Withnell Fold, a VC and a Feline Guide.

 Friday 10th June 2022 above the Wigan Locks.

A beautiful sunny early morning.

We stopped off at Withnell Fold, site of a huge former paper mill since demolished, but in 1841 a model village was created to house the paper mill's workers and those cottages still survive grouped around a central square - and with the old wooden village stocks still in situ!. On our way up to the village, we were greeted by a local resident, who then escorted us throughout our visit. He was so gorgeous; we wanted to take him home!

The factory chimney still survives, plus a series of outbuildings, now used by small businesses. The narrow road up from the canal, and on through the village, is cobbled all the way. The village has no shop, no pub and no church.

The mill once had a large lake to store water for the papermaking process. This has now been turned into a memorial garden, dedicated to villagers who died in the two World Wars. The sundial is the centrepiece of the memorial.

The plinth of the memorial lists villagers who died in the First World War on one side and those who died in the Second World War on the other.

A plaque in front of the memorial records the name of Private James Miller VC who, despite being mortally wounded, delivered a vital message during the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. Our local guide paid his respects to the brave young man.

Running through the village in a tunnel is an aqueduct built by Manchester Corporation in 1894 to carry water from Thirlmere in the Lake District to Manchester. Local villagers can still remember walking through the tunnel as children when it was drained for maintenance in the 1950s.

The world famous contralto, Kathleen Ferrier, grew up close to here and used to play the piano at the village workers' club in her youth. In 1935, she married Bert Wilson, who lived in the village.

Our guide continued to escort us until we returned to MM.

Further on, we came to the seven Johnson's Hillocks Locks and were very pleased to see two C&RT volunteers who kindly helped us down the flight in record time.

As ever, almost all the top gates leaked badly and, as MM is 60ft long, it is necessary to back into the waterfall to give enough room to open the bottom gates, which often ends up flooding the back deck. Today we managed to get away with only one bucket full in the engine room!

These are very pretty locks surrounded by open countryside.

At the bottom lock we said farewell and a big "Thank You" to our two C&RT volunteers.

Along the towpath we saw several groups of Duke of Edinburgh students, each with colourful rain covers on their packs. They said that they have a six hour trek today and the level of enthusiasm varied considerably! The pony was taking a great interest in procedings.

Shortly before we moored up, we saw this unusual boat name, can't quite make out what it really means?

We moored up a couple of miles before the top of the Wigan 21 flight of locks. Tomorrow we will go to the top of the locks and wait a while, hoping to find a second boat to go with. R has put a post on the Wigan Flight Facebook page to see if anyone else is planning to go down.

Today: 10 miles, 7 locks and 4.1 hours.

Trip: 214 miles, 138 locks and 118.0 hours.