June 19

Another week of very different activities for me. I travelled back to Liverpool, having moored the boat in Godmanchester (and rang there on the front 6 of their heavy 8: tuning strange when you do that, and the noise from the mechanism was loud enough to almost obscure the bells. Nice people, though). I’m getting very used to train travel-and that beats driving all that way by one’s self.

In Liverpool, I helped my friend Nick prepare for and complete a crossing of the Mersey River estuary, from Liverpool to Ellesmere Port. This was full of all sorts of bureaucracy (seaworthiness inspection and certification, a bunch of equipment including long mooring ropes, anchor chain, etc, and dealing with the required pilot for the crossing). I’m glad Nick got to deal with most of that. We removed all the stuff on the roof of his boat, and made our way to the sea lock which was huge. The tide was flooding on the river (about 7kt flow!) as it was new moon spring tide. We were ‘flushed’ out of the lock (they opened the front gates with about 70cm water higher in the lock- we swooshed out!) and into the river. There was a cruise liner just turning from going upstream, across the flooding tide to its’ berth headed downstream. It was a little intimidating seeing this 120,000 tonne vessel drifting broadside up river towards us!. (also reminded me of the turn I had to do at Selby approaching that lock with the tide…). All good, and we followed the other narrowboat with Kyp and Carol and the pilot. There was about a 1m chop as the 10kt wind was directly against the flooding tide. The chop made for lots of spray above the roof of Nick’s boat (he’ll be cleaning salt spray for weeks!). Some pitching made for unusual crunching sounds as the bows lifted in one wave, falling back onto the next trough.

exiting Brunswick lock onto the Mersey River in Liverpool

Mersey ferry in dazzle paint from WW2, dodging the cruise ship turning mid-channel, which we had to avoid!

There were a few other interesting moments, as Nick’s engine started to smoke some, and that would have been a very awkward moment to have engine failure, but, although disconcerting, no mechanical issues were apparent.

We crossed to the lock at the entrance to the Manchester Ship Canal (lock being a misnomer: there are three side by side, so that they can move several ships at once with as little delay as possible). Up our single lock (with only two little narrowboats in this MASSIVE lock designed for large freighters!), and then up the ship canal to Ellesmere Port. We didn’t meet any ships, and none tried to overrun us, so that part of the trip was quite uneventful.

following the pilot’s instructions, we kept close station behind

about 1m chop

Through the 3 locks at Ellesmere Port, and onto the Shropshire Union Canal and familiar territory again, to Chester. I left Nick there, and entrained back to my boat, where I hot-footed it up the Great Ouse River to Bedford, where I awaited the arrival of friends Pat and Kerry from Canada.

into the lock at the mouth of the Manchester Ship Canal. We were lost with our two little narrowboats in this big lock

spray up onto the upper deck of Nick’s boat

view back towards Liverpool

The next stage of my wanderings will be to further explore these eastern waterways. There is a real beauty to how the rivers have been made navigable and the large drains have changed the landscape completely from swamp and wetland, to some of the best farmland in the country.