Please note the walks were done before National Lockdown on 23rd March 2020.

My Dad and I walked the Chesterfield canal over a six month period in five stages.

West Stockwith to Clarborough – 7^th September 2019

On our maiden walk, we walked from West Stockwith, where the canal meets the River Trent, to Clarborough, a village near Retford.

We began our quest with a coffee at the Waterfront Inn then had a look at the marina and joined The Cuckoo Way to Clarborough.

It’s a beautiful stretch of the canal with the surrounding countryside and remnants of past industrial activity such as the brickworks near Gringley On the Hill.

Thirteen miles later we reached Clarborough and stopped for a drink at The Kings Arm before returning home.

Clarborough to Worksop – 9^th November 2019

We drove to Retford and caught a bus to Clarborough…our plan was to walk from there to Worksop because catching a bus (as we thought at the time) back to Retford would be easier.  It wasn’t a long walk to the outskirts of Retford.  I bought a takeaway coffee and used the facilities at the canal side Bay Tree Café Bar and enjoyed the market town’s ambience.  We did notice a considerable amount of flooding around the River Idle.

After admiring the autumn colours around the town’s cemetery, we approached and ascended up the Forest Locks.

We stopped at the Forest Middle Top Lock for lunch.  We were hoping to stop for a drink at Ranby but it was a long walk to the pub (the canal bridge where we needed to get off was a bit of a walking distance). Instead we soldiered on passing Obserton Hall and reached the outskirts of Worksop as it was getting dark.  After 12 miles or so of walking, we had a well earned drink at The Liquorice Gardens before supposedly catching our bus back to Retford.

We learnt that due to the heavy localised flooding, our bus was cancelled! Instead we had to catch a train and it was a bit of walk up a hill to the town’s station (it was tough going after already walking so many miles).  We had to wait a bit for the train but we eventually made it to Retford for our return home.

Worksop to Norwood Tunnel (East Portal) – 23^rd December 2019

We continued our adventures on the Chesterfield Canal by parking the car in Sheffield and catching the train to Worksop.  We had a quick coffee stop at the station’s café before descending down the hill towards the canal.

We picked up where we left off on our previous walk and walked via Shireoaks to the tunnel.  I remember the walk for its many locks set in stunning scenery with the canal travelling through incredible woodlands and reflecting the engineering ingenuity as far as the locks were concerned.

We meant to have stopped for a drink at the Station Pub at Kiveton Park but the pub didn’t open until 4.00pm and we couldn’t hang around till then.

We walked the remaining stretch to the tunnel entrance and continued attempting to walk overland to the other portal but couldn’t find The Cuckoo Way signs so we diverted ourselves through a country park and numerous muddy fields towards Killamarsh.

We eventually went under the motorway (M1) and walked into Woodall village and on its main road we spotted a bus stop and the bus we needed to get back to Sheffield stopped there!  With half an hour to spare we had a drink at The Travellers Rest.  A hot chocolate with cognac was well received after another tough walk especially the latter stages!  Bus bound and on our arrival at Sheffield we went home.

Chesterfield to Renishaw – 11^th January 2020

This was one of our first walks in the new year.  We parked the car in Chesterfield where we had breakfast and also had a little look round the town centre including its market square and of course St Mary’s and All Saints Church (which is infamous for its crooked spire).  A short walk out of town, we picked up The Cuckoo Way and crossed one of the main roads where we walked along the River Rother until reaching the canal.  It was a short walk to Tapton Lock Visitors Centre where we had a coffee and I bought some canal souvenirs including the official canal guide.

The Transpennine trail shares the same path as The Cuckoo Way.  After a few more locks we reached Hollingwood Hub where we visited the café and facilities and enjoyed coffee again with cake in its outside seating area.  There was a consultation event happening at the same time so we found out more about the canal’s restoration proposals.  Their aim is to have the canal completely restored in 2027 and I feel it’s doable as there are only a few miles now that are still yet to be restored. Afterwards, we had a look at the Staveley’s Basin where they usually have annual canal events (though the events in 2020 have sadly been cancelled due to COVID-19 though they will be reinstated in 2021 all being well).

We saw the recently restored town lock and continued our way.  The Cuckoo Way appeared to have been blocked so we pick up the Transpennine Trail to finish the remainder of our walk.  We finished our walk in Renishaw and after some confusion where we should be catching our bus back to Chesterfield; we eventually caught the bus for our drive home.

Renishaw to Norwood Tunnel (West Portal) – 7^th March 2020

There was one jigsaw puzzle missing for our completion of our Chesterfield Canal adventures and this was to reach Norwood Tunnel (West Portal).  We parked our car in Sheffield and got the bus to Renishaw.  On arrival we had a lovely breakfast at The Sitwell Arms and afterwards picked up The Cuckoo Way for our walk towards Killamarsh.

We briefly joined the Transpennine Trail and enjoyed a stop at its “town station” (the trail is on a disused railway and there used to be a station).  We got slightly lost in Killamarsh and ended up wandering in Rother Valley Country Park.  With the help of Google Maps we eventually rejoined the Cuckoo Way for our ascent up to Norwood Tunnel (West Portal).  We then retraced our steps back to Killamarsh and caught our bus back to Sheffield where we picked up a take away coffee for our journey home.

Final thoughts

We thoroughly enjoyed our adventures on the Chesterfield Canal.

The canal offers some of the most incredible and rustic scenery I’ve ever seen on a waterway and its set beautifully in its rural settings.

However logical planning needs to be done as the canal (apart from the Chesterfield to Renishaw stretch and of course the towns) do lack canal side facilities and also the lack of public transportation - particularly in Nottinghamshire as the Retford to Gainsborough bus (which runs along the main road near the canal) is every two hours during the day!  This was definitely something we had to be mindful about as most of our walks were between 10-13 miles.

The canal isn’t too busy so crowds aren’t an issue (especially with the current situation) whatsoever and it is a perfect waterway to explore.  The canal will for sure open up a lot more places once it’s fully restored – only a few miles between Staveley and Kiveton Park.

Further information about Chesterfield Canal Trust can be found here.

Dawn Smallwood
September 2020

This edition explores the intertidal zone between Community, Canal and Rail.

Appley Bridge: Village in England

Appley Bridge is a small, affluent village crossing the borders of Greater Manchester and West Lancashire, England.

It is located off Junction 27 of the M6 motorway and is nestled in the Douglas Valley alongside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Wikipedia

Bridge 42 on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal is in Appley Bridge.

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal is a canal in Northern England, linking the cities of Leeds and Liverpool. Over a distance of 127 miles, it crosses the Pennines, and includes 91 locks on the main line. Wikipedia

I have read the interesting article by Doug Yelland on canalside churches, with his lovely photographs.

He visited St. Nicolas, Newbury, on the K and A canal, but apparently didn’t get as far as St. Lawrence’s in the attractive town of Hungerford. The church stands adjacent to the towpath, by the swing bridge, and the churchyard is reached through the entrance in the fence.

Although a church has stood on this site since early times, the present church was built by the Victorians in 1816, the tower of the former building having collapsed, bringing down part of the church with it.

During lockdown, the church is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for private prayer and exploring. The counter in the porch registers that the church is welcoming about 350 people each week, who come to enjoy the peacefulness of the interior (described as a foretaste of heaven) and admire the 10 stained glass windows created between 1815 and 1900, the oldest, from the previous church, being in the vestry. Many of the memorials have been transferred from the previous building. Before lockdown, when the Visitors’ Book was available, it registered the names of visitors from many parts of the world as well as Britain, some of them coming off the narrow boats. Many visited because their ancestors had been married in the church, and all wrote about the beauty and peace they found there.

The churchyard is now closed and cleared of some gravestones and is maintained by the local town council. They have, however, left one gravestone in situ. It marks the grave of James Dean, a coachman plying between Hungerford and Bath, who was killed in 1827 when a hearse collided with his coach. The poem on his gravestone reads:

Passengers of every age
I safely drove from stage to stage
Till death came by in a hearse unseen
And stop’d the course of my machine.

Part of the churchyard is now dedicated to a wildlife sanctuary.

If you are moored anywhere near the church, do pop in and have a quiet browse. Our vicar, Revd. Michael Saunders (Mike to everyone) and his wife Ali are Waterways Chaplains. The vicarage is nearby and they welcome anyone who comes to their door or rings them for help or a chat (01488 208341).

I am also a Waterways Chaplain, trained online as I am self isolating, so I haven’t yet ventured onto the towpath.

​If you wish to know anything about any aspect of Hungerford, we have a wonderful virtual museum – a museum online – that contains thousands of entries, compiled by local historian Dr. Hugh Pihlens. Well worth a browse!

Iris Lloyd

I was built sometime in the reign of Victoria, at least 135 years ago, in the Black Country, Birmingham.

The canals were a very different place back then, none of this slowing down to relax and all that they say these days.

The skyline bristled with chimneys and the air was black with smoke. No cars were on the streets and bicycles were still strange contraptions.

Only the fancy boats had engines and they were steam.

I had a horse.

He wasn’t a very good horse but then I was only a maintenance boat, a spoon dredger to be precise. I worked for the Birmingham Canal Navigations Company, number 118 in their fleet, and I worked in the number 2 district around Tipton. My job was to keep the channel deep for the cargo boats, by the simple expedient of what was, in essence, a giant shovel, scooping out silt into my hold.

I had a small cabin then, where the men, usually 3, could have a brew (and occasionally doss down), and in the middle of my hold was a small hand crane, attached to the great iron scoop and its long wooden handle.

Towards my front end was a winch, which was also attached to the scoop, and when they’d lowered the scoop down into the murky depths, they used the winch to drag it forward into the mud. Then they used the crane to lift the scoop out of the water, and a man used its long wooden handle to guide it so they could dump the contents into my hold.

Each scoopful was about a hundredweight of mud and water, and it went everywhere. My decks were slick with mud, and it reeked in high summer! They had to regularly pump the water out so they could get a full load, which was about 25 tonnes at a time.

Sometimes there was a fourth man on the bank with another winch, so they could accurately edge me forward bit by bit, but more often than not it was a case of short straws as to who had to haul me forward by hand.

Dredgers sometimes lifted things that were best left lying: guns, knives, sometimes stolen safes and strongboxes (empty of course). Occasionally a dredger would bring a body up, which was never fun for anyone involved and would invariably hold up traffic. It wasn’t unheard of for a body to be quietly slipped back into the water without telling anyone official.

When they’d made a load up, I was towed away and the mud unloaded into spoil heaps, where it could be reloaded back onto a boat to be taken away. Nothing was wasted then; sometimes the spoil was taken to fields out of the city, sometimes to building sites to help level the ground, and sometimes it was taken back to the canal that needed repairing.

No, a spoon dredger’s life was not a glamorous one. The men would swear a lot, and sometimes drink a lot too; that was usually when my cabin got slept in.

I did that until 1937, when they took away my dredging gear and I was put onto general maintenance. During the war I did whatever was needed; sometimes I carried things like lock gates, sometimes I carried bits of Birmingham away that had been blown up by Mr Hitler. Sometimes I even carried cargo for the war effort.

After the war I carried on doing maintenance. They took my cabin away so I could carry more, and made me smaller, taking some plates out of my middle, so that I could work with a bantam tug. I hauled pilling, scaffolding, bricks. I often worked with a modern dredger, carrying the silt away. I was ignored by everyone and given the frankly ignominious title of a ‘hopper.’

And then, after all that service, more than 100 years dedicated to keeping the canals going, waterways decided they didn’t want me anymore, and that I was “beyond economical repair.”

I was sold. Retirement beckoned at last, perhaps I would be cut again and turned into a motorboat? Perhaps I would just be broken up?

​No.

I am now a cargo boat in my own right. I am still unpowered, but I have a motorboat of my own to take me where I wish, and I have my little cabin back. I will be carrying coal and logs for a fuel boat, and maybe tanks of diesel in the summer. I’ll be taking animal feed, and occasionally animals, the pets of my keeper.

Nearly 150 years after I was built, I will still be working. How many other boats can say that?

I did not keep a diary at the time so this account is entirely from memory.

My friend, Janet, and I, both in our twenties, decided we would enjoy a week’s holiday on a narrowboat. It was not a working holiday, so we were not expected to help at the locks. We were to board at Market Harborough on the Grand Union canal.

Janet drove a car of her own, which was quite unusual for those days, so she drove us there. We arrived in a thunderstorm to find that some of the guests had got there ahead of us and had gone back home because their bunks were wet. Ours were not too bad, so we decided to stay.

We found that there were two boats, one leading the second. On board were Annie and Ernie, the bargees. They had been engaged for 15 years but had not made it to the altar. Also on board was one of the owners, and the three of them were arguing throughout the week.

The rain storm had affected the electricity so we had to use candles all the way.

There were two elderly ladies also on board and they offered to teach us how to play Canasta, the only time I have ever played that card game. We enjoyed most evenings playing cards but the candle flames attracted the moths and we spent a lot of time waving our arms about to keep them away.

It was not long before the leading boat broke down. So the second boat was brought forward to lead the way until that, too, broke down. I don’t remember where we should have finished the holiday but we never reached wherever it was and got no further than Rugby.

We then had to get back to Market Harborough to collect Janet’s car, and must have travelled by train.

Other memories are the peace when gliding slowly along the canals and seeing a part of the countryside that the motorist never sees. On one occasion, we found a sheep that had fallen down the bank and was standing on a ledge at the side of the canal. Its wool was sodden and it was too heavy to clamber out again. We were able to alert someone further along the bank.

We went through a tunnel where, in a previous era, boatmen had to leg it through. Boating readers will know which tunnel that was.

Another pleasure was mooring of an evening at a canal side public house for an evening meal and a drink. Magical moments!

We never received an apology from the holiday company. These days, we would have complained and asked for some if not all of our money back but there were no trading standard laws in the 1950s and consumers just put up with anything dealt out to them.

I was surprised to receive a brochure the following year – as if nothing untoward had happened to us.

Hi! My name is Iris Lloyd. I live in beautiful Hungerford and the Kennet and Avon canal is opposite my front door, across my drive, a side road and the canal bank, so I see all the activity on the waterway. Additionally, our church is half a mile distant, also on the canal side, so we get boaters going in to have a look around or attend services.

My vicar and his wife are Waterways Chaplains and I thought it was something I would like to do, so volunteered. A training day was cancelled and then along came the pandemic. However, I offered to become a guinea pig using marvellous Zoom, and five Saturday morning training sessions were arranged for half a dozen of us.

At the start, I felt overwhelmed. I had no idea there was a waterways community. I thought boaters were out there enjoying themselves and was not aware of the needs of many, so my eyes have been opened with a vengeance. My only experience of the waterways was an unusual canal holiday I enjoyed in the fifties and I will tell you about that in a future article.

I am now getting used to the idea of lives lived on the canals and broads, but cannot start walking the towpath in earnest until restrictions are relaxed a little. I thought that perhaps diary entries from me, of my experiences, once I start, would be of interest to readers. It will also keep me up to scratch!

So, am I suited to becoming a Waterways Chaplain? I consciously became a Christian at the age of 17 and believe that God loves every one of us, though it may not seem so sometimes.

I worked for the C.A.B. for 20 years so know how to listen to people. I am also a listener (as opposed to a packer of food) at our local Food Bank, which is not operating at the moment.

Having been born in Clapham, south-west London, I was a child and young teenager during the war, was in London on the first night of the Blitz and was evacuated shortly afterwards. I am now widowed, have two daughters and three grandchildren, all in their twenties, of whom I am very proud although their lifestyles are very different from how we were brought up.

I have been writing all my life, including 17 pantomimes, all produced by amateurs; eight years as a correspondent for our local paper, the Newbury Weekly News; I am the editor of the church’s monthly magazine (we came 19th out of over 360 entries in a national competition last year!) and I am now writing my ninth novel (all self published). I was also a dancer for 80 years, teaching for much of that time, but put away my tap shoes a few years ago.

My age is 89 – but what’s a number?

So I look forward to contributing an occasional article to this online magazine and hope you enjoy them.

Iris Lloyd