The last few miles of the Macclesfield Canal take us through Congleton. We used to get tantalising glimpses of the town when we drove up to visit Firecrest in build, but we’ve never actually walked around this little town. The signage from the canal was also intriguing.
We moored to the north of the town near Stanley’s bridge and walked the mile and a half into the centre.
Despite some old timber framed buildings and an attractive town garden, the day was damp and miserable and I wasn’t inspired to spend long exploring. I suspect the town has suffered economically.
But this isn’t a new thing, in 1620 the town was struggling to attract visitors to it’s bear baiting contests. As legend has it, when the town couldn’t find the money to buy a bigger more aggressive beast, they used the funds raised to buy a town bible to buy a bear instead to keep the bear baiting entertainment going. Thankfully they have more respect for their animals nowadays.
We continued cruising south, under the last of the gorgeous snake bridges so familiar on the Macclesfield Canal. These ingeniously simple designs allows the old horse drawn barges to continue seamlessly when the Towpath changed sides because the horses didn’t need to be unclipped and refastened.
And one last lock to be tackled at Hall Green. This was originally the end of the Macclesfield Canal, as the mile long Hall Green Branch was built by the Trent and Mersey Canal company in order for them to charge tolls and to retain the water flowing down the Macclesfield Canal. Originally it had two chambers that enabled either side to be the higher or lower level. Many stop locks have been removed from the system, but due to the draft of the Harecastle tunnel and the shallow depth of the Macc the 12 inch drop at Hall Green is one of the nicer locks to work.
With only a mile to go, we crossed the aqueduct and looked down onto the rusty Trent and Mersey, under bridge 97,
and onto the Trent and Mersey Canal