Stoke is so sad

I always find Stoke a fascinating but sad and sorry place to boat through. Fascinating because there are so many remnants of its old industries - the bottle kilns, the wharves, the ruined brick warehouses. Sad because that's all they are - remnants.
People have told me of cruising through the town when steel furnaces spat fire along the canal and the kilns belched smoke. What a sight that must have been!
All that has gone, the warehouses are deserted ruins, the kilns silent museum pieces and for nearly a mile the canal runs through a wasteland; a bulldozed desert of nothingness.
I know things have to change but in Stoke they seem to have just changed for the worst; those lifeblood industries have gone but nothing much seems to have replaced them.
It's a story one sees across so much of the old industrial heart of England.

Granny gets her fix

Narrowboat, foot, train and van. Those were our means of transport yesterday to bring us from Macclesfield to Bury St Edmunds so Vicky could get her fix of grannying before little Martha and her ma & pa go off on holidays.
We set off at 10 a.m., reached Stoke on Trent by 3pm where we left the boat in the Festival Park Marina (and a very helpful outfit they were too), walked to the station, got the train to Lichfield, walked to Streethay, picked up the Astravan and drove to Bury St Eds getting there 12 hours later at 10pm after a Macdonalds refuelling stop en route.
It was a busy and an incident filled day. First we found ourselves holding up a trio of little plastic cruisers so I pulled over and let them by, only to be caught up by another couple and a small narrowboat. Apparently we'd got tangled up in a cruising club outing to the Ashby Canal.
Well, the second lot had to stay behind us to the Harecastle Tunnel entrance where their narrowboat member decided he ought to try and overtake and bashed into the back of Star!
He was in a panic about missing the run through the tunnel - despite the fact that we were joining a line of boats all starting to filter through.
As we left the other end of the tunnel I, shall we say, explained the error of his ways to him - and to the club 'commodore' in the boat behind him!
We stopped for a sandwich and to let the cruising crews get well ahead and then carried on through Stoke to the marina. It being Saturday, a steady stream of newly hired craft were coming the other way, their steerers gradually mastering their new controls.
And then round a bend at some speed appeared one - completely on the wrong side of the water. There followed that couple of seconds when you think "I guess he'll just pull the tiller over and move across" followed by the dawning realisation "Oh no! He's not going to. And unless I do something he's going to T-bone us!"
I swung to the left and waved him furiously to pass on the 'wrong' side. Just as he decided to engage full reverse with plumes of water spraying everywhere. A couple of seconds of that and he's be all over the place. Fortunately he decided to obey my signal and go forwards instead.
As we passed he uttered an unforgettable question "What side are you supposed to pass on, mate?".
He'd actually come from the marina we were heading to and when we got there I saw another boat crew getting pretty comprehensive driving instructions. Clearly that particular boater had been asleep at the back of the class!

Down - and up again

We must be mad. We spent two hours wrestling our way down the twelve Bosley locks, moored up below them on the aqueduct and then went off and walked up the 1150-ft high summit you can see in the distance called The Cloud.


We made it!
And so did Brian who was more impressed by the smells than the view

Still, it was worth it. Even on a hazy day the views are superb. There's a complete 360 degree panorama of Cheshire and Staffordshire. On a clear day you can see Wales, though probably not Lands End and John O'Groats that are marked on the big bronze compass plaque at the summit along with all the local landmarks.
The walk was actually not as bad as it looked (it looked terrifyingly steep!). We had to drop down from the aqueduct into the river valley below then climb some steep lanes before a very stiff trudge up through a meadow. The last bit was easy, though: the National Trust who own the site had even put in some concrete steps and a handrail up the steepest bit.
After an energy packed banana and honey sandwich each - plus a pile of dog biscuits for Brian - we were recovered enough for the descent. And three hours after leaving it we were back at the boat.
Tomorrow sadly we'll leave the hills behind, tunneling through the last of them via the Harecastle Tunnel that brings us to Stoke. A few more days and we'll be back at base.

Pushchair!!

Vicky flagged down a passing pushchair today just like you or I would flag down a passing cab.
Apparently you can do this if you are a state-registered-granny and want to have a bit of an "ooh" and "aah" at a baby. Or in this case two babies as the eagle eyed granny had spotted it was a double buggy.
Mums appear quite happy - delighted even - to have grannies doing this sort of thing. I suppose it's because to grannies all babies are "lovely", "beautiful" etc etc. Which, of course, they are.

Brian's Blog

Another day, another bl**dy hill! I don't mind a walk but why do they always have to pick hills? A towpath I like - plenty to sniff, the odd dog to growl at - but hills are just damned hard work. It's alright for them; they went off and bought fancy walking shoes but me, I'm on my poor old pads clambering over these rocks. Up they go and my little legs have to try and keep up.
It gets worse; if there are any of those silly big white woolly dogs around (y'know, the sort that make a kind of odd 'baa-ing' bark) then I'm back on the lead before I get a chance to have a play.
And when we get to the top of these hills, what happens? They both sit about scoffing sandwiches and going on and on about what they can see. Me I get a bowl of lukewarm water and a couple of dog biscuits. And today I even had to put up with a really irritating 4 year old who kept rushing up and shouting at me. She even tried to put a bag over my head. I had to put on my fierce growling face to get rid of her. It's the parents I blame.
To be honest with you, going down hill is often worse than going up. I'd tell them "you try going down a steep hill head first"!
But this walk had one thing going for it - the bloke who built the stiles had at least thought about dogs and that's a rarity. He'd left a nice hole in the stone wall for me to get through. And when I walked through they kept saying how clever I was. Do they think I'm stupid or something? They're the daft ones, keep finding all these steep hills.

Another summit conquered

The Macca has three notable canalside 'summits' among the hills that line it. The first, Mow Cop, we cracked a few days ago; the second, White Nancy, we tackled today.
White Nancy is actually a curious bottle shaped building on top of the northern edge of the Saddle of Kerridge that overlooks Bollington just north of Macclesfield. It was put up by one of the local landowners to commemorate victory at Waterloo and was a summerhouse from which - presumably - he could survey his domain while sipping a glass or three. A glass which would have been heaved up the sharp, steep slope by his poor unfortunate servants. I bet they dreaded the annual Waterloo victory celebrations that must have gone on up there!
It's not a long walk but it is a damned steep one though most of it's up a damned fine stone footpath, first of slabs and later of gritstone pieces laid on edge into the soil.
From the summit the view is of course stunning - we could see planes landing at Manchester Airport in one direction and right across the dry stone wall grids of the Peakland hills in the other.
We took the long way back, along the Saddle to its southern tip then meandering down through the lanes and footways of the steep slope down to Kerridge and Bollington. A crazy zig-zagging footpath took us down between stone cottages clinging for dear life to the edge of the hillside and even, at one point, under what was once the upper floor of a now ruined cottage.
Finally down at the canalside we passed the two huge surviving silk mills now revived as offices and apartments. At their height no less than 18 mills worked in this tiny area alone.
Tomorrow it's the final peak - The Cloud.

Low and slow

It's been a slow day - but not for the want of trying. Water levels in the always shallow Macca are about six inches below their usual level which means the bottom is rather too close to the top for deeper draughted boats like us.
It's worst at bridgeholes where the silt and muck collects in the narrows. We dragged our way across some slower than a reluctant child being dragged to the dentist. As you go through, mud and a slurry of rotted vegetation cling to the prop which often demands some lively reversing to throw it off again.
The original plan was to stop at Macclesfield to stock up the larder and stooge round the other shops but that soon changed. What a shame that the town that gave the canal its name does so little to encourage the passing boater to visit.
The moorings are shallow, unkempt and lack any sort of ring or barrier to hook a rope to on the eroded bankside. Worse, three average sized boats would fill them. Today none had bothered to make the effort and I don't blame them. Maybe Macclesfield feels it can do without the boaters' trade. Well it did without ours for sure!
With moorings few and far between along this section of the canal we decided to plod on to what will be our destination on the Macca this trip - the moorings at Higher Poynton run by our chums Iain and Luisa Bryceland, former owners of Braidbar Boats across the other side of the cut. They've done a lot of work since we were here two years ago with new jetties, much dredging and the removal of a huge concrete barrier wall.
Tomorrow we'll turn around and drift slowly back towards Streethay. Quite literally it's all downhill from here.