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Wednesday, May 17, 2006 DOWN THE CANAL, DOWN MEMORY LANE!

As some of you are aware I have taken to having a long walk at lunchtime when work and weather permit. Although not glorious sunshine it was a nice day today and I made time for this walk down the Lancaster Canal. For those of you unfamiliar with canals they were the original motorways. Used for transporting goods and people in barges, towed by a horse - hence towpath, as seen in this first picture.

All the bridges have a cast iron plaque with a number on, this one is 17, I'm pretty certain the first number is 12, the canal was cut shut some year ago at the Preston end, then later on when the M6 motorway was built it was shortened at the Lancaster end and near Tewitfield there is an unusable section, which is unreachable because of the low motorway bridge. The signpost below is a property developers vain attempt to make his massive housing estate merge in with the local environment, you can just see the rooftops in the photo.

These area was about two miles away from the nearest house when I was a kid, so 2 miles every 30 years!


The dead fish appeared to be a Pike, about two foot long and 2-3lbs I would imagine, a friend of mine caught a 20lb Pike when we were teenagers, he was in the local paper holding in a blag bin liner, he let it go, so you can imagine how big it might be now. The nest was found on the floor, I assume it fell from the tree during a storm. How do birds make them without hands?

The road bridge is a recent road built to encircle Preston - called Tom Benson Way - after a local record breaking long distance walker. It's odd there was only grafitti on this one surface, all the others were grafitti free. I'm really against grafitti, but here I just thought - whats worse a concrete wall or a colourful wall! I think maybe it wasn't menacing like some grafitti is, maybe if it was a dark night, etc. etc.


These three boats were moored at the 18th Bridge, as kids we would set out for a days walk with a duffle bag with fruit and drink in, and we would aim for a Bridge no. The 18th was always a popular choice because there was the white house in the photo that sold soft drinks and chocolate. Other destinations further along the canal were the Hand and Dagger Pub and the Jolly Rodger Cafe.

On one occasion we had set out fishing and were between the 17th and 18th Bridge, the local waterboard had been dredging the canal, depositing the mud and silt on the virtually unused towpath. There was a group of about 6-8 of us, some had wellington boots on and some had black plimsols, as a group we decided to run like mad idiots through this mud! Needless to say the one with plimsols managed to make it through, those of us with wellingtons on got stuck good and proper. This is a true story, for years afterwards when the mud had set solid, we would walk down the towpath and be able to see the tops of our wellingtons sticking out! We had to walk all the way home in our socks!

Happy days!
Posted by Cadley Dad :: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 :: 2 comments

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--------------- Preston, Lancashire ---------------