Right in front of me is the entrance to the Peak Forest Canal, which, lock-free, heads south for eight miles through two small tunnels to the magnificent Marple aqueduct towering 100ft above the Rover Goyt. There is then a dramatic climb through 16 closely set locks, where a short diversion takes my route to Bugsworth Basin, which operated until 1922 as a trans-shipment point between the canal and a tramway that ran seven miles on to huge limestone quarries, and on to Whaley Bridge, for no other reason than it is just a few miles short of Chapel-en-le-Frith, where my parents lived when I was born 50 years ago.
I will then head back to the top of the Marple locks to turn left on to the Macclesfield Canal, built by arguably the greatest of all of the civil engineers of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, Thomas Telford. Though his work predated the coming of the railways, Telford in his road-building and, especially, his canal construction pioneered the processes that allowed the Stephensons, for example, to create the first working steam passenger railway, between Manchester and Liverpool, and to carve their London to Birmingham Railway through the Chilterns in the 1830s.
Where James Brindley before him had either followed the contours of the land or taken his canals up hill and down dale using large numbers of locks, Telford pioneered the cut-and-fill techniques, which meant using the spoil from cutting deep through hills to create huge embankments to bridge the dales. These embankments were crucial in creating the virtually level playing fields for the railway tracks that were to put so many canals out of business.
In this way the Macclesfield Canal, which opened in 1831 as the railway age was dawning, runs for nearly 28 miles with only one flight of 12 locks before joining Brindley's Trent and Mersey Canal. The route then plunges into the darkness of the 3,000-yard Harecastle tunnel before emerging into the iron-red waters of Newcastle under Lyme and the five miles or so to Etruria, home to the potteries of Josiah Wedgewood, who, with the state of road transport in the eighteenth century was satisfied if a third of goods were delivered unbroken and so became one of the great promoters of canals.
· Mike Holland is writing weekly online dispatches from his canal journey around England. Thanks to the wonders of wireless technology, you can email him at michael.holland4@btinternet.com
