Anderton, Preston Brook and Daresbury

Definitely a cooler start to the day, overcast with no sunshine. As promised, however, it brightened up my lunchtime and the afternoon was pleasantly warm once more.

We urgently needed a service stop but it was only a short distance to Anderton - usually the water point here is a place of much contention so it was with a little surprise that we pulled in to empty moorings. However, it was not long before another boat arrived - there is only room for two boats to fill with water so the third boat to arrive was quite pleased to see that we were about to leave!

Entrance to Anderton Lift

Setting off once more we passed the entrances to the two marinas followed soon after by the Anderton Lift which enables boats to pass from the higher level of the Trent and Mersey canal to the much lower level of the River Weaver. This stretch has in the past been very busy with few if any free moorings overnight. Today there were plenty of spaces - perhaps another indication of the low numbers of boats on the move. Certainly each hire base we have passed has had many of its fleet tied up.

The road from Anderton village down to Winnington Swing Bridge over the River Weaver is quite steep, as can be seen from the modern road bridge built over the original which was not convenient for latter day motorised road transport.

A group of very small ducklings had not taken long to discover that it is much easier to feed on bread thrown to them by walkers than to forage for natural foods!

South Portal Barnton Tunnel

Just before Barnton Tunnel we pulled in to the visitor moorings and walked up to the village where we picked up a newspaper, some milk and bread for lunch. Also, from the butcher, we bought a pork pie which was a delicious addition at lunch time.

Inside Barnton Tunnel

We will pass through three tunnels today, each of which is not completely straight - although it is possible to see through each of them. As they are not wide enough for two way traffic there are set time windows for two of them when boats can enter to avoid unnecessary arguments!

Saltersford Tunnel - end just visible

Salterford Tunnel is a bit kinkier than the other two. However, all three are remarkably dry especially compared with others which can be very wet indeed.

Yesterday the canal hugged the River Dane and today it spends some time in the company of the Weaver but the picturesque greenery affords few opportunities to see through to the river.


Acton Bridge

There are few crossings over the river but here is the Acton Bridge which carries a busy A road.
We moored for lunch at Bridge 211 as we planned for a little walk down to the river after sandwiches. There is a good track straight down to Dutton Locks with an alternative longer route back which would also give us an opportunity to inspect the breach repairs.

Breach site from below

We had several views from below of the large area of hillside that was scarred by the water flowing through the breach - as well as the repair work that followed.

Dutton Locks

There are two locks at Dutton, the lowest of the currently navigable part of the river. The smaller barge lock has not been used since the 1960's and is now probably very difficult to restore even though this means that a vast amount of water is used for what are normally very much smaller boats.

After a chat with a couple of other visitors as well as the lock keeper, we continued along the Weaver Way, crossing over the end of the weir stream with the long Dutton Railway Viaduct in the background.

We came back to the canal at bridge 213 where three CRT workers were restoring the stop plank store (a bit late?) and they kindly carefully cut off some lilac blooms from one of the branches which they had already removed.

New stop plank grooves have also been inserted into the bridge - it seems that when the breach occurred CRT were not able to cut off the water flow as readily as they had expected.

(We came passed here 2 September 2012 http://takefiveboat.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/anderton.html)

After returning to the boat we set off once more with just the right amount of time to avoid a lengthy wait at Preston Brook Tunnel where there is only a 10 minute window for entry every hour.

Sadly, there are two sunken boats just south of the stop lock before the tunnel.

Preston Brook Tunnel South Portal

We had a short wait at the tunnel entrance before our turn to enter - we were a bit put out that a boat was still coming through from the other direction having entered well after the scheduled time. We did, however, just make it in before the end of the window from this direction. They were not apologetic!

Waters Meeting Junction

Bridgewater Canal

After completing the tunnel passage we were soon at Waters Meeting where the Bridgewater branch to Runcorn goes off to the left. We soon realised the effect of a wider and deeper canal as the boat speed increased and there were few places where there was any danger of a boat coming around a blind bend (we had plenty of those earlier today!)

A striking patch of rape oilseed crop was perhaps the first we have seen this year.s

Daresbury Science Park

The characteristic tower of the Daresbury Science Park soon came into view. originally a Science Research Council basic physics laboratory, they were in the 1908's keen users of GEC Computers equipment. It is salutary to realise just how much computers have changed since then. The architects of the 4000 Series were so convinced that 64Kbytes of main memory would be enough for anybody into the foreseeable future that they use 16 bit addresses. It will not be long before 16 Gb will be available for devices even as small as laptops and tablets, 1 million times as large! (See http://www.hector.ac.uk/abouthector/hectorbasics/ for an interesting comparison!) Just after passing the science park we moored for the night.

Buttercups

 Christine's project for today was to snap yellow flowers!



Irises

10.9 miles - 1 lock (and 2.6 miles walk)