For our Summer 2025 cruise we have been invited to join fellow Trinity Marina moorers Bev and Dave on NB J-PEG for a trip to the Peak Forest Canal. Neither boat crew have any time restrictions so it was agreed that we would turn the trip into a circular route with diversions to the Llangollen and Montgomery Canals with, if we felt like it, continueing to the end of the Shropshire Union Canal to Ellesmere Port.
The original intention was to travel the route in a counterclockwise direction but the very dry spring and (so far) very dry summer has resulted in “low water stoppages” on the Caldon, Trent and Mersey and Macclesfield canals so we are now travelling in a clockwise direction as western part of the journey suffers less from water shortage than the eastern section, so if the dry weather continues through the rest of the summer and into the autumn we will at least stand a chance of getting home before next spring.
The route seemed quite long so I used Canalplan to detail the route which you can read by CLICKING HERE It is a monster undertaking 469.33 miles made up of 377.28 miles of narrow canals, 92.05 miles of broad canals, 257 narrow locks , 79 broad locks and according to Canalplan will take around 96 travelling days, so with starting today (30th June) if we travel every day we will not be back home till some time in October. It should be born in mind that with both boats having retired crew if we wake up to rain we don’t move. If we wake up to high wind we don’t move. If we wake up feeling lazy we don’t move.
The weather for the start of our trip was absolutely glorious clear blue skies, the temperature rose to above 30ºC. Of course being British everyone we spoke to moaned about it being far to hot🥵
We can see in the photo above that the water level in the Ashby Canal is some way below it’s normal level.
The canal levels are not helped by canal breeches that waste many thousands of litres of water. This breech (photo above) on the Macclesfield has now been fixed but the levels are so low that the Marple Lock Flight is open Saturday only at 8.30 last boat entry at noon and all boats must be clear of the locks by 4.00pm and the Bosley Lock Flight is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays between the same hours.
Experience tells us that by reversing our direction of travel we stand a far greater chance of not getting caught by low water stoppages, the Llangollen Canal carries around 6 million gallons of water per day for consumption in Crewe and Nantwich, because of this we have never heard of this canal suffering low water levels. The water is extracted near the Horseshoe Falls and flows the entire length of the canal to a reservoir at the top of the Hurleston locks. Thomas Telford built the Horseshoe falls in 1808 on the river Dee to create a depth of water to extract and pump it up to the Canal. The Llangollen Canal also feeds water onto the Shropshire Union and several other canals.
At the end of the first day of our trip and the last day of June we had reached the Coventry Canal 14 day moorings very close to Hawkesbury Junction. We were on our way!!
The sun had shone from a clear blue sky since dawn and by mid afternoon the temperature was in the 30’s so we wandered down to the Greyhound Inn, one of the most famous pubs on the canal network and spent the remainder of the afternoon sipping cold drinks in a cool bar. A great start to what we hope will be a great trip.
