The journey to Marple

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Cath)

Lift bridge to start our day

The Peak Forest Canal is slow and shallow, and there were a several miles to go before the locks at Marple. 

Alan and I started the day by finding our way up to the Asda to get some much needed supplies. The store has clearly been designed with cars in mind. It isn't easy to get there from the canal towpath and requires crossing busy roads with no pedestrian crossings. We loaded ourselves up with as much as we could carry and slogged back to the boat.


 

The new railings on Marple Aqueduct are not really in keeping.

Through the first lift bridge and on through the sludge. We were brought to a halt at almost all of the bridge holes after that. Each time we all got off, I would 'bowhaul' the front of the boat with a rope, while Alan and David walked the boat through the bridge hole by walking along the roof and pushing on the bridge.

 

Marple locks are all fairly deep.

We had been warned by an experienced local historic boater that we needed to be particularly careful in the entrance to Hyde Bank Tunnel. There is a large pile of masonry in the middle of channel there. He said to take a run at it. Before we got there we talked it over. The boater has slightly shallower boats than Flamingo - should we got at it gently to try to float over it? We decided to try that first, then take a run at it if we didn't get into the tunnel.

 

The Marple Flight is very attractive throughout.

I went and sat on the bows, to try to lift the back of the boat, then we floated in gently - and stuck fast. So Alan took the boat back and made a run at the tunnel. There were graunching noises and we slowed. Just for a moment thought we were going to stick fast in the tunnel - what would we do? As it is a fairly short one-way traffic tunnel we would hope that nobody would come in from the other end. Inside the tunnel we would have no phone signal, and we would have to wait for a boat to arrive behind us before we would be able to get a message to CRT. Fortunately, another shudder and the boat began to move forwards again.

Very attractive former warehouse

Shortly before the flight of locks there is a well-known aqueduct crossing the River Goyt. It is visually stunning, but what has caused controversy in recent years is that fact that on the opposite side to the towpath there was just a wide stone path with no railings and a drop of 90 ft. CRT decided to install railings, as many people have stopped boats mid aqueduct for a stroll on this path. There have been rumours of youths jumping the canal from the towpath to the wide path on the other side. How they would get back again with no run-up remains a question. The railings are quite attractive, are they really appropriate to a more than 200 year old aqueduct?

The locks at Marple are very deep, but mercifully without any AV locks. It is a very attractive flight. The paddles and mechanisms work beautifully and there is one large gate at the top of the lock where you can wind all paddles from the same place and open and close the gate without having to walk around the lock. However, they all have a narrow stone bridge over the bottom end, which makes opening the bottom gates a bit difficult. To close them you have to stand on the bridge and start pushing, then you have to climb up onto the lock side to finish the job.

The top of the flight has a road alongside - quite unusual, we think.

We were lucky that we met boats coming down the flight and all of the 16 locks were 'our way', making the job of the 'lockwheeler' - who goes on to prep the next lock ready for the boat - nice and easy.

We got to the junction at the top at about 6 pm, and decided to moor there for the night. We weren't really sure how far the next viable moorings were down the Macclesfield Canal - and everyone had said that it was 'very shallow', so stopping where we were seemed the sensible move.

Dukinfield Lift Bridge to Marple Junction

Miles 7.8, Locks:16
Total Miles 233.9, Total Locks: 296