Join us as we take a spooky narrowboat journey through Harecastle Tunnel on the Trent & Mersey canal. Are the rumours about the Kidsgrove Boggart true? Can you spot the ghost of the Harecastle Tunnel? 👻 We start the day at Westport Lake, cruising the short distance to the south portal of Harecastle Tunnel. Colin takes a look at the history of both canal tunnels, the original, built by James Brindley, and the current tunnel, built by Thomas Telford, and investigates the giant fans used to clear the tunnel of fumes. Then we take narrowboat Silver Fox through Harecastle Tunnel!
Narrowboat life gets complicated as we get trapped on the Trent & Mersey Canal. First, we head to Church Lawton moorings where narrowboat Silver Fox stays for a few nights while Shaun heads off to Yorkshire. Then we go backwards and forwards a few times before heading for Harecastle Tunnel. That's where it all went a bit Pete Tong 😕
In the first in our series of Narrowboat Living Tips - How to empty a cassette toilet, Colin empties our narrow boat Thetford cassette toilet at a canalside Elsan point for the first time with hilarious results! Emptying a cassette toilet is pretty simple, but kind of gross too! It's the same principle for caravan toilets, motorhome and RV toilets too, but we use our Thetford Cassette Toilet on our narrowboat. Check out loads of narrowboat toilet tips too.
Continuing from our previous mooring (Vlog 74), we continue our narrowboat journey through Bosley Locks and Congleton to the end of the Macclesfield Canal. We descend the twelve Bosley Locks of the thirteen locks of the Macclesfield Canal, lowering Silver Fox by 188 feet. We travel through Congleton, stopping off to get some drone shots of Congleton Viaduct, carrying the West Coast Main Line, and visit Ramsdell Hall in Scholar Green. After only two weeks on here,​ we have to race to leave the end of the Macclesfield Canal to avoid being trapped by the winter closures, and we make it to the junction of the Trent and Mersey Canal just in time. But which way do we go from there...?
We need to get a move on and beat the canal closure! A narrowboat journey on the Macclesfield Canal after five glorious weeks means we finally wave goodbye to the Peak Forest Canal. But all is not well! A leak has led to a winter canal closure being brought forward so we can't hang about! Still, we do get some time soak in the beauty as we journey on the Macclesfield canal. Colin discovers the story of last paid Jester in the UK, as we head through Bollington and Macclesfield, continuing our adventure towards the Bosley flight of locks.
On the 1st of August 2019, following 48-hours of unprecedented rainfall, the dam at Toddbrook Reservoir was in danger of bursting as the concrete spillway began collapsing under a torrent of floodwater. Engineers, the armed forces, Police, Fire Service, Canal & River Trust, Environment Agency and hundreds of local volunteers raced towards Whaley Bridge to help avert a disaster, to stop Toddbrook Reservoir from collapse and flooding the towns and villages along the Goyt Valley.
