Sunday 22^nd March 2020

After a very broken night’s sleep, we were both up and breakfasted by 7am and on the move before 8am. The day was cold but otherwise a lovely spring day. Nice to see people walking the towpaths, smiling.

Beyond the M53 and M56 motorways came the ½ mile of privately moored boats and beyond this Chester Zoo. Beneath the A41 and the Birkenhead to Chester railway bridge, the canal then starts the run into Chester. From the railway bridge to Mollington Bridge, there is a 1-mile stretch of tree filled water meadows below the level of the canal, that signage indicates is used as a flood control measure, the fields being used to store flood waters when the need arises.

     

Water Meadows used for Flood Control. How long before they are built on?

Presently, we arrived back in Telford’s Basin where we moored, but firstly, we manoeuvred as close to the Dee Branch Top Lock as possible for the purpose of the IWA Silver Propeller Challenge. The object of the challenge is to travel as far down the branch as possible. However, the bottom gate of the top lock has a sink hole beside it, the lock is closed and CRT have built a footbridge across the top of the lock preventing access. Under the circumstances, hopefully, the IWA will accept this. After all, we do try to traverse a canal from one end to the other and it always feels good to travel a rarely used section of canal, no matter how challenging.

     

Top Lock of the Dee Branch between Taylor’s Boatyard and Dry-Dock

Once moored, we went into the city for shopping. Due to the Corona Virus, there have been many reports on the news of food shortages and panic buying with supermarket trolley queues stretching into the distance just waiting to get into the store. We do not have the storage capacity on board to hoard stores and, while we always carry a good stock of dried goods, we do have to shop for essentials and fresh goods on a regular basis.

We need not have worried, Chester was eerily quiet, there were few people shopping and plenty of goods on the shelves. Obviously, the selfish panic buyers have filled their freezers and garage spaces to capacity and the shops are now catching up.

In the afternoon we walked down the Dee Branch to its confluence with the River Dee and for quite a distance along the river bank.

As originally built, the Chester Canal dropped down a staircase of five locks direct to the river with a large basin at the foot of the locks, surrounded by wharves and warehouses. The building of the Wirral Line of the Ellesmere Canal in 1795, dispensed with the bottom two locks and altered the route to the Dee. A new basin was built, Tower Wharf, or Telford’s Basin, and the new connection to the Dee was through a very sharp bend off the end of the basin. The branch then descended two locks running parallel with the basin, with another tight bend into another basin before descending a third lock to the River Dee. The second basin has now been filled in and attractive apartment blocks, resembling warehousing, built in its place. The locks do not have sluices and water cascades over the top of the gates. The pound below the second lock is so completely choked with a thick mat of weed, that any passage would be impossible and the propeller would become heavily fouled. There is a boom across the top gate of the bottom lock and a steel door beyond the bottom gate, preventing any further progress anyway.

     

Thick Weed and a Steel Door on the Dee Branch

The river at the outflow of the canal is interesting. Wharves and warehouses thronged the river bank but all but one have now disappeared, being again, replaced by apartment blocks resembling warehousing. We walked back alongside the race course, being surprised that we could actually walk on it.            

                                        

                                                                                             Dee River Front                                                                 

                                                           Last Original River Front Warehouse

Back on the boat we sat in the front cratch and watched the world. For the first time this year, it was nice and warm. The Government have now ordered all pubs, bars, restaurants, gymnasiums and cinemas to close and recommended people to stay at home. Clearly, on such a lovely day, this is being ignored and there were many people out walking, fishing, exercising and sitting on the grass with picnics. It might have been against Government guidelines, but it was lovely to see people enjoying themselves.

Weather: a cold start, but a lovely, warm sunny day.

Day Total: 0 locks; 5 miles; 0 Tunnels; 0 Swing Bridges; 0 Lift Bridges; 0 Boat Lift; Day’s running hours 1.3      

Overall Total: 891 locks; 1573 miles; 53 tunnels; 61 Swing Bridges; 17 Lift Bridges; 2 Boat Lifts; total engine running hours 1061.1