SATURDAY. At Fishers Swing Bridge, L & L
The 2008 trip thus far: 312 Locks; 584.5 Miles; 56 Swing\Lift Bridges. Bus pass journeys 21
After a very quiet night, helped by the lack of pubs nearby and the patrols of plastic policemen, (Community support officers) we awoke refreshed at 6.50 this morning. We went for a short walk to get a paper from Wigan North Western station. The sky was clouding over, and some heavy looking ones at that. By the time that we had eaten breakfast and moved out of the first lock, drizzle began to fall.
We had decided that Wigan had very little to offer us; the few decent buildings had been all but obscured by new style shopping areas. Why so many? We went to look inside the church. It was locked; only open to visitors on Saturdays. It seemed to me that to find visible evidence of culture in Wigan, you would search for a discarded yoghurt carton.
The council are so proud of Trencherfield mill, which boasts ‘probably the largest working mill engine in Europe’; that it is now only open for two short periods on a Sunday, not daily. There are broken windows along the south wall.
The Way We Were, billed as a stunning exhibition/museum/theatre showing the lives of local people around the 1900’s; dramatically now shows The Way We Are Now, namely closed down and boarded up. Wigan has one redeeming feature; that of the view westwards from lock 67 of the flight. It is quite simply, stunning.
The drizzle seemed to hold off whilst we did the next two locks; we were lulled into a false sense of security. When the heavens opened at Dean Locks, we were already fully waterproofed; we were intending to moor up just before Fishers Swing Bridge about ten minutes below the lock.
We did exactly that.
The rain continued for most of the day with some heavy showers.
