Canal District

We are now at Day 6 of the Canal boat adventure and the story is all about locks, lock after lock after lock descending into Manchester through Newton Heath (location of Man United's footie ground) and Miles Platting. We do 19 locks in 4 miles and about 4 and a half hours using our finely tuned teamwork system where our own lock-wranglers (Mr Silverwood, Mum, sometimes Mrs S and the two girls Em-J (13) and J-M (11) plus Fran from the Oxford and occasionally little M Silverwood (4). The girls are now big and strong enough to be really handy around locks, windlasses and paddle gear so while one half of the team wrangles your current lock, the other walks on ahead to set up the next.

This section of canal is closely controlled by the Water Board, partly because it's in the big city but also because some locks are leaky and holiday boaters cannot be trusted to close them correctly and could make the problem worse, so we are let in at one end and let out again at the bottom, the BW guy padlocking the gates shut behind us.

We are now in Manchester's famous Canal District, the first real open, proud and affluent gay district in the UK, first real flowering of the 'pink economy'. Now developed, shiny and renovated into chic apartments and very clean, neat communal gardens, cafes and socialising areas, it felt like a privilege to be allowed to moor there. This was a Saturday evening and as the locals came home from their shopping and started to think about the evening's parties or food it was very obviously peopled by couples of very smart, fashionably dressed, buffed, groomed young men.

Em-J broke out the treasured "Converse" knee-high boots and all of us felt we should do best behaviour and clean, rather than grungy boat-folk. We needn't have worried about the party-noise either; the small gathering of barbeque-ers on our local green dispersed soberly to do the washing up by about 20:30 and we could only hear one restrained party going on in a balconied apartment overlooking our foredeck, this one mainly very smart affluent looking young ladies enjoying some one's flat and balcony, occasionally strolling out onto the balcony to get some air, clutching a glass of wine and chatting.

On the Sunday we turn the corner at Ducie Street in Manchester, from the 2-boat-wide Rochdale Canal, and start our ascent of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, where locks are so narrow that only one boat will fit (but also that the boat is held so neatly in the lock you do not need to rope on each time). We split up temporarily with the Oxford, following them up about an hour behind.

For historic 'dodgy area', vandalism reasons, BW recommend you do the whole ascent through Ashton in one hit, not stopping overnight, so we jokingly name it 'Bandit Country' but honestly we think this may be a fading problem - most of it is getting as new and neat and developed as Canal District and we got no hassle anywhere or even felt threatened but BW know best so we do as we're told and it's another 18-lock grind which again, takes us a solid 5 hours or so climbing up to Fairfield and then enjoying the relief of a lockless cruise for 2 miles to the Portland Basin.

More on Portland and Day 7 tomorrow.

Deefer