Author: Pete Schloss
In law school we were often challenged to analyze legal disputes between the fictional Longacre, Whiteacre, and Blackacre. Today we found Longacre! Now to continued through the woods in search of the other two properties. In the meantime I thought I would take you along on this most beautiful stroll through Longacre…
Peace Everyone. Pete
11 pence UK is roughly 14 cents US. I am 67 years old and in my experience it has been 60 years since 11 pence could purchase anything meaningful. As a child of 5 it bought a candy bar or a small bottle of Coke… a cup of coffee for an adult, even an order of french fries (called “chips” here in the UK) at a McDonalds. It has been decades since the equivalent of 11 pence was usable pocket tender… Now it doesn’t buy a stick of gum or even 15 minutes of time on a parking meter. Today it was the price of a priceless experience. Please read on.
On January 1, 1894 Queen Victoria dedicated and officially opened the Manchester Ship Canal. At 36 miles long it is a major commercial shipping artery that connects Manchester to the Irish Sea. It can accommodate vessels that are up to 65 feet wide and 600 feet long. Then the largest ship canal in the world, it remains the world’s eighth longest, slightly shorter than the Panama Canal.
Today our narrowboat plied the the tiny Bridgewater Canal and took us to within a short hike of The Manchester.
We moored near the town of Thelwall, an attractive village that traces its origin to the year 923 when “Edward the Elder Founded a Cyty Here and Called it Thelwall.”
From Thelwall we walked to the set of the major shipping locks on The Manchester, strolled along the edge of the chamber’s open chasm, and then across the actual lock gates. A pleasant stroll marked for the public, this is something that would NEVER be permitted in the States.
We continued back along the north shore of The Manchester to a point across from Thelwall. Hundreds of yards of water stood to thwart our return. But read on…
Before the founding of Thelwall, perhaps reaching into the recesses of pre-history, there was a footpath at the place where we stood. Under English Common Law that footpath had become a public right-of-way. When plans were laid to dig the massive ship canal that small footpath could not be ignored. An accommodation was reached whereby the canal company would establish and maintain a ferry crossing for pedestrians. We stood on one side of the canal and hailed across to the other. In response, a lean man who appeared to be tending a small green on the opposite bank picked up a very long oar and boarded a small aluminum boat. He “sculled” the boat across the channel to us much as a Venice gondola-man might have.
This was Kevin. A very pleasant man who for 17 years has been providing this one man ferry service as an employee of the canal company. He lives nearby and except on Sundays and bank holidays he rows folks back and forth between the two established wharves that he maintains.
Kevin spoke of his early years at the tiller. The waters were oil polluted and immune to freezing. Clean water legislation thankfully changed all that, but when the unusually cold winter of 2010 struck the canal froze. It was no impediment to shipping which just punched through the 3 inch thick sheet of ice, but it stopped Kevin for a time. Little else does.
He pauses his service during ship passings and for the occasional vacation (another local takes on Kevin’s duties to allow him to take his holiday). Understandably, the passage is not free. Since 1982 price increase the established fare, including tax, is precisely 11 pence UK, or about 14 cents US. Although it does not appear upon the sign, experiencing the short crossing with Kevin at the helm is priceless.
Peace Everyone. Pete
How many “Big Things” can one really expect to see and experience in the course of travel? Big Things are the major sites and attractions that are featured in tourist brochures, Trip Advisor, Wikipedia… They are the things that friends and family ask about upon our return home. 2 or 3 in a day? 7 or 8 in a week? Certainly not more.
The remainder of time on the road must then be occupied by something, and it occurs to me that they must then be the “Little Things”.
Little Things give context to be big ones. They provide texture and depth… they are the Kodachrome of daily reality that give the color of life to the otherwise black & white starkness of Big Things. They are also the overlooked joys that mindfulness reveals.
A warm shower is something taken for granted at home, but aboard a narrowboat where water conservation is required that shower becomes a celebration that sparks a 10 minute conversation.
A sunrise, a formation of clouds, a sunset. These are the ever changing “art” that hangs upon the endless horizon of our experience.
In the weeks of extended travel we compress a closet full of clothing into a small backpack. A change of socks or a fresh t-shirt bring an appreciative sigh to one’s spirit, not to mention the olfactory senses of self and others!
There are countless things that are taken for granted at home but become little moments of happiness on a journey. They are inadequate if measured against their home equivalents but become huge in the context of travel. Gratitude springs from the Little Things as awareness brings appreciation.
Relationships also come into sharper focus. At home we suffer the distraction and background “noise” of daily life, media, bills, house and myriad other duties. Appreciation for those we love often suffers accordingly. However, in the compressed spaces that we inhabit on the road attention is forced into a refreshed appreciation for the qualities of our life partner and for the absent loved ones who we miss.
The friendships that we share with our travel companions are not an occasional evening out, but are minute by minute experiences.
In 2001 a chance encounter at a restaurant in southern France brought our daughter Alexis into acquaintance with Huw and Nina Thomas of Wales. From that 20 minute conversation sprang a friendship that continues to this day. They have are like family to us.
In 2013 while Christine and I walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain we were passed afoot by another “pilgrim”. Peeking out from a recess on her backpack was a small stuffed bunny. That sight brought a smile to my face and sparked my greeting to the pilgrim. She was from Denver Colorado and the “bunny’s” name was Marshmallow. Conversation ensued, she offered to take a picture of Christine and I together, and what sprang from that insignificant moment was our enduring friendship with Kris Ashton.
In 2018 while we walked the Portuguese Camino a gentleman commented upon the hat that I was wearing. It was a “Tilly Hat”, made by a small firm in Canada and well regarded for sailing and travel. He commented, “Nice hat!”. I turned to see that he too was wearing a “Tilly”. Pleasant banter ensued which quickly included our spouses. They were from Ottawa Canada and the friendship that sprang from those hats brought Tom and Nanci to share this week with us aboard Salten-Fjord. How different life became because of a stuffed bunny and a couple of wide-brimmed hats.
Our “stories” abound with moments that seemed small and meaningless, but in the rear view mirror of time they loom large as the major crossroads in our life journey. One such moment brought Christine and I together. That “Little Thing” became the biggest thing in my life.
Peace Everyone. Pete
PS. Sometimes the “little things” come as sample sized glasses of really excellent British cask ales!
The weather broke for us today, providing a cool and (thankfully!) calm cruising experience. The misery of yesterday’s joust with the remnants of Hurricane Hannah has become a memory, but one that will be spoken of by us years into the future. However, that is not the “big thing” of today. It was our visit to the Anderton Boat Lift, one of the “Seven Wonders of the British Canals”.
In 1875 an engineering problem was presented at the confluence of two prominent British commercial waterways. The Weaver Navigation came within a matter of a few hundred feet of a bend in the Trent & Mersey Canal. Were that all it would have been a simple matter to cut a channel to connect the two systems. However, the Trent & Mersey was perched on a bluff precisely 50 feet 5 inches higher than the Weaver Navigation. Too close and too high for a series of locks to bridge the distance.
Edwin Clark, a renowned hydraulic engineer, was employed to design a solution. He created a massive structural framework that looks like something out of an H. G. Wells science fiction novel. It towers above the Weaver and contains two 75 foot long,15 foot wide troughs that each contain 5 feet of water.
These “caissons” are each large enough to accommodate 2 narrowboats, and when full of water each weigh over 500,000 pounds! They were each mounted on a single massive hydraulic piston that was 3 feet in diameter and 50 feet in length. These pistons were recessed into buried cylinders that fully extended one piston as the other simultaneously retracted under the riverbed. The caissons thus became a colossal set of balance scales carrying narrowboats up and down between the two waterways like a pair of monumental elevators.
Because the caissons acted as counterweights all that was required was a 10 horsepower steam engine to operate the lift. Unfortunately, salt water corroded the iron pistons into uselessness by the early 1900’s. An electrically powered system of gears, pulleys, and counterweights was then devised to replace the pistons and operated into the 1980’s at which time the Anderton Lift was abandoned due to structural fatigue and maintenance costs.
In 1997 a grassroots public outcry halted plans to scrap the lift. Over £7 million Pounds was raised to restore the system, this time to its original hydraulic configuration. However stainless steel pistons were now employed with a working life expectancy of nearly 100 years. The refurbished lift was re-opened to boat traffic in 2002 and thus made possible our visit to this 19th Century wonder today.
Peace Everyone. Pete
PS. Visits to “The Big Things” are certainly the hallmark events of travel. However, it has occurred to me that “the little things” are often overlooked and deserving of a separate post… to be continued.
Christine became a fan of Strongbow Hard Cider during one of our prior travels to the UK. This post is not about that beverage.
In case you missed my last post, we awoke at 2 a.m. this morning to the raucous laughter of some young drunks. They pounded against our hull with their fists and thus called the four of us from sound sleep. I peered out the window to discover that they had untied us from our moorings and set us adrift. We restored order soon enough, but the adrenaline charge assured that there was to be no more sound sleep at that docking.
We slept-in this morning to stave off sleep deprivation. By the time we had dressed and taken a bite of breakfast the predicted storm “Hannah” was hard upon us. Concern even motivated our Welsh friends, Huw and Nina Thomas, to give us a ring. The rain sodden zephyr had crossed their location to the south and was of sufficient intensity to even threaten long established trees. The weather reports were properly pessimistic as I watched the barometer dip into some serious storm territory. Nevertheless, we proceeded down the canal with intentions of a 4 hour cruise to the Anderton Lift, one of the “Seven Wonders of the British Canals”. There will be more on that destination when we make it… a hint that we did not make it today.
We pressed on against the force of the storm for over two hours. Driving rain and brutal headwinds slowed our progress to the point that full throttle threatened to become insufficient in some stretches. On a “normal day” we should have seen dozens of fellow narrowboaters plying the waters. We saw only one while underway. Prudence dictated that I find a secure mooring, and when good fortune presented an opportunity I seized upon it.
We are tied to concrete embedded mooring rings in an isolated picnic grove that is only accessible by boat. There should be no miscreants tonight unless they drop in by parachute. The weather should clear by morning as this “StrongBlow” plows through. In the meantime we are four souls stuck by circumstances in a submarine-like interior space that is barely 6 feet wide and 50 feet long. We half expect a cigarette smoking Rod Serling, wearing a pencil-thin tie, to suddenly appear on shore speaking to an invisible audience… “Given for your consideration, 4 friends set out for a pleasant narrowboat holiday only to find that their destination has become… The Twilight Zone.
Peace Everyone. Pete
PS. This evening, in spite of the cramped quarters, Christine and Tom prepared a marvelous onboard dinner for the four of us. Nanci and I handled the KP (clean-up) duties afterward. The sharing that we celebrated became the highpoint of the day… thus we have now found ourselves in The “Highlight Zone”!
