Tuesday May 8th, Burscough Junction - Downholland Cross

Mooring at Burscough Junction

Yesterday, after all the local boaters had got back to their marinas (some at break neck speed) after the Bank Holiday weekend, everything quietened down nicely although there was some heavy rain last night.

Ainscough's Flour Mill

Under the railway bridge we passed Ainscough’s former flour mill – a majestic building that still lies empty and in need of some tender loving care. It is a shame no use has been found for the old mill, presumably the economic climate is still against its conversion to flats. It has a lovely canopy stretching almost the full length of the building supported by some charming wrought iron brackets.

We just managed to pull in on the moorings for the new sanitary station at Burscough Bridge. A day boat was tied up right in the middle of the specified moorings. However, the new facility was sparkling clean and is housed in an attractive group of buildings which house, amongst others, a popular bakery.

On the move again, we only managed to make it through the bridge before coming to a halt. There was a boat adrift and was right across the canal. We managed to nudge it back to its apparent off-side mooring where, with the assistance of a dressing gowned chap and his pyjama clad wife from the apartments adjacent to the canal bank, we managed to tie up its one rope and secure the other to a T-bar on the bank.

It had apparently been left on the offside private land yesterday and the owner/user had just left it.

Hopefully nothing else would happen to delay our progress…..

Crabtree Swing Bridge & The Sl
ipway pub

By now the sun had disappeared and dark clouds were now spluttering with rain as we approached Crabtree Swing Bridge – the one bridge that had caused me to scratch my head over the operating procedure two years ago. Fortunately it has now been converted to an all singing all dancing full electric job.

However, very soon after comes New Lane Swing Bridge and here I must confess I turned bright red with embarrassment. It is a semi-automatic one in that you have to unlock the mechanism, manually close the barriers and then press buttons in the usual way. All went well until after I had closed the barriers and tried to extract my BW key. It wouldn’t come out! For several minutes I was trying to slam the control box lid down and turn the key, but it wouldn’t have it.

It took Elaine, holding the boat into the side, to call back to me “are the barriers locked properly?” Of course one wasn’t and until it was, the mechanism wouldn’t let me take my key out. At least the system prevents barriers just swinging across the road when the wind blows.

Well done Elaine!

After that faux pas, nothing untoward happened as we wended our way through a quiet peaceful farming landscape dotted with farms and their associated buildings. Nothing remotely industrial comes near the canal, and it is all rather pleasant. The landscape is very flat hereabouts and very reminiscent of the Fens, but with the advantage of being raised slightly above ground level rather than down below high flood banks.

Near Halsall

By now the sun had reappeared and everything looked charming.

There is a succession of stone bridges, all with their familiar Leeds & Liverpool whitewashed stripe slightly off-centre denoting the centre of the canal channel. Remarkably there is a pub at or close by virtually every one. If you want to have a slightly “meandering” pub crawl this is the length to do it in.

Every now and then there is a line of moored boats, either some official on-line permanent moorings or a boat club or at one point, a large caravan site. For once we didn’t begrudge the slow progress past the moored boats. We have plenty of time in hand before we need to be at the final mooring before our passage into Liverpool.

A new marina near Scarisbrick looked to have plenty of spaces. I wouldn’t have thought many boats would be out at this time of year, especially as the Bank Holiday is over.

Cutting near Halsall

Unusually, a shallow cutting occurs between Halsall and Haskayne. It is thought that this is where the first excavation of the canal took place in the early 1770’s.

Mooring at Downholland Cross

When we returned from Liverpool two years ago, one of the boats that had been in our “convoy” out of the docks moored in the vicinity of Downholland Cross, and we thought at the time that it would make a nice quiet place to tie up. So when we reached there this morning, we pulled in. All we could hear was bird song. Lovely!