Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The Rochdale Nine
Passing through the "Rochdale Nine" - the lowest of the 92 locks on the Rochdale canal - was a much-anticipated highlight of our Cheshire Ring canal trip. Passing right through the middle of Manchester, the Rochdale Canal descends through nine locks from the junction with the Aston Canal at Piccadilly Basin through Castlefield, where it joins the River Irwell and the Bridgewater Canal.
Rejuvenated in the early 90s, Castlefield was our starting point and recommended overnight stopping point in most of the guidebooks - yes, but. The big but was that our schedules for the following days would be skewed by a lazy day in Manchester. With a 97-mile route to cover and 100-plus locks ahead of us, we were eager to get on - so we walked the Rochdale Nine along the towpath, all the way to Piccadilly, where we decided that perfectly good, quiet, safe overnight moorings were available. The area's more of a building site than anything else at the moment.
Onwards and upwards - the rise in each of the nine locks is four meters or more, hugely different to the 3cm difference in the Dutton Stop Lock at the top of the Trent and Mersey, which had been our practice lock. Also, the Rochdale is a wide canal - meaning that two boats can fit together in each lock.
Getting into the first lock at Dukes 92 was easy, once I'd decided to ignore the Gongoozlers who were watching with interest as an amateur crew got to grips with a lock. Aware of the cill at the back of the lock, I was too far forward, and the boat's stern was flooded by water splashing through the lock gate. Thankfully, water did not get into the boat, and drained away - but it wasn't a great start.
Inside the slow-filling lock, all kinds of detritus were floating around - we swear there was an empty plastic Coke bottle in every lock in Manchester, on both the Rochdale and Ashton canals. As the lock filled, so the boat would be drawn forwards, presumably by the water coming into the lock at the bottom of the front, and swirling towards the back of the lock.
Once the lock was full, it was a strange experience standing on the boat's aft, looking down over the dripping rear lock gates to the lower water level. Time to move forward...
We were lucky, it turned out. During our recce we'd passed a motor cruiser whose captain was busy cutting a bedsheet out of the blades of the propellor. And while passing along Canal Street, we met another Cheshire Ring cruiser, headed in the opposite direction, also with a bedsheet fouling the prop. Goodness knows what else is in the canal - Canal Street was visibly the worst, with metal chairs, roadsigns and traffic cones littering the water - although this is very murky and impossible to see the bottom, even though the canal is supposed to be only a couple of meters deep. It's a shame to see that the canal is seen as an occasionally-flowing rubbish dump for fast food and snack wrappers, bin and shoppings bags, dead dogs and probably plenty more - we didn't dig around to find out. An aluminium beer cask floating close to the Oxford Road lock turned out to be empty, so we didn't rescue it.
Completing all nine locks took almost three hours - since we were all pretty inexperienced, and there was no need to race. The time passed rapidly, and the bow of a 17-meter narrowboat provided a unique view of the center of Manchester. Coming back after eight years, it struck me just how industrial and Victorian much of the architecture is - the place must have changed beyond recognition every 10 years or so in the second half of the 19th Century. For me, the Piccadilly area had changed - much cleaner and the more upmarket shops are moving into Station Approach - which was always an area to avoid in the past.
Emerging from the top lock, the junction of the Ashton Canal before us, we moored for the night - avoiding the submerged shopping trolley.
Rejuvenated in the early 90s, Castlefield was our starting point and recommended overnight stopping point in most of the guidebooks - yes, but. The big but was that our schedules for the following days would be skewed by a lazy day in Manchester. With a 97-mile route to cover and 100-plus locks ahead of us, we were eager to get on - so we walked the Rochdale Nine along the towpath, all the way to Piccadilly, where we decided that perfectly good, quiet, safe overnight moorings were available. The area's more of a building site than anything else at the moment.
Onwards and upwards - the rise in each of the nine locks is four meters or more, hugely different to the 3cm difference in the Dutton Stop Lock at the top of the Trent and Mersey, which had been our practice lock. Also, the Rochdale is a wide canal - meaning that two boats can fit together in each lock.
Getting into the first lock at Dukes 92 was easy, once I'd decided to ignore the Gongoozlers who were watching with interest as an amateur crew got to grips with a lock. Aware of the cill at the back of the lock, I was too far forward, and the boat's stern was flooded by water splashing through the lock gate. Thankfully, water did not get into the boat, and drained away - but it wasn't a great start.
Inside the slow-filling lock, all kinds of detritus were floating around - we swear there was an empty plastic Coke bottle in every lock in Manchester, on both the Rochdale and Ashton canals. As the lock filled, so the boat would be drawn forwards, presumably by the water coming into the lock at the bottom of the front, and swirling towards the back of the lock.
Once the lock was full, it was a strange experience standing on the boat's aft, looking down over the dripping rear lock gates to the lower water level. Time to move forward...
We were lucky, it turned out. During our recce we'd passed a motor cruiser whose captain was busy cutting a bedsheet out of the blades of the propellor. And while passing along Canal Street, we met another Cheshire Ring cruiser, headed in the opposite direction, also with a bedsheet fouling the prop. Goodness knows what else is in the canal - Canal Street was visibly the worst, with metal chairs, roadsigns and traffic cones littering the water - although this is very murky and impossible to see the bottom, even though the canal is supposed to be only a couple of meters deep. It's a shame to see that the canal is seen as an occasionally-flowing rubbish dump for fast food and snack wrappers, bin and shoppings bags, dead dogs and probably plenty more - we didn't dig around to find out. An aluminium beer cask floating close to the Oxford Road lock turned out to be empty, so we didn't rescue it.
Completing all nine locks took almost three hours - since we were all pretty inexperienced, and there was no need to race. The time passed rapidly, and the bow of a 17-meter narrowboat provided a unique view of the center of Manchester. Coming back after eight years, it struck me just how industrial and Victorian much of the architecture is - the place must have changed beyond recognition every 10 years or so in the second half of the 19th Century. For me, the Piccadilly area had changed - much cleaner and the more upmarket shops are moving into Station Approach - which was always an area to avoid in the past.
Emerging from the top lock, the junction of the Ashton Canal before us, we moored for the night - avoiding the submerged shopping trolley.
Labels: canal holiday, Cheshire Ring, Dukes 92, Rochdale Canal
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A new view of Manchester
After a break of eight years, we returned to Manchester over Easter, on our much-anticipated narrowboat tour. In the mid-to-late 90s, seeing a canalboat on the "Rochdale Nine" - the one-mile stretch through nine locks in central Manchester - was a rarity. This time, we'd not only see a narrowboat, but pilot one along the canals around the 100-mile Cheshire Ring.
After "walking the course" from Dukes 92 right through to Piccadilly Basin, the canal was much cleaner, with the underpasses better lit. There was still evidence of the underpasses being a hotspot for drug/alcohol abuse, but during the day the towpaths were quiet.
So off we went - the first picture is immediately after turning the boat in Castlefield Basin to face the rather daunting entrance to Dukes 92 - our first serious lock, and we felt that it looked like the Gates of Mordor.
The second picture shows us turning in Castlefield Basin - and gives an idea of the length of a 55-foot narrowboat!
More to come on the trip through the Rochdale Nine, where we battled bedsheets, beer casks and shopping trolleys.
After "walking the course" from Dukes 92 right through to Piccadilly Basin, the canal was much cleaner, with the underpasses better lit. There was still evidence of the underpasses being a hotspot for drug/alcohol abuse, but during the day the towpaths were quiet.
So off we went - the first picture is immediately after turning the boat in Castlefield Basin to face the rather daunting entrance to Dukes 92 - our first serious lock, and we felt that it looked like the Gates of Mordor.
The second picture shows us turning in Castlefield Basin - and gives an idea of the length of a 55-foot narrowboat!
More to come on the trip through the Rochdale Nine, where we battled bedsheets, beer casks and shopping trolleys.
Labels: canal holiday, Cheshire Ring, Rochdale Canal
Monday, April 16, 2007
The road to nowhere?
I often hear people saying they can't wear a watch because their personal magnetic field plays havoc with the clockwork, or batteries, or both - perhaps I have the same effect on chip-based devices, since my Mio DigiWalker 269+ has started to misbehave.
Since buying it in early 2006 I've put up with a few glitches - such as the time it thought I'd taken off while driving over the Donnersbergerbrücke in Munich, since my speed was quoted as over 1000kmh and I'd reached a height of 8000 metres above sea level ... maybe it mistook a plane for a GPS satellite.
Generally the problem is that the system often loses view of all satellites and takes up to 20 minutes to find them again ... or that the internal battery loses its charge over a week or so without use.
So of course the latest malfunctions happened during the course of a 3300km road trip around Europe in which we went from Munich to Calais via Luxembourg, then to Manchester and the Peak District, then back home via Strasbourg (which is an unmissable great city for sightseeing).
The jitters began on the first day - we'd planned to park our rented motor caravan overnight at facilities in an obscure location at the back end of Saarbrücken. All the stops had been pre-programmed into the device and we had made the mistake of trusting the technology.
After midnight and hundreds of KM finally behind us at a stately 100 max speed in the mobile, the navi just seized, completely, 3.3km from the autobahn exit we were supposed to take. Of course we hadn't been checking every minute to see if the navi was still working ... much swearing ensured and I came close to putting the device under the wheels of a three-tonne vehicle. After 20 minutes of driving around Saarbrücken while trying to reboot / reset the DigiWalker and wait for it to eventually find a signal, we gave up and drove to a motorway services in Luxembourg - having covered this route a few times we knew where to find it, and how to reach Calais from there without digital navigation assistance.
Eventually the device did come back to life - somewhere near Brussels (so several hours later) it managed to find a GPS satellite and work out that we were, surprise! in Belgium. Great work for a Belgian company!! Yay!!!
After that we did our own navigation using trusty old printed maps and local knowledge, although the disgraced DigiWalker was still on, for the TMC traffic warning info - the single feature that proved to be the decision maker in choosing the Mio model. For this to work effectively, we'd also put in our destination - a campsite near Leek in Staffs. During a motorway services stop, I consulted the navi for its opinion on our next manoeuvre - and was told: "Please follow the road for 3,582 miles."
Yeah, right.
This time I had the camcorder handy - so here's a video clip.
There's finally an upgrade to the Mio-branded Navigon software - so perhaps that will iron out the glitches.
Since buying it in early 2006 I've put up with a few glitches - such as the time it thought I'd taken off while driving over the Donnersbergerbrücke in Munich, since my speed was quoted as over 1000kmh and I'd reached a height of 8000 metres above sea level ... maybe it mistook a plane for a GPS satellite.
Generally the problem is that the system often loses view of all satellites and takes up to 20 minutes to find them again ... or that the internal battery loses its charge over a week or so without use.
So of course the latest malfunctions happened during the course of a 3300km road trip around Europe in which we went from Munich to Calais via Luxembourg, then to Manchester and the Peak District, then back home via Strasbourg (which is an unmissable great city for sightseeing).
The jitters began on the first day - we'd planned to park our rented motor caravan overnight at facilities in an obscure location at the back end of Saarbrücken. All the stops had been pre-programmed into the device and we had made the mistake of trusting the technology.
After midnight and hundreds of KM finally behind us at a stately 100 max speed in the mobile, the navi just seized, completely, 3.3km from the autobahn exit we were supposed to take. Of course we hadn't been checking every minute to see if the navi was still working ... much swearing ensured and I came close to putting the device under the wheels of a three-tonne vehicle. After 20 minutes of driving around Saarbrücken while trying to reboot / reset the DigiWalker and wait for it to eventually find a signal, we gave up and drove to a motorway services in Luxembourg - having covered this route a few times we knew where to find it, and how to reach Calais from there without digital navigation assistance.
Eventually the device did come back to life - somewhere near Brussels (so several hours later) it managed to find a GPS satellite and work out that we were, surprise! in Belgium. Great work for a Belgian company!! Yay!!!
After that we did our own navigation using trusty old printed maps and local knowledge, although the disgraced DigiWalker was still on, for the TMC traffic warning info - the single feature that proved to be the decision maker in choosing the Mio model. For this to work effectively, we'd also put in our destination - a campsite near Leek in Staffs. During a motorway services stop, I consulted the navi for its opinion on our next manoeuvre - and was told: "Please follow the road for 3,582 miles."
Yeah, right.
This time I had the camcorder handy - so here's a video clip.
There's finally an upgrade to the Mio-branded Navigon software - so perhaps that will iron out the glitches.
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