Wigan - the Family Way

And so our final stretch of the Bridgewater Canals through a former mining landscape now restored into parkland and wetlands and two attractive locks before Wigan. 

What a northerly ring that name has and how familiar we were with it as one of those roads signs on the M6 that for some reason we have always noted as we trek up and down that motorway. We were looking forward to seeing the famous "Wigan Pier" that incongruously is many miles from the sea, the most usual place for a pier in our experience.

We had arranged to meet our eldest son and daughter in law here for a weekend visit and Wigan was the most suitable place on the spreadsheet itinerary - lucky them! It was also a good place to receive visitors as it had a nice challenging flight of 21 locks to climb and help with locks is now always appreciated. 

Do you detect a slight lessening of enthusiasm for locks dear reader? Certainly that may well be true for my part - especially when there's a whole flight of them AND  its pouring with rain AND every paddle is incredibly hard work AND every gate has an anti-vandal key to unlock AND the gates are achingly heavy to open/close. Stretches my definition of fun to its limits. And you know what, even my narrow-boat-groupie wife sometimes (and I must be accurate here or I'll be in trouble for it is only sometimes) admits locks can be "tiring" and we need to "pace ourselves". 

Now that's bordering on sacrilege for the enthusiast.

We chugged into Wigan early in the morning to await our visitors' arrival and had to moor opposite the local rubbish dump to be near an access point for them. Such a convenient and attractive landmark. Ugh. Whilst waiting we took our chance to explore on foot and discovered the famous Wigan Pier two locks down the canal towards Liverpool and now consisting of a series of restored workshops and warehouses, attractive stone bridges and the inevitable Orwell pub. To be fair, it has been a CAMRA pub of the year and so boasts an excellent range of real ales not that I had a chance to sample them as 10.00 was a little early in the day.

Nick and Jen arrived fresh from their boutique hotel and hearty breakfast in nearby Chorley at 10.45 armed with wet weather gear and a most welcome bottle of Taittinger champagne to celebrate our anniversary. What style I smiled to myself - I wonder who he takes after? 

Oh, and to add to our delights a box a Krispie Kreme doughnuts - no calories there then. 

Giggles over after their tour of the boat and introduction to the flexible dinette sleeping berth where they would cosy up for the night, we began our day in overcast skies hoping the rain would hold off. Vain hope. We had only done about 5 locks when the drizzle started and this soon developed into lovely wet Lancashire rain. But properly attired (loved the pink spotted wellies Jen) we cheerfully attacked the locks and were rewarded with clearing skies by the time we reached to the top. 

Having read about Giles' natural ability at the helm and his silky entrances into the locks, I'm sure that wasn't far from Nick's mind as he took his turn to show the parents that it was obviously genetic and in the blood that a Scott son should navigate perfectly into the locks with not a whisper of a bash or scrape. Satisfied grins all round. 

That evening we took a taxi to a recommended restaurant wonderfully named the "Summit ta Eat" where we all enjoyed steaks cooked on your own personal  hot stone. The stones really were piping hot, so flushed faces all round. And the taxi back was quite an experience too. New to the business, we learned that the driver had previously been a dustman and so claimed an intimate knowledge of the back roads and shortcuts. We were a bit worried when we headed off down a potholed dirt track into the middle of nowhere but he got us back very quickly and it cost half the outward journey! The joys of the naive new boy not yet milking the punter!

After bacon butties for breakfast and a yoga lesson from Jen on the roof of the boat (I could never be that flexible... but it sure loosened her muscles after a night in the dinette) we pootled through pleasant countryside to Adlington where Nick and I attempted to mend Ros' phantom puncture only to discover it hadn't been pumped up properly! Wonder who had managed that? I also discovered that my lovely wife had never mended a puncture before - "I thought you just bought a new inner tube" she said. As a child schooled by his father in the importance of frugality in all things biking, I bit my tongue.

Borrowing my bike to cycle back to his car parked near the landmark rubbish dump in Wigan, Nick soon returned to collect his lovely wife and head back to Edinburgh. Fond farewells and happy memories of a lovely weekend together. 

I'm not sure narrow boating is high on their agenda for future must-do's, but they were very polite to their mum. Wasn't my blog that corrupted them - honest.