Tuesday 29th
October 2019
The world this morning, was completely white after a very hard,
overnight frost. After a breakfast of toast, we walked to visit All Saints
Church in Church Lawton, just 100 yards away. From the outside, the church
appears old and yet it has what, at first, appears to be a reasonably modern
interior, light and airy due to large, clear windows. Across a field next to
the church is Lawton Hall although we could not get close to it. We felt quite
rewarded as we had wanted to visit here for a few years and it had always
intrigued us whenever we drove past.
Lawton Hall
We descended six locks before stopping at the Broughton Arms in Rode
Heath for lunch. Unusually, all the locks were in our favour with boats either
just leaving, or just left the locks, so each lock being passed through in
quick succession.
In the almost three weeks spent on the Caldon Canal, we saw very few
boats moving. Throughout today, we saw 19, all but one, travelling in the
opposite direction. For the first time in over a year, we also began to see
hire boats local to the Middlewich area, Andersen Boats and Chas Harden from
Beeston.
At Snapes Aqueduct, just before Rode Heath, the canal passes beneath
the A50. I had travelled on this road almost every day during Bridge Street’s
build and used to look down this stretch of canal and say to myself ’one day,
we will get there’, and here we are.
After lunch we continued, now in very familiar territory, through a
further four locks and moored at Hassall Green with the M6motorway just
visible.
Of the four locks, one was Thurlwood Lock in Rode Heath which is worthy
of note. All the Cheshire Locks on Heartbreak Hill were originally duplicated locks,
although quite a number now are single with the other lock either abandoned, or
filled in. Although today, Thurlwood is a single lock, until 1988 the second lock
was the site of an experimental, steel, guillotine lock.
Thurlwood Steel
Lock circa 1960’s
Built in 1958, it replaced the original lock that
had started to fail due to subsidence caused by brine pumping and could be jacked
up when further subsidence occurred. However, it was found to be unreliable, was
often out of use and took longer to fill than the neighbouring conventional
lock. Boaters tended to avoid it, its maintenance became neglected and it was
scrapped in 1988. A shame to have lost such an iconic piece of engineering from
our waterways.
Weather: very cold in the morning, giving way to a lovely sunny late
autumnal day.
Day Total: 10 locks; 3 miles; 0 Tunnels; 0 Swing Bridges; 0 Lift Bridges;
0 Boat Lift; Day’s running hours 2.7
Overall Total: 796 locks; 1366 miles; 53 tunnels; 61 Swing Bridges; 17
Lift Bridges; 2 Boat Lifts; total engine running hours 867.8hrs
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