Leaky Gates and Dinner with William

Thursday 5th June, 2014 at Marple.
More rain overnight and we awoke to a very cold morning (only 10deg).
We went for a walk along the path of the old tramway, which used to bring limestone down from a series of quarries about six miles to the east.  Just above the Basin, the tramway splits, with one line going to the top of the kilns (over the bridge) and the other down to the basin proper.

Horses were used to pull the empty wagons back up to the quarries, we wondered if this might be one of their descendants?

The slight gradient meant that loaded waggons could "freewheel" down the tramway to the Basin, usually in a "gang" of up to 20 two-ton wagons.

A "ganger" rode on the side of the second waggon, he had no platform, he just stood on the stub axle sticking out from the wheel! If the gang started going too fast, he would "sprag" a wheel, this meant hooking a chain on to a spoke of one of the wheels to stop it turning and so slow the gang down (lovely visions of the 'elf turning in his grave!).

We set off after filling up with water. We were wearing umpteen layers of clothing as well as fleeces and hats. Well, this is June in England after all!
We cruised the mile down to the terminus at Whaley Bridge, just so that we could say that MM had been there, then we set off for Marple. This time M did all four swing/lift bridges on her own; there was almost no-one around and the canal was very quiet.
At Marple Junction we moored in exactly the same place as we did on the way up. There was just room for a beautiful 60 footer right beside our friends on "It's Amore".

A "few bits" was a perfect excuse for R to disappear into Costa while M went to the Co-op!
Before dinner, we decided to combine a nice walk with useful reconnaissance of the full length of the sixteen lock Marple flight. It was indeed a good walk and very rural once past the top four locks.
Lock thirteen is unusual in that a road goes over the top and there are two tunnels, a wide one for the horses:

And a second very narrow and steep one for the boat crew.

It was extremely good reconnaissance because now we are much better prepared for next year when we need to go down these locks to reach the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. The locks are very deep at over 13ft and the flow from the paddles is ferocious.
However, it was a lovely quiet walk of about a mile in each direction and 214 ft down and up. We greatly admired the stonework in each lock, built by true craftsmen - even if the gates tended to leak a lot! Unusually, some locks were empty, whereas others were full or only half full. There appeared to be no pattern to it and we could only put it down to horribly leaking gates.

We had another visitor this evening. Jenni's eldest son, William, lives at Hadfield only 20 minutes' drive away and we had invited him to come for dinner on board. It was wonderful to see him walking down the towpath towards us and M was so pleased that she dashed up the back steps and ended up hitting her head on the sliding hatch!
As William left, the moon was bright above and reflected as a perfect mirror-image in the still waters of the canal.
Today: 7 miles, 0 Locks and 5.1 hours (plus 2.8 hours for power yesterday)
Trip: 56 miles, 28 locks and 34.5 hours.