Stalactites and bats

We knew it would be the hottest day of the year before 8. The air was still and close even then.

Today’s lesson interruption, at Middlewich, was to look across from the boat to dump trucks carting huge scoops of salt around the salt works. Salt has been a major source of local employment since the Romans found rocksalt here 2,000 years ago, an astonishing continuity.

Luckily, in the heat, there were only four locks to work between Middlewich and our next stop. The Anderton lift is two huge counter-balanced water tanks with watertight doors built in 1875 to lift boats down the 50 feet from the Trent and Mersey Canal to the River Weaver (or vice versa). Although we weren’t going onto the Weaver we’d hoped for a ride down and back up but we arrived too late in the day. Even so, it was another impressive bit of Victorian engineering to add to my collection.

As the sun was setting we went through Dutton Stop lock in preparation for leaving the Trent and Mersey and joining the Bridgewater Canal. This strange lock with a drop of only a few inches is the result of the 1766 Act of Parliament authorising the building of the Trent and Mersey and forbidding it from 'stealing' any water from the earlier (1761) Bridgewater Canal.

All 1239 yards of the Preston Brook tunnel, just after the lock, were a delight. It was cool, there were dramatic stalactites, the boat light attracted insects and the insects tempted bats from their perches in the ceiling so we were able to watch them swoop just in front of us. John played radical songs to the echoes on his fearfully out-of-tune saxophone while the rest of us sang, louder on the saxophone’s duff notes.

And on through the dark towards Manchester.

(Malkins Bank on the Trent and Mersey. Onto the Bridgwater to somewhere.)