Ian Mac

I thought this happened when the Ashton & Lower Peak happened, however they are not in the list, so in practice it has not happened. Need to reread the canal press to see why we think this. Anyone any clues?

True, however there was(is) a winding hole at the top and a pub on the far side of the spine Rd. It made a nice destination. I also remember the branch (WOC mainline) being dredged back in the late 80's And Yes I know it is not technically the Ridgeacre now, but I am old enough to have boated on the Ridgeacre before we lost it, and old names stick. I use to like around there when the eight locks pub was open, it was a nice place to spend the night. I also note that contrary to what I thought, the Ashton & Lower Peak Forest are not now Cruising waterways, which is interesting.

These two waterways are still subject to being paid for by the appropriate local authorities, I am not sure of the details, but I seem to remember that the agreement which was reached for the Rochdale was that the Local authorities would pay some of the maintenance costs until 2050. Of course in Manchester City it is more complex as C&RT are only responsible for the water part, as the city council have the lease for the towpath. I seem to think that the HVNC had a different structure for how it was funded, which is why the HCS still exist as they were part of the formula. As to other canals I believe that there are a good number of waterways in the West Midlands which are still remaindered The Walsall canal springs to mind, as being one which is still open for navigation, and I believe receives LA support. Bradely locks is another which is currently closed, but subject to a campaign to re-open. Then there is the problem of the Ridgeacre Branch, which is currently being ignored by all, as it is very heavy polluted, so would cost a mega fortune to dredge. I last used it was over 20 years ago.

It would appear the neighbouring land owner has been doing some digging in order to improve the drainage on his land, and has disturbed some old land drains, one of which was connected to the culvert which passes under the canal, which no one had any knowledge of. As with the breach on the Rochdale canal in Ancoats, Manchester, three years ago, once the exit of the culvert had been opened this allowed water to start to flow, thus then causing the culvert to fail. Unlike the one in Ancoats a plastic sheet appears to be holding this one for now!

Someone mentioned earlier that they were the first steel purpose built leisure boats, from 1970. I think the Ice cream carts where a lot earlier than that. I remember going on holiday in one in the mid 1960's all the way from Nantwich to Oxford and back in a fortnight, called Trace Anne, which had wheel steerage and a centre cockpit. I also remember the disappointment my father had that we could not stop in Oxford for a couple of nights but had to leave later the same day, the middle Saturday, as he point out to me only the other day. Somolda built the boats if they got slack with orders for Ice Cream vans, which was the Cummins family main business, at their works in Crewe. Having built them at their Crewe works they then had them brought to the basin at Nantwich and launched there. At one time they had quite a large fleet, not sure what happened to the company. Their original hire boat was named Ethel Mary after the wife of the founder, Sid Cummins, I believe originally it was there own personal boat, before they started their hire boat business.

There is a famous story from PFCS days when the working party was getting ready for the 100 boat Rally in Manchester Piccadilly. The WP had retired to the pub (The Crown Hotel on Deansgate, central Manchester) for the evening, the landlady approached my sister (aged 14 at the time) and asked her to keep young Kelly (aged 11) in the back room rather than chatting with the customers at the bar. This happened when she had gone to the bar to get the round in. She duly came back with Chris and the beers, and told us grown ups? (I was just 18) in the back room the story. - how times have changed. He had gone to help carry the beers back.

I suspect the waiting boats do not wish to go up to inspect the bottom gates of lock 45 and come back, as that is where it is locked off. This may be possible if you ask, as this is where the last winding place is. There is a small stream feeder which comes into the canals below lock 44, however there is nowhere to wind on that pound, thus the locks on 45. This small feeder is what is currently keeping the pounds below 44 full, with limited movements up to 45 to allow boats to access the facilities block below 46. The Manchester side has been open for a while as this is feed off Hollingworth lake which enters on the long Littleborough pound some way below 48, and this feed has not been compromised as badly as the summit feed from Chelburn which has very tight limits on the supply it can provide. The only long term solution will be back pumping of the summit flight, this has been looked at and would be very expensive to install/reinstate, I guess over £1M so we will need either a very philanthropic person or a far better settlement from DEFRA to be able to even think about doing this. My guess is the Defra are going to attempt to pull the grant which they currently pay C&RT so that the Tory rich can have their bonuses, so maybe we will get a donor, a rich Tory - Trickle down economy.

See this - things are really move on, maybe! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E6jzJijHrd88Zfm6S2YyRs-uD2_eXJ-4/view?ts=62c608cd

Have been talking to people, including Crown Oil, a producer of HVO. They can not make enough, as the big boys have stepped in to use it. They are using it on things like the Sulzer Tugs and big railway trains, as they can then claim the green environmental levy, which makes it better for them for two reasons - its cheaper and better publicity. I do not think being green enters the equation! This mean us, members of the General Public, will not get a look in for ages now, as Market forces are jacking the price up and the government is not subsidising Joe Public, just its mates. There was always going to be a problem as the world can not currently grow enough stuff to turn into HVO. There are various research projects looking at how to fix that by, for example, using green algae, but that will be as far down the line as cold fusion. I find the conversations about power requirements interesting. It is blatantly obvious some people have never done the Ribble Link for example, or watched the various You-tubes about it. Hammering out of Tarleton on a rising tide up the River Douglas, is flipping hard going, it is a real test of if you have got the engine and prop sizes correct for your boat, those that haven't, have had a pleasant time in the old Preston Docks, whilst they await the next tide and hopefully a slot on the link. That applies to both energy sources diesel or electric.

It can be done a lot faster, however the cost increase is not linear, more like a square law. The other problem is all the listed consent problems, oh and now they have discovered newts! On top of that, 24/7 access still has to be provided. The real problem here is that this was a self inflicted wound in the first place, and if someone had been on the ball, it could have been a much cheaper job.

Well our experiment with HVO has come to an abrupt end as we can not get any delivered. We wanted 500l delivered somewhere around Oxford. Only found one company that would supply HVO at all, and they wanted us to pick it up in 20l boxes at £2.32 a litre. The world has gone totally mad. As for electric it will be the future, however we need cold fusion to really happen first, so that there is a realistic provision of power, and then it may be steam power rather electricity as heat is always easier to generate. One can always put your name down for a few of these http://ecatorders.com/ or wait for one of these https://brillouinenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Brillouin-Press-Release-ICCF24-7-20-22-Final.pdf take you pick! For those that say they do not need full power for 2hrs or more, they obviously have not done many rivers, coming down the Thames or Trent punching the tide is full power for hours, alternatively going down the big ditch we ran basically flat out for over 6hrs all the way from Manchester to EP the last 4hrs below Latchford gets really boring in that respect.

I have heard that although the breach will be opening on time, that they have had yet more vandalism happen to the repairs on Wigan flight and that this may be delayed yet further.

Interesting comments. I suspect boaters we interested in maximising the amount carried as they were normally paid by delivered weight if they were number ones. If they were company men they did not care, that much what was on they only really care what draught they were as that slowed them down. I suspect that as a boat is basically a box as two measurements were taken it is very easy to calculate the tonnage carried. I am not sure to what precision it was measured and more to the point charged, I suspect to the cwt. but I may well be wrong, different canals may have used different methods not sure if it was standardised.

There were cranes on the Ashton near Copperas Lane, near Meadow St and also on the Peak at Hyde, these will be the sort of style you require. There are pictures of all three floating around on the interweb.

This could get really interesting! Box trunks are a common form of providing a means for draining a canal. As Pluto has already shown they are standard on the L&L. And also as shown above the Rochdale also uses them. As does the HVNC and the Chesterfield. There construction is very simple. A vertical shaft is constructed from a horizontal culvert which runs under the canal below the puddle lining. A elm board is made traditionally these days one may use oppepe. This is placed on top of the vertical shaft and it is then sealed in place with clay which bonds with the puddle clay in the bed of the canal. The board has a chain attached to it and the chain is traditionally hooked onto a hook which is positioned in the wash wall under the water. The site of the hook is marked on the top of the wash wall. On the Rochdale an arrow is used. On the HVNC a roller is provided to which the chain can be attached and the roller has to cross holes in it so a couple of bars can be used to rotate the roller and thus pull the pull up. On the Rochdale winch points were provided by these were deemed to be a trip hazard and that bit of heritage has been got rid off. On the Ashton, Peak and Macc a different system is used. A culvert leaves the canal horizontally from the bottom of the bed, and normally passes under the towpath. This connects at the far side of the towpath with a vertical chamber about 3ft square. This chamber has a set of stop planks in it and then on the far side of these the culvert continues onwards to the stream/river where the water will be dumped. There is a paddle frame which covers the hole as it leaves the chamber. The planks as secured with two sets of wedges one set hold the second stop plank down from the top in place and then another pair of wedges secure the top stopplank. This enable the height of the top plank to be adjusted to the weir level of the canal. The Paddle is normally left in the open position and it is the stop planks which retain the water. The paddle is closed the top plank removed and all the wedges and this enable the planks to bob and be removed then the canal can be drained by opening the paddle. On the Macc these paddles have a triangular spindle and a special windlass. The outlet culvert is sometimes also used as part of the storm weir system.

Come on, you have bragging rights now - an easy passage down the Manchester 18 - a relaxed trip in under 4 hrs. A little on the chilly side to start with, but a nice sunny day. Nothing major wrong with the infrastructure, and quite a few things have been improved/mended

We have become very concerned by the changes in headlights, our own included. We switched to a LED headlight a while ago, so we could better see at night, so the more lumens the better was the principle, and we stuck to a fog light reflector so that we got a wide narrow beam, once the technology allowed us to. We started off using a pair of array LEDS. However although it is great for night boating we have discovered that it blinds people coming the other way. Two reasons for this 1) is the number of lumens 2) is the colour temperature. This second one is a real problem for two reasons the colour temperature effects the quantity of lumen quite significantly currently, the higher the colour temp the more lumens you can get. However the higher the temp the more dazing the light becomes, due to the way the human eye works. This is why it is getting harder to drive on the roads at night due to dazzle, as more and more headlights become LED ones, and nearly all road Leds are high colour temps. So we are now in the process of fitting a duel bulb system, where we will have a powerful wide beam and a low power very warm white 2500K bulb and the steerer will be able to switch between them. Hopefully this will mean when we are cycling back towards the boat, we will not cycle into the cut which is why we started to look into this problem, in the first place. Too many near misses. It will also mean if we get dazzled in a tunnel we can totally dazzle back, and maybe the boat coming the other way will get the hint. Till then we will be putting a paper bag over the headlight in tunnels.

I bet you can, as it's free to tax anything built before 1981!!!!!

Own is the wrong legal phrase, MCC have a long lease on the Towpath and some other associated lands. C&RT only have a lease for the water walls and everything between them. I am not sure if this holds true at locks, having never seen the legal document, but only heard the problems this arrangement causes. The original lease was for most of the the Manchester 18 with in Manchester from above Great Ancoats lock 82. Not quite sure but maybe from Henry St bridge upwards. This was the 1970 water channeling project done by MCC. Then in the early 1990's the Council got the lease for the whole of the Manchester 9, this enabled them to bring it up to some sort of working state again. Then the millennium bid happened and Manchester had to make the decision to restore the 18 rather than just saying, they would. Not sure if they then got the missing bit between 84 and Henry St. and also the pound above lock 78. I know they did not have these bits as we worked upon locks 83 & 82 as volunteers for the WRG NW with RCS with permission from RCC in the late 1970's and early 1980's. The rest had been water channelled, except there was also a piece which was not open to the public from lock 78 to lock 77, this was never water channelled and there was never any public access, till the canal was fully reopened. This pound was used as a reservoir and to supply industry.

Ownership and rights of the Rochdale canal are complex! This is my current understand and this is not the full detail. The Canal is still owned by the RCC and therefore Town Centre Securities, and the Ziff empire. The canal is then leased from RCC to now C&RT in the main this is a very long lease 777 years I think and counting down, from when ever the original parts started. The back history is complex for this set of leases and involved both councils and The Waterways Trust. In Manchester it is yet more complex as the original lease was to Manchester City, they in turn have leased just the water part of the canal to now C&RT via TWT. MCC retain the lease for the towpath, and other adjoining lands. RCC still own large tracts of land in Manchester. I do not know if this split ownership also applies in Calderdale, however I have not heard of this before reading it above, and I was under the impression that the C&RT had full rights except in Manchester City. The Drydock & Wharf are leased still by Calderdale. however this is offside land and not normally part of a canal anyway, so the TWT and then C&RT would not have taken it unless they had to, as there would be an associated cost. There is also an ongoing dispute over who owns the bridges in Manchester, particularly the footbridges which replace the low level paths which Manchester installed as part of the water channelling. This dispute is between MCC & C&RT. The offside boundary is complex in places as RCC had leased out land before the restoration, it was unusual for them to sell it outright.

Rochdale Canal water supply. This is an ongoing story, as Pluto says the summit reservoirs were all sold off to Rochdale Council in 1923 for public water supply, with the right to a small supply kept from Chelburn and a larger supply from Hollingworth Lake. The only supplies to the summit level is from Chelburn and from a small stream at Warland, which enters the canal just above Longless Lock 36 which is the eastern summit lock. As has been written elsewhere the stream supplies are under threat as the rules on abstraction have recently been changed by the government and all the grandfather rights have been extinguished C&RT are having to make many thousands of applications in an attempt to retain these old rights. There are also supplies from streams just below lock 44 and above lock 33, and another supply from the Calder below lock 25 lock. There is also a pumped supply again from the Calder below lock 5. The supplies from the Calder are new and therefore already controlled by the EA so can only operate when there is sufficient water in the River Calder. There is a reasonable feed which enters the canal on the Rochdale level below lock 48 from Hollingworth lake. Originally there was a pumped feed from Hollingworth lake via a long sough some of which is underground, to the western end of the summit. This was stopped a long time ago, although the Rochdale Canal Company were still inspecting it in the mid 1980's, however the location of the access shafts to the culvert have been lost. The summit reservoirs and Hollingworth Lake are now the property of United Utilities, the wonders of privatisation. Every now and then UU want to sell the summit reservoirs, especially when the cost of reservoir inspections appears, and there have been no droughts. C&RT will not take them on unless they are fully inspected. Rochdale Council will not let UU just drain them, so there is hope for the future maybe. C&RT are also looking at the cost of installing a pump back scheme up from Littleborough to the summit, however that will not be cheap.

The L&L collapse of the culvert. This is not be be unexpected. Many years ago a culvert collapsed and BW panicked and inspected all the other culverts on the western side. I do not know if the eastern side was also done. The reason for the panic was the style of culvert build was basically a wooden box made of elm, and the elm is now 200 years plus old. There are a lot of these culverts, so the decision was taken that rather than panic and fix them back then, that they would be fixed on fail, as it is very hard to see just how good the wood is still, and therefore if it needs to be replaced. With hindsight this was the correct decision, as they seem to be failing at about 1 every 2 years. The fix is to dig out the old wooden structure and replace it with a concrete pipe. I would predict that this repair will take about 8 weeks, depending on the start date. That will be governed by getting an access agreement to take modern plant in to undertake the job.

Hi Folks, well as Mark99 has said the planning committee have rejected the planning request. Thanks for all you late letters, there was mention at the meeting that there were about 50 late letters, not quite sure what these were but it all added to the PAC unanimously vote to refuse planning. Not sure if it now has to go to main council, but it is unlikely to be changed there. However this in my opinion is not the end of the line, as the applicant will not now just lie down, so we need to remain very vigilant. --cheers and Thanks Ian Mac

All very interesting. I provide another though - My understanding is that the term Puddle Banks referred to sites which were sources Puddle Clay.