Chester by boat

 We are in fact now in Nantwich on the Shropshire Union Canal heading south but here is our experience of visiting Chester by boat. The cruise down into Chester from the junction at Barbridge, where most boats turn south towards Nantwich and Audlem is full of variety with double staircase locks at Bunbury, an iron lock and fine views over the Cheshire countryside.

This is Beeston Iron Lock. The two locks at Beeston are called the Iron and the Stone locks because of their construction. Stone built locks are fairly conventional but this one was made of iron because the sand it was built in shifted and the only way the builders could guarantee its continued use was to build the whole thing of iron and sink it into the ground. There are warning signs here to use the wide lock only one narrowboat at a time but on the way back we managed two boats together. It may be that a couple of working boats might be too tight a squeeze but leisure boats like ours at 6 foot 10 inches beam are fine.

The view to the south here is of Beeston Castle built in the 14th century on a prominent rocky eminence. On our way back we climbed up to the castle (owned by English Heritage) and admired the view from the top. You do have to pay to get the view (unless you are members) but we could see Liverpool, Manchester, Jodrell Bank, Mow Cop and the Wrekin not to mention the Welsh mountains, Moel Famau being the highest.

This prominent blue water tower is a key feature as the canal descends further locks into the city. It is on the site of waterworks which pumps water up from the River Dee.

And here is the view as we came down into Chester. Underneath the Steam Mill tower is a restaurant called Artichoke that we had recommended to us, though it was only open in the evenings.

We moored in the city for a couple of days and spent a whole day sightseeing. Here we are walking the walls which go all around the city. This part is along the River Dee where you can see the weir and the bridge. There is a canal branch which links with the River Dee but it is not presently navigable. Even if it was, the weir is a great obstruction to going upstream though there are plenty of boats above the weir. Below the weir the river is tidal.

We had a look round the Cathedral and later returned for a guided climb to the top of the tower. We admired the carvings on the choir stalls. This one shows a man whose bottom half is in the jaws of a dragon. He doesn't look too worried about this.

And this one shows a man quaffing ale while trampling a child underfoot.

Ian has a fascination for unusual gravestones. This one makes great play of the fact that the deceased had decided that his relatives had plenty of money and so gave his estate to the Cathedral. The bottom part of the inscription says "This plain monument, with the above inscription upon this cheap stone, is according to the express words of Dean Arderne's will."

Below where we were moored are triple staircase locks which are deep and forbidding. These lead down to Tower Wharf where there was a festival during our visit to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Chester Canal. Here you can see the festival boats with bunting.

This is the canal branch which leads down three locks from Tower Wharf to the River Dee. Some boats have their moorings down the first lock.

And here is the exit into the River Dee at the end of the branch. Clearly there is work to do to make this navigable even on a high tide on the river. Still it does look more navigable than it did when we were last here 7 years ago. So maybe there is hope.

Here we are in the city looking up Bridge Street. Chester has ancient shopping streets known as the Rows where you can walk along at first floor level past a higher level of shops. You can make out this higher level walkway in the picture.

Part way down the street the Grosvenor Shopping Centre opens up to the side. Lined with marble and beautifully preserved.

This is the street facade of the Grosvenor Shopping Centre.

Later in the afternoon we returned to the Cathedral for our trip to the roof of the tower. The views were excellent even on this fairly dull day. This view looking east shows the curious separate bell tower of the Cathedral. The distant hills include the 'lump' where Beeston Castle sits.

This view looks west towards Wales. The fine building is the town hall.

And here on a long zoom we could see Liverpool. The anglican Cathedral is the tall building in the middle of the photo with the Roman Catholic Cathedral between the two pylons on the far right.

 

 

In the cloister of the Cathedral we found this stained glass memorial to Mallory and Irvine who perished on Everest in 1924. It seems they were from Cheshire: we didn't know that.

After a couple of days looking round the city we continued on the canal. Much of the route is cut down through solid sandstone rock forming a gorge below the city walls.

Here we are cruising under Northgate Bridge at the northern entrance to Roman Chester.

This picture shows the gorge at its deepest and narrowest.

The Northgate Staircase falls 33 feet in three deep locks. This photo is taken as we pass through the middle lock.

Lots of little fish got caught on the cill of the lock as the water went down. They flipped and they flipped and some managed to flip into the water down below the cill.

This shot shows how the locks have been cut down through solid rock. What an amazing structure.

This photo looking back shows the boats of the festival suitably decorated in the basin below the staircase.

Just to finish this posting I've included a couple of photos from our journey back up the Northgate Staircase a couple of days later. In the meantime we had been to Ellesmere Port and visited the Boat Museum there, but that is another story. Coming back up the staircase we had paired with another narrowboat and between the middle and the top locks we passed a boat coming down. This is unusual but not impossible for a pair going one way to pass a single boat going the other way. It requires some shuffling of one boat and that job fell to us. Our paired boat is ahead of us in the picture and Ian has moved Leo across the lock to let the down boat come into the vacant space left behind. Ian then needs to move across in travelling into the next lock. And all without a bow thruster. Who needs one of those noisy cheating devices? The whole exercise is like those toys where you have to move tiles in a frame around to create a pattern.

A double staircase is easy to set  up to use - you simply have to ensure that the top lock is full and the bottom lock is empty before you start either going up or going down. But with a staircase of three locks how do you set the middle one? The answer here is that there is a level marker shown here. The middle lock has to be set in the green i.e. part filled. If its level is in the yellow then you have to let water out down into the bottom lock. If its level is in the red band (below the water level in the photo) then you need to add more water from the top lock. Clever but simple.

Well that is about it for our trip to Chester. We would certainly recommend a trip to the city as part of a boating journey. As I said at the start of this posting we are now in Nantwich heading south with a myriad of other boats probably because most of the other northern canals are short of water and closed. However the arm to Chester and Ellesmere Port was very quiet by comparison.