Moored Across the "Dutton Breach".

 Friday 30th June 2023 at Dutton.

This morning, we were not going to be thwarted for breakfast and we were standing outside the gate at 9:30 when the Vistors' Centre opened for the day. The breakfast was excellent with a view overlooking the Anderton Lift.

We have visited the lift a few times before and taken MM down and back up again in 2015. It never fails to impress.

It was originally built in 1875 and it was then a much slimmer structure. The two 250 ton water filled caissons were lifted up and down on two massive interconnected hydraulic rams. When boats had been loaded into the caissons, with one caisson at the top and the other at the bottom, some water would be removed from the bottom caisson. The top caisson was now heaver and so it would start down, pushing the bottom caisson up as it went. Victorian ingenuity!

Sadly, they used the river water as their hydraulic fluid and the contaminated water rotted the iron hydraulic fittings. Finally, around 1900, they decided to dispense with the hydraulics and put electric motors, gears and pulleys on the top with huge counterweights suspending the caissons on steel cables. The massive extra weight of all this meant that the supporting structure had to be doubled and extra pillars fitted on each side.

By the early 1980s the lift was in a very sad state and it became unsafe. There was a move to demolish it but local activists raised enough money to rebuild it completely. It was rebuilt using the original hydraulic principle but this time using hydraulic fluid instead of water. It was reopened in 2002 and is still a marvel of Victorian engineering.

We moved on with MM as far as Dutton, where we knew that there were good moorings with rings. What we hadn't realised was that the concrete side and mooring rings were put there when the canal was rebuilt following a massive breach in September 2012. Coincidentally, we moored up next to a small plaque recording the exact centre of the breach!

Now there is barely any visible evidence of what happened 11 years ago and the eight months of work that went into rebuilding the canal.

We found some old pictures of the breach and superimposed MM about where she is now moored! The people give some scale as to the damage caused by the breach.

That picture made M very nervous but the new concrete wall looks good and strong (we hope!).

Today: 5 miles, 0 locks and 2.3 hours.

Trip: 50 miles, 52 locks and 35.6 hours.