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| Leeds and Liverpool Canal |
Up at 6am, no rain. Hung the wet clothes on some bushes in a vain attempt to dry them while I packed, then put wet clothes on. Fortunately the weather was still mild. I was away by first light, and the towpath was great compared to the Lancaster canal, just a 100 metres of quagmire near Red Rocks. I tried unsuccessfully to find a phone box in New Springs to let the girlfriend know I hadn't drowned, and soon reached Top Lock and a big flight of locks down towards Wigan. The towpath had now reached new heights of excellence: it was paved, and carried on like that for miles!
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| Towpath heaven near Wigan Flashes |
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| Trans Pennine Way |
I left the canal at Pennington Flash and spent the next couple of hours hanging around trying to get my phone fixed at a repairer in a nearby newsagents, before leaving them with the phone and cash and heading across country to join up with the Bridgewater Canal. 22km of backroads, B roads and a tiny bit of A road led through Culcheth, Glazebrook and into Lymm, where a bike shop miraculously appeared just as the hematoma on the tyre wall looked ready to burst. I was offered a higher-priced puncture resistant tyre, which looked like a good move with all the towpaths to come.
A short stretch of the Trans Pennine Way took me alongside the canal, where I nipped over a fence to have a look at the towpath. It wasn't too bad.There was an extensive notice listing all the things you
couldn’t do on the canal. It would have been more
economical to list the things you could do, and just say everything else is
banned. Cycling was one of the proscribed activities, or at least on this section
of canal. It’s one of the few canals in the country not to have been nationalised
and is owned by The Bridgewater Canal Company. There were enough tyre marks in
the mud to suggest the bike ban was not widely respected, so I unloaded Horse
and threaded him through the wooden fence, loaded up and set off in a westerly
direction, skirting Warrington.The
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| Bridgewater Canal |
towpath was a another mixed bag, with some
short sections of grass and mud which several times built up in the front
mudguard and brought me to a halt. I soon became proficient at scooping it out,
always hoping it was mud and not something of canine origin. The path was often
narrow, but there was a decent gravel base and I made good progress.It was perfect compacted gravel, and I was
flying along, and in what seemed no
time at all I was over the
footbridge where the Norton Arm branches off, then under the M56 to the Preston
Brook Tunnel. 15 k’s of the canal already done and I was now heading south
on the Cheshire Ring.I led Horse along the track above the
tunnel, and saw The Tunnel Top pub. By now it was past four o’clock, and I’d
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| Preston Brook Tunnel |
need to find a camping spot soon. I could get some water from the pub, and
they’d probably have beer there too. Inside there were a couple of chaps at the
bar, quietly drinking a pint. They didn’t look as though they wanted to talk, but when I raised my glass and
said ‘Cheers’ it was enough to break the ice and we had a good chat. They
thought my trip would be a great way to see a cross-section of the country and
see the changes in people and places as I headed south. As I was bereft of
technology one of the chaps pulled out his phone and checked the weather for
me: it didn’t look too bad at all until Friday, giving me three days of
possibly dry cycling. This was great news as the daily soakings had been
getting on top of me. After another half hour of cycling into the dusk I found a great little posse tucked in a corner formed by a stone bridge over a farm track, and a thick hedge. I ws pleased to have knocked off 74k's despite the couple of lost hours trying to get the phone fixed. I cooked up the last of the dried meals I'd bought in Windermere, and had an early night.
