Barnton (largest village in England)

We spent Monday morning sorting out stuff on the boat as we have had to move a lot of personal items etc. on board.  We then walked to Northwich to give Buddy some much needed exercise.  We walked over the top of Saltersford canal tunnel and passed these two air vents.

By the time we got back and had lunch the wind had got up.  This prompted us to look at the local weather forecast, something we have got out of the habit of doing being back on land.  It seems we have some really strong winds coming over the next few days so thought we would get a quick cruise in even though it was a bit windy.  There was quite a lot of duckweed on the water although nothing like the amount of algae we encountered on the River Lea when we were in London.

The River Lea in London in summer 2014

Karen walked along the towpath with Buddy who is waiting patiently here whilst Karen held onto the boat as I needed to get into the weed hatch to clear the propeller.

As we went through Saltersford tunnel Karen got a shot up one of the air vents we passed in the morning.

There is a sharp right hander coming out of the tunnel as can be seen from our wake.

We then went into an uncharacteristically wide section of canal…

…and then went through Barnton tunnel.  Here we are entering Barnton village having come through the tunnel.

Apparently Barnton is the largest village in England and we moored at the start of the village.  Although from here you can see we overlooked one of the many chemical works in Northwich. 

Northwich, like many towns in this area became famous through salt mining.  Also, like many mining towns, it suffers from subsidence which has even affected parts of the Trent & Mersey canal in the past.

Regular readers may wonder why Karen is not back at work now her 12 month career break is over.  As her break was nearing its end in November there were a round of redundancies but unfortunately she wasn’t on the list so she applied for voluntary redundancy and was lucky enough to be offered it.  She doesn’t feel like it’s time to give up work completely yet so we will look around for a short term contract.  She has always fancied the idea of living on the boat whilst going to work so with such a large canal network there is a lot of choice of where to look for work.