Friday 6^th March 2020

With Tesco’s being within 100 yards of the boat, we did a big shop today, first visiting the butchers in the market.

We had been on this mooring now for 11 days, done all we wanted to do on this side of the city, and so decided to move with the water becoming low and the loo needing emptying. Shortly after the mooring, the canal enters a cutting directly below the Roman City Walls, where the canal has been hewn out of the solid sandstone rock. It is impressive, especially with the busy Northgate Street bridge high above.

Cutting leading to Northgate Locks

Then, below the Chester ring-road the Northgate Staircase Locks are reached. These are also hewn out of solid rock and lower the canal by 33 feet, an impressive feat of engineering. They consist of a staircase of three locks, wide-beam and deep. With the road above, these locks are always a little dark. We first passed through these locks many years ago and got them completely wrong, flooding the towpath below in the process. We are a lot more experienced now and passed through without mishap.  

     

Northgate Staircase Locks

At the foot of the locks the canal passes below the main railway line into North Wales, before a sharp 90˚ bend into Chester Canal Basin, otherwise known as ‘Telford’s Basin’. Surprisingly, there was only one other boat moored here. We filled with water and did a few washes whilst on the water point. A sink hole has appeared beside the lock leading down into the Dee Branch and the area is fenced off, blocking the route to the Elsan point and necessitating a walk around the branch to reach it. Only then did we find we had passed the rubbish disposal which is actually above the staircase.

Once moored and settled, we took the rubbish to the disposal point and called into Telford’s Warehouse, now converted to a pub and restaurant, for a pint. The place is very atmospheric and has retained the crane in the centre of the floor which would have been used to load and unload boats in the arches beneath.

     

                                   

                                                                                          Chester Canal Basin                                                                     

                                                                    Telford’s Warehouse

Next to the warehouse is a building that originally housed the Canal Company offices and a tavern that was used by passengers waiting for the packet boats to Ellesmere Port where they would have transferred to ferries across the Mersey to Liverpool.

When the Chester Canal was completed in 1775, neither the basin or the warehouse would have existed and the route of the canal actually descended through a staircase of five locks, into a basin lined with warehouses, before entering the River Dee.

The Ellesmere Canal Company was formed in 1795 to link industries in North Wales and Shropshire with the rivers Mersey and Severn. The Wirral Line was completed in 1795 between Chester and the River Mersey at what became known as Ellesmere Port. This brought about changes with the bottom two locks of the staircase being replaced by the Dee Branch and the building of the new basin and Telford’s Warehouse.  

     

                                       

                                                                                             Taylor’s Boatyard                                                                       

                                                                   Drydock at Taylor’s Yard      

                                         

                                                                                                      Dee Branch                                                                                    

                                                                                                 Roving Bridge

The area at the head of the Dee Branch and its junction with the main line, is interesting. The top lock was used as a Graving Dock, planks would be placed in the lock and the lock emptied, leaving the boat sitting on the planks enabling work to be carried out below the water line. Taylor’s Boatyard is housed within the original workshops of the Shropshire Union Railway and Canal Company boat building yard. In 1921, it was taken over by J. H. Taylor a boat builder on the Dee Branch and the name has survived. There is a fine example of a covered dry-dock and a cast iron ‘roving’ bridge, where the towpath changes sides but the bridge is so arranged that the rope between a horse and the boat does not have to be disconnected.  

Day Total: 3 locks; 1 mile; 0 Tunnels; 0 Swing Bridges; 0 Lift Bridges; 0 Boat Lift; Day’s running hours 8.9    (including running for hot water etc)

Overall Total: 887 locks; 1545 miles; 53 tunnels; 61 Swing Bridges; 17 Lift Bridges; 2 Boat Lifts; total engine running hours 1044.1

Today was the 33^rd anniversary of the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise, the Townsend Thoresen cross-channel ferry that sank off Zeebrugge. I sailed on her for 3½ years and she was a very happy ship. Of the engine room crew of 20 men, there was just the one survivor. I lost a lot of friends that night and become very upset every year thinking of them all.