Wednesday May 2nd, Daresbury - Dunham Massey

Just can’t seem to get two day’s weather the same. Fortunately it was the right way round this time with blue skies and sunshine for most of the day; a welcome change after all the rain, which bucketed down again yesterday late afternoonish.

Daresbury Lab Tower

Once under way we were treated to a fine view of Fiddler’s Ferry Power Station with a lot of steam pouring vertically from its cooling towers before all turning north-west in unison.

The Daresbury Atomic Research Laboratory with its iconic tower has a long and attractive canal frontage with neatly manicured lawns and seating areas for its boffins. “No Mooring” signs proliferate, but then they go and spoil it with a line of concrete wharf wall lined with large mooring rings. Did they once get coal deliveries by boat?

Passing under the Runcorn Expressway link to the A56 the canal reverts to open countryside for a few miles passing the little village of Moore, where we once moored (pardon the pun). I dropped Elaine off here so she could nip to the village shop for a newspaper.

The A56 crosses the canal at the western extremity of Warrington’s suburbs on an unusually designed bridge for a road - I think it is a bow string girder bridge. Here we came across what for me is the bane of the Bridgewater Canal – moored boats.

The canal is home to a number of popular boating clubs who operate a number of linear moorings at various sites from the Warrington outskirts all the way to Stretford in Manchester, and also along the line to Worsley. The Bridgewater must have the most linear moored boats per mile ratio of any canal in the country, and by the time you slow down for the umpteenth time, you are feeling a bit frustrated.

Having said that, the Bridgewater was constructed to a wider and deeper dimension than the vast majority of the British canal system, and so you are able to cruise a little faster.

Warrington’s suburbs offer the usual fascination we have for peering into other people’s back gardens. The villas and terraces of Higher Walton, Stockton Heath, Grappenhall and Thelwall take up about an hour’s cruising and there is always something to look at. Whether it be allotments, new flats, Thorn Marina’s seemingly successful fight not to be swept away for more new housing and yet more moored boats courtesy of Lymm Cruising Club, you won’t be bored.

A short rural interlude follows before a growing din announces the imminent arrival of the M6. The motorway crosses on the outskirts of Lymm and is on a rising gradient as it gains sufficient height to soar over the nearby Manchester Ship Canal and River Mersey on Thelwall Viaduct.

I feel for the owners of the houses built directly beneath the south-eastern embankment of the motorway. The noise must be so intrusive and I hope they have sufficient layers of glazing.

More housing follows as Lymm town centre approaches. Lymm is a delightful town to moor in and spend some time in the shopping centre or to walk up the narrow gorge to the pools above the dam. Normally when we want to more here, we have to really get creative to find a space. Today, when we didn’t need to stop, there was plenty of space available. C’est la vie.

The eastern exit from Lymm is past more moored boats, courtesy again of Lymm Cruising Club and then out into some lovely pastoral scenery. There are some attractive houses at Oughtrington (and one of the few noxious sanitary stations provided by the Bridgewater) and then a long straight with long views across green fields (and yellow ones with the oilseed rape out in flower) to the Ship Canal-side based industries to the north, whilst the other is another line of moored boats (Lymm CC again) punctuated by a couple of boatyards.

A curve to the north-east brings the canal past “Ye Olde Number 3” – so called because it was the third stop for the packet boats that used to ply between Manchester & Runcorn. The slowest water tap anywhere on the UK waterways network is situated here. The moorings here are signed 24 hours only, but seemed populated by a collection of permanently moored boats.

Mooring at Dunham Massey

However, it was only half a mile or so to our mooring. We passed the first fishermen seen for several days, one going so far as to take his t-shirt off in the warm sunshine (unless he was doing it for Elaine…perhaps I should have said something). They were picking the bones out of the recent Manchester derby between City & United.

Soon after, we pulled into our favoured mooring on this stretch on the embankment just before the Bollin Aqueduct. There are fine views in all directions and Dunham Massey House with its distinctive Stable Block Clock Tower is visible through the trees.

Stable Block & Clock Tower

Having moored, we walked to the house for a lovely lunch and a walk round the very interesting house, and gardens. It has really been a lovely day and we could not have picked a better one to use our National Trust membership to visit Dunham Massey.

Dunham Massey, south front