Returning to familiar places, familiar things and retracing your steps can sound faintly boring but it provides new perspectives, new opportunities to see things differently if you are prepared to do so, and can foster moments of familiar comfort, alongside a capacity to still surprise.
This week that’s exactly what we’ve been doing on the first leg of our trip back to the north west. I say leg, but actually it was a trip of 5 short legs. It’s brought us along the Trent and Mersey Canal from Alrewas where the passage includes the River Trent. The village of Alrewas is thought to have grown up around the crossing point to meet the needs of merchants who could be held up by the river flooding, just as boaters get held up there today. As a result Alrewas remains a delightful village to while away the hours, days, or weeks it can take for the river levels to drop and make safe passage.
Alrewas was a key crossing point for salt merchants bringing their white gold from the salt springs and mines of Cheshire particularly. And we’ve spent this week travelling the route plied by carriers of salt, ending up now in the salt town of Middlewich. Its very name stems from salt, a wych (which) being a brine spring or well. It is easy to see the saline trail across Cheshire – in Northwich, Nantwich and Middlewich.
For us this week was retracing what has become a familiar route through Staffordshire, across the Potteries and into Cheshire. We weren’t only tracing the steps of commercial barges that carried clay, pots, coal and salt (not all together!) but as ever we were using the same locks these bargees would have used, treading the same paths, seeing some of the same views, trees and fields they would have seen.
To those whose trade it was to travel this route, this passage between the Midlands and the North West would have been immensely familiar. It’s becoming that way for us too. We’ve made this journey heading north to south and south to north numerous times. We’re on first name terms with Bob the Lock at Etruria and stood him a cuppa this time.
Often, as this time we take advantage of the moorings at Middleport Pottery to stop and enjoy excellent local delicacies at their cafe. No traditional lobby this time (think of a stew with everything you can find lobbed in…) but some truly excellent oatcakes.
From Middleport it’s just a short trip to the Harecastle Tunnel. We’ve made it through at least four times now but there’s still a frisson of something as we head towards that entrance, hearing the roar of the fans and the thudding clang of the doors slamming shut behind us as we cross the threshold. Is it fear? Is it nerves? Despite the view of the coffin and skeleton visible as you enter from the south, this time was an uneventful calm 40 minute journey through the mile and three quarters underground. They haven’t always been like that, so perhaps recollections of previous less easy encounters with the Scarecastle Tunnel have made me anxious.
From the tunnel set in its caramel waters courtesy of local iron ore, the canal offers the chance to head up the Macclesfield or to descend the Cheshire Flight. These 26 locks, built in the 1770s carried us down to Wheelock on the Cheshire Plain.
For us the first lock coming north of the 26 at Kidsgrove holds painful memories. Here it was coming up last Autumn that I dented our beautiful new chimney from the Little Chimney Company on the low bridge profile before the lock. This time, coming down the lock we remembered and kept the chimney off that we’d removed for the tunnel.
Just before the next lock we were delighted to find Geoffrey on a bench. We first met Geoffrey when he was living out in Willington in Derbyshire. He’s a fascinating man, now in his early 70s. Serendipity brought us together again, as he’d decided to take advantage of some of the wetter recent days to travel by bus instead of his usual Shanks’s pony, hence his arrival in The Potteries. It was good to make him a hot cup of tea in his special lidded cup (he has Parkinson’s Disease), and sort him a dinner and snacks before heading on our separate ways. Geoffrey is heading to a holiday park on the Lincolnshire coast where he has work and accommodation for the summer season. Maybe we shall have to head over there to see him – shame no canals go that way!
So retracing our steps along the Trent and Mersey Canal brought us by chance back into contact with Geoffrey, it also gave us the opportunity to catch distant views of Mow Cop castle, a folly perched high on the edge of the Staffordshire Moorlands. It’s fondly known on our boat as Cow Mop. We moored in one of our favoured spots, at Church Lawton before heading out as the light began to fail to walk Boatdog. She has a particular field she enjoys galloping through near there but this time her walk got longer than expected as we diverted to rescue a stranded, grounded cruiser stuck in a low pound, and heeling over. We sorted the water levels, hauled the shaking owner and cruiser to the side and then because he had engine problems, hauled him through the remaining three locks. Familiar we may be with this flight, but every time we pass through them is certainly different!
We’ve been lucky too to help some single narrowboaters too on this trip, lockwheeling for them where we could. So as I write this we are 60 locks and 52 miles further on our way, with several pay it forward deeds making us feel good along this very familiar way. As arrived in Middlewich it was good t see the familiar faces of those who’ve become friends over the years – always a delight.
It seems we’ve arrived in a flurry of spring – mating mallards squawking and flapping around, willows in vibrant green robes and blossom appearing at every turn. That’s another thing that makes familiar paths and routes so different, the unique nature and vibrancy of each season. It reinforces just how therapeutic it can be to go back over familiar ground and see it with new eyes in different circumstances.
Pickingupducks 