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In August of 1986, four friends (Mark Edwards, John Ryan, Ben Fowler and Mark Phillips) had between them contrived to take the skiff 'Edward' to the Shropshire town of Whitchurch, by water, from Hampton on Thames ...
Wednesday 24th September found Ann Siswell and I alighting onto the somewhat derelict platform of Whitchurch Station, on our way to pick her up. Leaving the station, with an anachronistic looking goods train heading West, shaking the peeling paint from the buildings, we set out to find the canal, which unusually managed to be diametrically across the town from the railway. Having settled up with the owner of the boatyard, we found 'Edward' sitting mustily in the middle of an unmown oval of grass. A procession of hens formed a queue to take advantage of ten thousand or so earwigs that had taken shelter under the boat, as we slid her into the water. Two swans took a more damaging advantage of the pile of boat gear and food that came out of the skiff for the launching. In front of 'Edward', the curl of the canal, diminutive, muddy, insignificant; the view closed to the left by an indifferent concrete bridge, and to the right by a brief punctuation curve of embankment across the valley, a lift bridge and the path of the disused Whitchurch arm inserting an arch bridge into the landscape towards the town; all this under grey skies. The scene became more positive for us with the boat launched and loaded, the cover up and the kettle on, and the long muddy puddle asserting itself as a navigation. We walked into Whitchurch along the derelict canal arm, a finger touch of continuity across the fields to the town. Most of the pubs promised food, but none could provide it. Luckily the fish and chip shop proved more substantial. Safety on the way back to the boat was increased by the canal being dry (though it was no less traumatic to fall into it)
An extraordinary penetrating cold during the night drove noses down sleeping bags and announced a change in the weather. Somewhat before seven the following morning, raising the cover revealed a transformed world, dew-covered, with a hazy clear sky. Breakfast done with and the boat packed, away we sculled beneath the road bridge, and away from its noise into a soundless bright concussion of mist that had drifted imperceptibly in from Whixall Moss to the West. The canal picked its way around the edge of the peat, giving us time to appreciate the delicate mix of air and water, sun and mist; before crossing the Moss on a long embankment. The day settled into its pattern of sun, and the lazy flicking of towline, the canal vaguely maintaining its direction through the changing landscape. The Shropshire lakes and then the short tunnel announced the short arm to Ellesmere. 
Tying up in the middle of the town was an improvement on Whitchurch; the town itself, cheerful and individual, is at present fighting the closure of its school while the cheese works and dairy adjacent to the canal basin is on the point of being closed down. Ellesmere is losing jobs.Returning to the main line and tucking 'Edward' into the Bank, we lunched with the best of the sun and out of the wind in the company of a family of swans who appeared, more or less, as the French bread was broken. I ate French Brie guiltily, feeling the shadow of the cheese works across the field to the town.Afternoon; with the canal heading towards Wales, the landscape giving little sign of the geographical upheavals to come. Long vistas opened out to the Severn valley in the South. The number of boats that we met dwindled. The Llangollen canal has a number of navigational peculiarities, including an 8 million gallon flow per day throughout, and a strong 'seasonal' pattern of boats through the week. Avoiding going up on Tuesday to Thursday on the season side-steps the weekly rush to Llangollen. 
Particularly gratifying on this stretch of the canal was the effect of the sight of a camping skiff being towed upstream on the steerer of a downstream boat. Generally distracted, their slow turn to watch us as they passed was matched by a similar motion of the boat as it fetched up aground and across the current, but any smugness that ''Edward's' 
occupants felt at this was repaid at a high rate of interest later when we had the downstream run. Thursday evening and the canal finally decided to emulate the boat horse's balancing act on the, at times, inadequate towpath; and walk on air, crossing the Ceriog valley on the austerely beautiful Chirk aqueduct. The boat horse (me) found that it had enough energy to try a hydrodynamic experiment: the effect of towing a loaded camping skiff at running speed in a seven foot wide channel. I'm not sure what happened, but we survived and the aqueduct was undamaged. The night was spent in the basin between the aqueduct and the tunnel, which breathed warm air and bats into the dusk. This night's walk back from the pub was contemplated with sobriety: I did not object to falling into the canal so long as I avoided the seventy foot fall to the fields over the balustrade.
24 miles
2 locks
Up next morning and Ann towed the boat through Chirk tunnel, armed with a torch, and advised not to put to much reliance on the handrail that disappeared into the blackness. The tunnel, negotiated without a sign of the bats so numerous the night before, gave way to a gloomy cutting. The succeeding piece of land across to the Dee valley has a strange feel to it, the railway alongside dropping away as it loses height at every opportunity for its crossing of the Dee on a prodigious long legged viaduct that strides through trees to the left. 
The canal follows an increasingly precarious path on the valley side before it too launches itself across the abyss and the iron thread of Pontcysyllte is revealed. The aqueduct is in sound condition now, its towpath railings replaced, and the experience of crossing in a skiff is delightfully odd. The cast iron of which it is made never found as much importance in structures as it did towards the end of the canal age, immensely strong but too brittle for much 
save static loads. Pontcysyllte consequently has a very individual air to it - plain, functional, economical in its use of material and very elegant. 'Edward' having regained terra firma, ran the couple of hundred yards to the end of the main line; a dead end. A bridge to the right marking the site of a short arm; a head, a stop. The canal North across difficult ground to the Mersey was never built, hardly started. The branch from the North end of the aqueduct to Llangollen is more of a feeder supplying water, and it is restricted in all of its dimensions; nowhere is there room for a pair of sculls. The town is reached in the teeth of a two mile an hour current. The landscape despite its reputation is not exceedingly beautiful, but it feels odd to see this terrain from a boat. The canal itself is dominated by its own engineering problems and for much of the way it is a raw crooked concrete channel. Time, and the planting of hanging creepers at the water's edge, will do much to modify this harshness. At Llangollen I was assured by the operator of one of the horse boats that the first boat to move on the canal would assuredly crush 'Edward' in its attempts to turn. Regarding the confined water space, I could only agree with him. Taking his advice, I ran 'Edward' astern, flicking the bow-stern line over the roof of the horse boat. The last thing that I expected to find up there was a jamming cleat; the line found one though in the shape of the lip of the roof, and snagged, swinging 'Edward's stern resoundingly against the side of the horse boat, the resulting bell like crash announcing to Llangollen that a camping skiff was in town. After exploring the town, the remainder of the feeder beckoned attractively, and we set out past the various notices advising against navigating the two or so miles to the feeder intake. A plain stone canal bridge stands out in memory, with 6' of water beneath it. Then past the point at which the horse boats now retire. Finally, 'Edward' had the distinctive fern hung, rock cut channel to herself, and we tied up at the back of the Chain Bridge Hotel under the surprised eyes of the kitchen staff. Canals in Llantsilio are treated with the same indifference as elsewhere. The hotel looked out on an intimate little landscape of river, scrambling downstream across rocks to the single platform of Berwyn station perched above all on its viaduct. The canal feeder crept past unnoticed. We sat eating a late celebratory lunch, thinking of the rest of the Thames Traditional Boat Society, engaged in a meet at Thames Ditton. An hour later the feeder bore 'Edward' and two well fed passengers back downstream. The first miles through Llangollen were remarkable in that I was able to sit on the bows of the skiff, travelling stern first, paddling with a scull and carried above the rooftops of the town by the stream. A very pleasant mode of travel. We returned to Chirk through what remained of the afternoon and half the evening. That night, I, sober, fell in some extensive roadworks while attempting to return to 'Edward' from the 'Lion' pub at the top of Chirk bank.
About 400 yards, but via Llansilio and return ...
The following day was a long run to the flight of Locks at Grindley Brook, with 'Edward' thankful for the downstream current. A kingfisher kept us company through the deserted New Marton locks, perching on the paddle gear and running ahead of us. At the junction, 'Edward' buried her nose in a bed of rushes marking the entrance to the derelict Montgomeryshire canal and the uncompleted way to Shrewsbury. We walked down the flight in the autumn sunshine, dipping beneath the hedge out of the breeze and listening to the background of wind and bird song, while a postman worked his van round the scattered lanes and homes of Welsh Frankton. Lunch was an idyllic picnic with the fifty or so acres of Blakemere across the towpath from us, sunlit and speckled in the breeze. We relaxed, feeling terribly Edwardian despite the skiff's Victorian birth date of eighteen seventy nine. The sight of a camping skiff was no surprise to an ancient inhabitant of Whixall Moss, who recounted the several previous times that he had seen skiffs on the canal. Reaching the locks, we talked to the incumbent of the canal shop that lies beside them. It transpired that he had that week thrown up his job as head chef at the Grosvenor Hotel in London for something less pressured. He was not very pleased with the stock that he had inherited, and there were, he assured Ann, at least three objects in the shop that he would refuse, in fact be too embarrassed, to sell her ...
22 miles
9 locks
With Sunday, locks arrived in ones and twos as the canal dropped towards the Cheshire plain. The final flight of four revealed the junction and the main line of the Shropshire Union, full of moving boats. Time for some exhibitionism. With 'Edward' held up at the lock, I, as horse, set out over the junction bridge with the tow rope paying out fully so that there was just enough for 'Edward' to fly out of the lock and describe a graceful sweep on to the main line - and all done by wires. For once it worked, and 'Edward' joined the outraged mass of gaily painted steel on the Shropshire Union, the cynosure of every eye. Crossing our fingers that the next navigational mishap would occur out of sight of those present, we continued North to Barbridge junction. 'Edward' picked herself through every kind of nautical indulgence; narrow boats with satellite navigation dishes, narrow boats being navigated, if you please, by man in the bows giving instructions on a cb radio to woman at the tiller, marital breakdowns aboard narrow boats, lost dogs everywhere, acres of plastic on miles of linear moorings. Finally, the Middlewich arm, more moorings and a marina the size of Heathrow Airport. Then we were clear of it, feeling so superior by now that life was quite unliveable. The Middlewich arm ran on beneath a magnificent sky, running East on the gentlest of curves, confident of its direction, cutting the contours. A lock appeared in the distance, the gates opened and a noble emerald green plywood Celtic dog kennel emerged, propelled by a, for once, unobtrusive outboard. It transpired that the owners had built this craft, drawing on all the boat building tradition of their locality, up a hill in Cheshire. Not a lot, but the result was a beautifully maintained celebration of individuality and purpose. Where, they asked, could you buy a kit with instructions for the building of an 'Edward' (who lay looking aggressively crisp and Norse in the sharp evening light). They then realized themselves that 'Edward' was only the product of a similar rather older boat building tradition ... and their next boat may well be a surprising craft. The sun set and we ran out of light but not out of canal, which ran away to the East. 'Edward' tied up above the village of Church Minshull next to an elegant brick accommodation bridge. I'd given up navigating, as the skiff seemed thoroughly competent. After a meal in the boat, we made our way down to the village, the pub having the prosperous Surreyish air common to a large part of rural Cheshire within reach of the larger towns. It was full of stuffed animals - literally - I don't mean the customers who looked a passable crowd, save that they drove too fast upon leaving the place, running me down about fourteen times before I regained the dubious safety of the towpath.
15 miles
14 locks
The following morning dawned grey, and the country looked increasingly bleak as the canal took us to Middlewich. Then the sun came out and good humour was restored. The last lock of the Middlewich arm was followed immediately by another as 'Edward' turned south onto the ancient Trent and Mersey canal. This time though we were going up, for the first time since Llangollen. Lunch was taken in the Kimbolton Arms, a very welcome pub on a straight stretch of canal and road on the outskirts of Middlewich. The Trent and Mersey is an old canal linking old industrial areas. Its bones ache and we are very lucky that the Board has been able to maintain its life expired structures. 'Edward' stopped at Thirlwood for the night within sight of the monstrous steel lock, built to counter severe local subsidence. Both huge and gaunt, I suspect that this structure cost the British Transport Commission more, weight for weight, than Concorde when it was constructed and there is a local rumour that those responsible for its vast and mechanically interlocked mechanisms were put to a frightful death, guillotined in its gates. It cast its baleful influence down the canal as far as a small boy, who was systematically stoning a large, noble but not very bright, swan. By means of simple body language, Ann and I managed to induce him to take up a rather less obnoxious pursuit.
12 miles
19 locks
Tuesday came, and 'Edward', Ann and I worked up the remaining locks to the summit, and the irritation that we often feel on Tuesdays, for some reason, gave way to a thoughtful, reflective mood, matching the grey, soft and not unpleasant morning. Short pounds between locks were carpeted with autumn leaves. Derelict lock chambers leaned crazily beside the useable versions. We passed BWB's Kidsgrove yard rather apprehensively, as I feared that 'Edward' might have the letter of the law thrown at her at the tunnel. The Macclesfield canal used the excuse of proximity of the ancient works of the Trent and Mersey to leap over our heads on a stupendously ungainly and heavy aqueduct, which would not do credit to a child's sand pit. The summit lock, followed by Lunch at the Blue Bell pub, typically run by an expatriate eastender, then on to the wharf at the tunnel mouth to await a tow. Thankfully, a hire boat from Penkridge soon provided the motive power and after a further delay while a Northbound boat cleared the tunnel, we were off, standing on the stern of the steel boat with 'Edward' sensibly lining herself up behind us for the tunnel entrance. Harecastle Hill is pierced by three tunnels and several coal mines. The latter have inevitably wrecked the former. British Rail bowed out in the sixties. The railway now loops over and round the hill through former parkland. Telford's 1827 tunnel, though very damaged, has outlasted Brindley's, a large crack through its Northern portal hints at the unpleasant tunnelling environment provided by Harecastle Hill. Following the substantial repair work, Telford's tunnel is a partially reformed character however. The removal of the remains of the towpath and the rebuilding of the most subsided sections has eased navigation, and sealing off the arms to the mines has contained the sulphurous damp smell of Staffordshire coal seams which used to pervade the place. All of this leaves more time to appreciate the ingenuity of the people who have had to reconstruct the roof of the beast time and time again. For what seems an age, their handiwork slides past inches from one's head, while the receding end of the tunnel dwindles to a star. All of this brought us, and 'Edward', to the south end of the tunnel and a truly claustrophobic five minutes before the tunnel keeper realized that we were there. The south end is closed by doors while a fan draws air through the tunnel for ventilation purposes. So there the boat hung, suspended on its own reflection in the blackness, surrounded by still water, roaring air and the irresolvable shapes formed by the light that was finding its way past the ventilation doors. The noise of the fan died, the door opened and we ventured into the light with 'Edward' trailing thankfully behind. Now was the encounter that I dreaded. What was the tunnel keeper going to think of 'Edward'? 'Have you got a licence?' I produced 'Edward's licence, endorsed 'With use of Locks' acquired at Brentford the preceding week. To our visible relief, he merely wished us well. Ann and I scrambled up the bank as far as the derelict railway to stretch our legs. I tapped reflectively on the remaining stretch of rusty track pointing at the mile long wreck that was the railway through Harecastle Hill. Over to the left, another Manchester express danced beneath the wires, flying along its new road. We returned to the rather older and wetter road where 'Edward' sat, fidgeting and asking irrelevant questions like 'How far to Remanham?' , her nerves clearly affected by her recent experience. We travelled through Stoke until a large and ungainly lift bridge to the left masked the opening to the 1986 Stoke garden festival. The youths who were operating this structure were much amused when 'Edward' shot underneath before they had had time to open it. After consultation with the helpful BWB leisure person staffing their exhibition, we resolved to come back the following morning. Taking some well heeded advice as to where to stop up in an area of extensive and remote dereliction that is this part of the five towns, we returned to the Bridgwater Arms at Longport,. Unusually, the night's sleep was interrupted by a youth who kicked the cover at midnight, largely to see what it was made of. Startled from sleep, I made an explosive noise resembling a large and rather stupid animal that probably scared me more than it did him. The footsteps retreated rather more quickly than they had approached.
9 miles
12 locks
Wednesday revealed Longport beneath an unflattering and gloomy grey dome of sky. Not the best weather to enjoy the garden festival sprawled out across a mile or so of thinly disguised slag heap. 'Edward' waited patiently in the basin while her two travelling companions waded through a series of displays before returning to the garden festival pub which was so exactly like any newish Charringtons pub that I wondered how the formula could be so accurately reproduced. Through what looked like a glass door, 'Edward' could be seen, all beak and chocks. Every so often, a customer would try to leave via the glass door that wasn't. The building soured rapidly. It was difficult to resist a quick burst of double sculling round the basin before leaving the festival, after so many miles of narrow canal. A further burst along the canal to Etruria was less successful with 'Edward' refusing to steer in the narrow channel. At Etruria, the Trent and Mersey starts its long descent to the Trent, the first lock having survived being lowered at least 3' by mining subsidence. Bound for the Caldon, 'Edward' made her way through a complicated channel to the staircase lock that lifts the navigation 19' 3'' towards paradise. Through miles of a precariously narrow channel, we had forgotten the advantages of a towline until meeting a longish boat at a completely blind bend reminded us of it. The late afternoon unfolded, brought us the five locks of the Stocton Brook flight and then the summit, and a late and glorious distant sunshine to see 'Edward' across the summit to Denford. We tied up in darkness, and having prepared the boat, walked down to the Holly Bush inn, This was inhabited by a most perplexing dog which stared fixedly at an invisible object on the mantelpiece for most of the evening.
11 miles
9 locks
Morning revealed the mooring to be in beautiful quiet country. A railway ganger walked a solitary path along the single line of railway in the valley below; beyond him a boat moved inaudibly on the canal to Froghall. We explored the Leek arm to its abrupt end by a most unusual aqueduct. To my regret the feeder from Rudyard lake was unnavigable for 'Edward' and we turned back, repassing the odd little tunnel that takes the canal through an outlying hill. 
Tall and narrow in section, it is both reminiscent of tunnels on the lost Leominster canal, and in its masonry, of the old London Bridge, which, like Leek tunnel, was designed by Rennie. 
Back past our mooring with the view of the Holly Bush, we grew conscious of time as the arm took us towards the junction at Hazelhurst and we spent the rest of the morning moving 'Edward' approximately 400 yards geographically but what felt like two miles by water. 
The history of the canal's line here is fascinating and somewhat over complicated, and the remains of the various routes litter the valley. Lunch was once again taken at the Holly Bush with 'Edward' tied up at waist height in the canal outside the window. Behind the pub the road crossed its complicated series of bridges - canal, stream, railway and canal - remotely rural and nine miles from Stoke on Trent station, England.
After lunch, the run down the Churnet valley produced its usual slow suspension of time. Steam trains returned to the line care of the North Staffordshire railway Company at Cheddleton. Shortly after this, I, acting as boat horse once again, met a BWB dredger on the towpath side, with a gang. 'Keep her going', they said, intimately familiar with the situation, and passed the line over the dredger. A freight train rumbled past, concealed by the dense foliage overhanging the inky black waters of the river. 'Edward', leaving the river, crept along the remote valley bottom, to pass beneath the up platform of Consall Forge Station, the canal having contracted to a little under nine feet wide. We made a brief and not too expensive stop at an excellent cottage pottery nearby. Through the last lock, the canal beyond it looking like a farm pond owing firstly to its size, secondly its colour and thirdly the goat standing in it. Finally, after a stretch of stunning attractiveness, the industry of Froghall appeared, buildings shielded by a discreet iron fence. The canal turned left and the thoroughly improbable looking Froghall tunnel appeared. The headroom may have been five feet but it looked like three. Late afternoon sun baked warm the red brick of England's most insignificant canal tunnel. 'Edward' nosed her way through to the basin beyond. A few hundred yards of autumnal leaf strewn canal and the group of buildings marking its end. Beyond the final bridge in a secretive shady lair lay 'Birdwood', seventy feet of horsedrawn narrow boat. Beside her, the excellent restaurant that her owners run when they are not with the boat taking passengers to Consall Forge. 'Edward' was at journey's end and by her brief tying up place lay the coping stones of the first lock of the continuation to Uttoxeter. It all felt rather remote and long ago. As we had a date with John Ryan at the Black Lion the next day, we retraced our steps to Consall Forge through the fast gathering dusk in the floor of the valley.
13 miles
9 Locks
John arrived with vehicle and trailer the next morning at eleven, rather to my surprise, the pub being a good mile down a dirt track - this being the case, he managed to turn up in a landrover. The slightly mournful business of loading 'Edward' onto the trailer done with, we sat in front of the Black Lion provided with truly monumental plates of sausage, egg and chips, and reflected on the journey and then on the scene before us. The Black Lion has the singular possession of a railway track through the front garden. Beyond this, the canal bridge, then the river, and the weir talking quietly to itself. Then, beneath the steeply rising hillside, sitting on her trailer, 'Edward', with another tale to tell.
124 miles
74 locks
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