Ooo Betty, I've got a bit of trouble in Wigan

Saturday, 18 July 2009 09:00

Wigan - the place of football, "up and unders" from Eddie Waring, Wigan Pier, George Orwell's book and George Formby's song

Approaching Wigan there are two locks. The first lock Ell Meadow (89) is certainly not in meadows but in the industrial heartland of Wigan. There are remains of another parallel lock here which pretty soon will no longer be visible, due to the undergrowth. The River Douglas runs alongside to the south, providing a bit of a rural outlook.

The next lock is Pagefield lock (89) and there is not a field here but Robin Park, home of Wigan Athletic and Wanderers. In the Robin Park area there are also shops, fast food outlets and Asda. However I would not recommend stopping here - in fact I did not see any obvious mooring points.

Just before Seven Stars Bridge (50) there are moorings that give access to Asda (we moored here on our way down).

So were we on "The Road to Wigan Pier" (by George Orwell)? Yes, in a way, but on the water road

The famous "Wigan Pier" (replica) - a coal tippler, two curved rails at the end of a tramway from a colliery

Opposite is what used to be a museum and The Orwell restaurant (for sale and closed). This is housed in what was Gibsons warehouse, built in1777, rebuilt in 1984. Yet another link with George Orwell!

Beyond the righthand bend and Pottery Changeline Bridge (51) is Number 1 Terminal Warehouse

The bays underneath were for loading and unloading and leads to the old Wigan branch of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

We turned right under Pottery Changeline Bridge

The next lock is the bottom of lock of the Wigan flight (87). It is a bit tricky as it is on a bend and a bit of a "jump" to get on to the bank to work the lock but John has long legs! The top gates are extremely leaky and there is quite a force of water coming down through the lock! The dry dock alongside had a boat in it this time!

Above the lock there are mooring rings on the towpath side and opposite is the Wigan BW office. We were going to moor there if we could but the moorings outside the office were full. We tried on the towpath side and went aground about 3 feet out! Hmm - not good!

Another boat had pulled in at the BW office and he went in to the office. He had had real trouble trying to moor as we did and went in to find out if there was a problem. There was. There had been a "pollution incident", which explained all the dead fish but they did not realise that the pound was down about 18 inches - had no one looked out the windows?

They contacted a supervisor to report it, but we decided to carry on up the second lock and here we had "our bit of trouble" - an orange roadworks cone around the prop just as John was aiming for the lock. The upshot was that we were bowhauled in by a couple of boaters from the boats behind - Nb Rose and Nb Chy Tyak (thank you both). Nb Rose was sharing the lock, once they could get off the moorings as they were aground too!

John went down the hatch in the lock but was unable to free it, so I and the others bowhauled Epiphany out onto the moorings above the lock. We had held everyone up but they were very generous about it and we would have struggled without their help.

After much snipping with the snips - taking a lot more effort than you would imagine - John was able to remove the offending parasite and we moved across to the other side. All's well that ends well, as we are moored now and snug against the rain - boy has it been raining too!

"Wigan - the place of ........." and where Epiphany caused mayhem at lock 86!

Leeds and Liverpool Canal, Parbold to Wigan - 4 hours 42 minutes, 7.5 miles, 6 locks