inevitably, the raising of prices for things such as moorings and licences. It also meant interpreting its role more widely than its predecessor British Waterways, embracing and encouraging all users of the canals, including, you’ve got it, cyclists and ramblers, as well as dog walkers, anglers and so on. This doesn’t seem unreasonable, unless of course you are a boater and are used to being seen as the primary users of the waterways, plus the fact that you pay a licence to be on the water whereas no one else did.
In this regard, the CRT is like many other government bodies, or quasi-government bodies, and actually quite late to the ‘having to justify your existence’ party. The friction between them and boaters perhaps underlines how, in the twenty-first century, there are few places left to run away from the modern world, and how the real world has finally caught up with them. When we’d spoken before, we’d been approaching one of Middlewich’s traditional boatyards, and a series of information boards were testament to the town’s, or village’s according to taste, attempts to carve out some kind of niche for itself. It also held an annual folk and boat festival.
