Burnley was bad but sad too. Blackburn was just bad. Canals do tend to enter towns through the back door but I can't imagine even Blackburn's front door would be much better.
Where Burnley had relics of a proud past, Blackburn's canalside just offered mile after mile of urban mess - semi-derelict buildings of all ages and types, totally derelict buildings and a canal that many in the town seemed to regard as a handy rubbish dump. In a couple of miles we came upon:
A sofa
A bed
Some fence panelling
A baby buggy
Various car parts
Numerous shopping trolleys
Street furniture
A car axle
And any amount of general cr*p! Every now and then Star would bump and sway as we passed over some half buried mystery piece of rubbish in the silt below.
The locks when we came to them were a horror story too - old fires, smashed bottles, cans, pill packets lined the top couple. Only in the middle (where the lock-keeper lived!) were they clean and tidy.
What a sorry place.
Out of curiosity I looked up who Blackburn's MP is - it's Jack Straw. Before that it was Barbara Castle. Both of them celebrated and highly successful members of Labour governments. But you can't help but wonder what they've actually done for the town that voted them into power.
Not bloody much by the look of it.
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