Tuesday 15 July
2014 – Rose Hill ‘Tunnel’, Peak Forest & Ashton Canal
Start today was 06:45 as we have 8 miles and 21 locks down to
Ashton-under-Lyne. The run was difficult
as the lock moorings were impossible to get into due to the pounds being low
and in most of them we were grounding. Our
lock system was working well and the scenery made up for the difficulty. Scout Tunnel is a baby version of Standedge
as it is still rough-hewn rock. At Millbrook
the canal passes underneath an electricity grid pylon and is then in a culvert through
the town of Stalybridge, parts are in good condition (blue and white painted ‘canal
furniture’) but others are not so good (offensive graffiti scrawled wherever
the locals can get). At lock 5W a team
of workmen from C&RT were just getting ready to do some repairs to the
fencing and advised that we should take care in the pounds lock 4to3, lock 3to2
and lock 2to1 as they were low due to four boats having gone down before
us. That may explain our earlier
problems.
Because of their warning we decided that we should head on to the bottom
of the Marple flight as this was just a matter of miles not locks and we would
be ahead of the rush tomorrow. We finally
moored after a 12 hour day having covered an additional 7 miles.
The weather started overcast but by 10:00 it was warm and sunny and
still is.
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