Halfway there!

We’ve had a relaxing couple of weeks since our dash up the Wigan flight of locks. We were also very lucky to get up them when we did as, a few days later, various issues with leakage in one of the pounds (pools between each lock that store the water) caused boats to ground on the stone cill in the lock. This cill is now damaged or “blown”. The cill leaks so much that it can’t be operated. This will take weeks to fix as the canal has to be dammed to allow for the stonework to be rebuilt. I feel very sorry for all those boaters who were planning to travel that way during June/July.

It’s been a relief to take it easy in the heat and thunderstorms. We’ve now passed through Adlington and Chorley – yes, we did buy some Chorley Cakes and we did demolish them as we cruised on. Some members of my family call these cakes Fly Pie and we are divided by those that will eat Fly Pie and those that refuse. I never knew where the term Fly Pie came from, I thought we’d just made it up as currants and raisins look just like dead flies!

Apparently not, Fly Pie is what the locals in Chorley, Lancashire, call the Chorley Cake. A 3-5 inch round flat cake made from a sandwich of unsweetened shortcrust pastry filled with a thin layer of raisins. But wait, here’s a surprise, Ian remembers his grandma (Yorkshire born and bred) making a Fly Pie that was different again, this was more like an enormous flatter, square version of a Chorley Cake with icing sugar on top. It turns out that there are many Lancashire cakes which combine dried fruit and pastry, everyone knows of the Eccles cake but what about the Sad Cake. It’s sort of like a Chorley cake but rolled flatter and a speciality of East Lancashire.  Sad Cakes date back to 17^th century, cooked on a hot griddle and put in a workman’s lunch box as a filler, they were eaten as a snack or a desert after sandwiches. Unfortunately, unless you got your Chorley Cake from a local baker in Chorley, it was probably baked in a factory in Burnley much to the disgust of the townsfolk!

So after that bombshell, it’s time to press on upwards and onwards to Leeds. The seven locks of the Johnson’s Hill flight were lovely, a bit like an upscale version of the Bosley Locks on the Macclesfield Canal, with stunning scenery and helpful volunteers. The construction of this wider canal attracted a lot of industry. The bigger towns grew up around industries such as huge cotton mills, but along this stretch a lot of the factories were either paper or printing mills. Withnell Fold is a model village built in 1843 by a mill owner for his papermill workers. It’s not as big or as grand as Saltaire in Yorkshire, but it has retained its charm with cobbled lanes and the necessary village stocks.

We’re making slow but steady progress, enjoying the contrasting scenery and the lovely weather. We’ve been spotting the white mile markers as we’ve gone along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, but to our astonishment, Church, a village between Blackburn and Burnley, seems to be very proud of its location.

It’s the first time that we’ve seen such homage paid to a halfway point, apparently, 63 5/8 miles is the magical point between Leeds and Liverpool-there’s even a metal rod, like a meridian line, embedded into the towpath!