It was also memorable for Steve meeting up with his Manchester cousins.
Jean and Frank navigating on the Bridgewater Canal
Reunion at Sale
Mike, Barbara, Jean, Maggie, & Steve
We have just worked out our travel log using Canalplan AC.
It gave us the following information:
Total distance was 408 miles, 1¾ flg and 254 locks. There were at least 14 moveable bridges; 53 small aqueducts or underbridges and 11 tunnels.
Made up of 284 miles of narrow canals; 83 miles of broad canals; 39 miles of large rivers; 195 narrow locks; 51 broad locks; 8 large locks.
The large river miles were on the Weaver, as were the eight large locks. These locks were, of course, operated by others but the rest we did. The 195 narrow locks were no real problem, except for the odd broken paddle and leaky gate, but as we got near home we were struck just how heavy the gates on the Buckby flight are. Sometime ago BW ran a study on the force required to open gates. We never saw the results but you can bet that Long Buckby must be somewhere close to the top of the list.
The planner said this would take 199 hours, or 33 days at 6 hours per day. We managed it in a total of five weeks, but some days we were on the move for over 8 hours and on other days, as in Manchester, we did very little.
