If looking for a house gives you that slnking feeling fear not, a scheme has been floated that could be the answer to your dreams. The owners of the marina at Preston Brook have asked Halton Council for permission to use 42 of the 250 moorings as residential berths. So instead of being master of your own castle you could become captain of your own house boat. Living on a boat has many advantages. If you don’t like the neighbours you simply raise the anchor and move elsewhere. Imagine, though, on a hot day a cranky neighbour shouting to the kids….Oye you, go and swim down yer own end....or hearing a Sunday morning rant ...me sump is blocked. When I first encountered Preston Brook many moons ago there were still families living on the old working barges. They adored the life, plying up and down the waterway, as bargees The Bridgewater Canal was way ahead of its time, in real sense the equivalent of a watery motorway. Between Runcorn and Manchester there are no locks to navigate. It’s wider than most canals and was built to accommodate double width boats. That old Duke of Bridgewater didn’t need a tap on the head to make him think. Some years ago, dreaming of a home in the country (which I could never afford) I thought, go for a boat. The search didn’t take long and soon I was the proud captain of a cabin cruiser called Lancashire Lass, moored in the rural tranquillity of Cheshire. Within its 25ft length there was a deck and seating area, and a large cabin with a dining table, cooker, toilet/shower, a double bed and two single beds. It was moored at a farm in Waverton, Chester on the Shropshire Union. The name has to go though. Lancashire Lass indeed, we’re in Cheshire now. An old sea salt spotted me making a new sign. Being a doggie person I opted for ‘Rover’ gerrit! Me a doggie owner, etc. Ok, suit yerself. They’ll never ‘ave any luck changing the name, said Captain Misery-Guts. A few days later the farmer rang me to say the newly named ‘Rover’ was sitting on the bottom of the Shroppie. Seems it had been the victim of a hit-and-sail. The culprits, no doubt with a steel narrow boat, fractured the Rover whilst doing a three point turn. The water was pumped out and we headed to the boat repair yard in Chester. Me, two others and the dog, no not called Montmorency. The journey took hours. The most frightening bit was trying to look calm and knowledgeable whilst negotiating a flight of locks in Chester, watched by an audience of tourists with their cameras. There is a specific sequence to follow when opening and closing the gates of the locks in a staircase. The guidebook was ruined because of days of being submerged in the sunken Rover. I knew we hadn’t got the hang of it when I looked deep into a cavernous lock, devoid of any water. The Rover was competing for space among discarded shopping trolleys, drowned bicycles and the contents of a submarine scrapyard. I’m thinking, like, boats supposed to be in water, this can’t be good for the propeller. After repair it was all plain sailing. Every weekend me and the dogs had down the Shroppie to Beeston, moored up outside a canal side inn called the Shady Oak. Once we did a thing called the Cheshire Ring, starting at Preston Brook and going in a big circle, Peak Forest Canal, Rochdale Canal, Bridgewater back to Runcorn. It took a week to complete. Spending the night in what seemed to be the very bowels of Manchester was strange, then the sight of a few dead dogs chucked into the canal near Wythenshawe. Otherwise it was an interesting expedition. Peel, who own the Trafford Centre, the ship canal and the Bridgewater, want the residential moorings, they say to meet demand. They already have a small handful at Preston Brook Marina and want the council to give them permission to add another 42. If I had £50,000 to spare to buy a decent 56ft long steel narrow boat I may be tempted. Then I wonder whether I’m better sticking to dry land. If other canal owners had followed the example of the Duke of Bridgeway, helped by his engineer James Brindley, this country may well still today be transporting goods by water. Instead future canal builders opted for locks that could only take narrow boats of up to 6ft wide. Then instead of following Brindleys example to finding routes that didnt need many locks, they introduced staircase locks, often taking hours to navigate. This came to me when my own boat the Rover sunk. The journey to the repair yard a few miles away in Chester took hours. I jumped in a taxi to retrieve my car back at Waverton and the journey took just 10 minutes. No wonder these canals never caught on.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:16:56 +0000