Steam and engines

We’ve spent our allotted 7 days cruising the Bridgewater Canal, it’s privately owned by the Manchester Ship Canal Co, that owns a good bit of land & property. I quite fancied going all the way to the end at Runcorn, but we battened down the hatches & sat by the fire several days due to the heavy rain.

 

I had a lovely evening strolling around my favourite shopping centre, The Trafford Centre, again gazing at the murals & statues, without spending a single penny. John on the other hand took some lovely photos of the sunset & reflections.

 

We got as far a Lymm and had a few damp days there, moored just a few yards from 3 pubs & a fish ’n’ chip shop, which were down a quaint little cobbled street. We decided to have a stroll when it was dry & didn’t get very far before we heard the toooot tooot of a steam whistle. We’ve met quite a few steam narrow boats but the sound wasn’t coming from the canal. Then we had a bit of a chase to find the engine. The steam engine was parked just down from our boat. 

The Bridgwater Canal is quite wide & easy to moor along. We spent a night under the watchful eye of some of the canals forefathers, Eggerton, Brindly & Gilbert. We both kept being startled when we looked out of the window by the iron statues.

John had read in a canal guide about Sale’s miniature railway and as we cruised past we heard the tiny toot toots of the models. So screeching to a halt, well a lot of reverse and he ran back to have a peek.

Our final mooring place on the Bridgewater Canal was Astley Green to visit the Pit Museum. It has the only remaining pit head gear in Lancashire . The shaft was a massive 3000 feet deep, which was in filled when the pit closed in the 1970’s. They have a huge engine that lifted the coal & miners from the coal face. The engine was once steam driven, but now powered by generators and compressors which produce the compressed air. The volunteers were speedily trying to fit their new compressors, we say new, as they are quite old but were donated by a firm that was upgrading, so sadly we didn’t see it working. 

 

Quite a few evenings we’ve had lovely sunsets. Last week we saw & heard a really bad storm behind us, we caught a few drops of rain from the edge. In-fact Ada & Dale in Chorley had huge hail stones that made holes in their young sunflowers leaves. We’re guessing the reservoirs that supply the upper Leeds & Liverpool Canal will be much fuller after all this rain.