A night in Bugsworth

13th & 14th October

Following through on the decision to visit Bugsworth Basin for the first time this year, we’d moored on the Upper Peak Forest Canal just a little bit before the first lift bridge, number 22. With just a couple of hours boating to do, we made a relaxed start and chugged our way up this always shallow canal.

Sheila was steering, so it fell to me to work the bridges, first the two lift bridges and then the swingers. BW have done some good work here, squeezing in small landing platforms with a single bollard on the offside of each bridge. Unlike the provision of bollards on narrow lock sides, this is something that has been seen as useful (especially for single handers) for many years.

These bridges can be quite heavy to work, but although not light they didn’t present any particular problems this time.

We duly passed the Swizzels Matlow factory with its evocative smells of penny sweets, and were soon idling past the long length of moorings at Furness Vale. At the far end a very shiny boat was just about to set off. This proved to be Streamline, the boat on which we first had a share some twelve years ago. Apparently she has just had a repeat of her Andy Russell paint job which explains her particularly smart appearance.

Shortly after Furness Vale we struggled past the length of canal which was the subject of some experimental planting on the off side. It’s a kind of willow which looks remarkably like bamboo and which is supposed to be good at protecting the bank. Unfortunately, it’s all flopped over so that there is just a bare boats width of clear channel. Since this length bends steadily it makes for tricky navigation.

When we got to Bugsworth, we found members of the Inland Waterways Protection Society busy doing minor maintenance. We had a chat with them whilst on the water point; they had some bad news, in that a newly laid patio area has suffered the attention not so much of vandals as of straightforward criminals. About a dozen of the York stone slabs had simply disappeared one night and have had to be replaced with rolled hard core.

Water tank full, we popped through the footbridge and tied in the lower basin. This sounds a lot easier than it proved. As we had turned through the junction, we saw two groups of kids in rafted up Canadian canoes approaching. They neatly got out of our way at that time but by the time we’d filled the water tank they had arrived back at the basin and were now having a merry time.

Their instructors were very happy to move them out of our way; I must say it was good to see youngsters being introduced to the joys of boating in this way and full marks to the YHA for operating such a good event.

As I was setting off to nip back to the Tesco at the junction, Streamline turned up and tied just in front of us.

We had a quiet afternoon; the main event was a shopping trip to Tesco, taking in searching for a couple of geocaches on the way. We found one but the other was a micro in a very nettley area on the edge of the Tesco car park, and it was just too much hassle hunting for it with so many muggles around.

Back at the boat I had a good play with the new toy, including experimenting with uploading photos to Flickr and adding them to the blog. This seems to be popular with some folk so here’s another one:

Marple Bridge 1

It’s one of the set I use as desktop photos; the rest are on Flickr here.

This morning we had planned to moor on the old long term moorings on the offside just on the Bugsworth side of the junction, which we reckoned would be the best place whilst we did another Tesco shop. These moorings seem only to have one boat there permanently now. Unfortunately we just couldn’t get close enough to the bank to make it worth the bother and we went on to shop at the Marple Co-op instead.

We could of course have turned left to see if we could find a mooring on the Whaley Bridge arm, from where there is another approach to Tesco. The problem is that those moorings are often busy and it would have meant winding yet again in the basin at Whaley Bridge.

We had a pleasant run back to Marple on a mild and misty autumnal day. Streamline followed us later and like us stopped for lunch and a shop in Marple.

We have come on just a little way towards Poynton, tying on the Armco just after bridge 6, and we’ll carry on back to our mooring tomorrow.