Cheddleton

Today's Canal : Caldon

Before leaving this morning  - a bright sunny day as promised - Mike walked the 200m to see the end of the canal. 

It is rather inauspicious, originally it continued a short distance closer to Leek but never actually quite getting there.

Rather more of the end of the canal might also have been lost but for the fact that here the feeder from Rudyard Lake joins in. 

The canal crossed the River Churnett - we shall see more of this river from the Froghall Branch.

The last full winding hole was also close to our mooring with the view looking rather more splendid than last night! We definitely would not made a turn at the end.

Soon after setting off we returned through Leek Tunnel.

A view of the large lagoon by he tunnel entrance - we did not dare to explore how much of it would support a narrowboat!

On the way up we grounded a number of times, especially on some of the very tight bends, but this time we learnt from that experience and, with one exception, found a better line that meant we could keep going. For the most part the sunshine filtering though the trees made it very pretty.

Christine was very impressed by the size of the cones on this end of garden tree. Perhaps at least 200mm in length.

We arrived back at Hazlehurst Junction and made the almost 180 degree turn onto the Frogall Branch. It took too much concentration to take a picture! Immediately we dropped down a level through three locks in a flight. The junction is at this acute angle because originally a three lock staircase linked the two levels, just the other side of the aqueduct but this became a bottleneck and was replaced by the present separate locks.

Bridge 12, just below the bottom lock, had to be re-built a short time ago at what seemed to many to be a vast cost but it needed to meet stringent heritage requirement.

Then under the aqueduct. From this angle we gained a much more impressive view of the structure than when crossing above where the lower canal is barely visible.

The present line of the canal is from the very right of this picture and the surprisingly straight piling edge seeming to go nowhere is the alignment for the staircase - this is all that can now be seen.

We stopped on the visitor mooring just before Cheddleton as Christine had a Zoom meeting at 1.30. Fortunately her mobile signal was just good enough but it was touch and go at times. Meanwhile Mike prepared the fish pie for tonight's meal so that we could continue a little further once the meeting was over.

Cheddleton Mill is only staffed (by volunteers) on Mondays and Wednesdays. Visitors are welcome to look around the outside of the buildings but we had a rather splendid view as we cruised slowly by.

Just beyond the village came another two locks.

The next stretch was rather faster, with seemingly deeper water but just before the next visitor moorings that all changed. There was a number of boats permanently moored on the off side and although we kept to the middle channel as best we could, we still ran aground opposite one of them. We tried forward and then reverse but the boat stayed put. The bow was free as was also the stern but the bottom caught somewhere in the middle and we simply pivoted around it. We even resorted to trying to push or lever off with the pole - not been deployed for a long time! Then we tried rocking the boat but there was not much movement. We are not sure quite what was the final trick but eventually we slowly moved backwards, free from the silt. This time we took a different line (only by about half a metre) but close to the moored boat and with a sigh of relief we were through. (Will we ever get back, though?) The visitor mooring was just ahead so we pulled in - we had lost too much time to push on as it is a while to the next known mooring.     

The Churnett Valley Railway runs close to the canal for some distance - here is where rolling stock is kept, some still seemingly awaiting careful restoration. We could not check whether we will see any steam trains running tomorrow as this is a largely mobile-free zone! (We did later get a signal that allowed us to upload this day's installment but it was almost 22:00)

5.5 Miles - 5 Locks