Google Street View of the Rochdale Canal in Manchester

I am now quite used to searching Google Maps and switching to Satellite view to see aerial photographs of the country.  In fact its quite good fun doing a virtual tour of the canals and we can even cut out the hard work by using Tony Blews’ Google Earth Canal Maps website.

From 18th March 2009 we can now not only look down from above but also literally walk through the streets with Google Street view.  First impressions are great – you drag a little yellow man onto the map and the streets which he knows all light up – follow the arrows on the screen and you can move up and down, and grab the screen with the mouse to turn through 360 degrees – you can even look over walls and bridges.

In this first release it seems we can now walk through Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Coventry, Derby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton and York (England); Belfast (Northern Ireland); Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow (Scotland); Cardiff and Swansea (Wales).  The imaging software is incredibly clever, even blocking out car number plates and peoples faces – although after a quick test I can see this doesn’t always work too well.

So where’s the canals link?  Test out Castle Street in Manchester, for a start off : you can walk right over the Rochdale Canal at Lock 92 and down into the Castlefield area.    It looks like most of the pictures are only a year or so old, much more recent than most Google aerial photography.  Let me know of any other good canal locations which you find!
Below you should be seeing a live view – click on the picture and have fun – but it doesn’t seem to be loading every time. If theres no picture then try reloading or follow the link to Google at the end.

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Zulu leaving Castlefield Manchester

About midnight on Saturday, on the way back from Snow Patrol, the weather took a major turn for the worse and a night of rain and wind ensued.  It didn’t put off the Manchester clubbers out in force, and the bars alongside Deansgate were heaving – what credit crunch?   Down at the Castlefield basin area there were very few if any revellers – that’s what is so nice about this mooring, literally a few hundred yards to the nightlife centre, yet not much disturbance although I dare say it has had its moments when it was a notorious drug den.

The morning was surprisingly sunny so I decided to push off early and head home – not possible to get to Middlewich in one day of course, but I thought I would see how far I could get – and ended up on the Trent and Mersey at Acton Bridge.  I decided not to push to Anderton as it would have meant a delay at Saltersford tunnel due to the time restriction.

Although its short, Saltersford tunnel is far from straight, and its not possible to see one end from the other.  Last time I visisted I was three quarters of the way through when a hire boat entered from the other direction, so I had the pleasure of reversing 150 yards to let them through.  Now the Preston Brook concept of allowing boats to enter at certain times only has been adopted, and this is certainly one of BWs better new rules.  Coming from Preston Brook boats can enter beteen half past and ten-two the hour, the other direction being from on the hour until twenty past.  The same applies at Preston Brook tunnel but the window is only for 10 minutes rather than 20.

It was so good to stop and moor for the night – I can’t remember boating on such a windy day for many years, and the mixture of rain, sleet, hailstones whipped into a wind chill by the gales made it very hard going today. 

Nevertheless the Bridgewater remains a very easy canal to navigate and we ended up 24 miles from Manchester – not bad going.

Another beautiful day for boating and the wide deep Bridgewater eats up the miles in no time at all.  With maximum power, Zulu struggles to make 3mph on the canals, but today according to the satnav we were rattling along at a heady 4mph for most of the way.  The canal is so wide that even when passing other boats a reasonable speed can be maintained without making any wake whatsover.

The Bridgewater is a very pleasant canal to cruise, passing through many suburban areas which tend to face the canal rather than turn their backs on it.  I was pleased to find that Thorn Marine are still operating chandlery and boat services at Stockton Heath despite dire warnings that their historic site was scheduled for demolition and redevelopment when I last passed through here almost 4 years ago.  I took advantage and topped up with Excel at £10.00 a bag, which isn’t too bad considering how much fuel has risen this year.

The last couple of miles into Manchester really are quite different  with hardly a building still standing – acre after acre of waste land gives way to a massive container port followed by Old Trafford football stadium, past Pomona lock which would drop you down to the Ship Canal if you had the keys, and then into Castlefield which I really like.  There are some really nice warehouse conversions, and some excellent moorings.  You just have to ignore the new tower blocks on the way into the basin, where literally hundreds of absolutely identical apartments overlook each other.  This was all just being built four years ago – it doesn’t seem to have done much for the area, other than reclaim a few acres of land.

Zulu at Castlefield

There is however something magical about approaching a big city by boat, and this is definitley the easist way into Manchester.  To be out in the countryside one minute, to being one minute away from the city is such a contrast, I still love the arrival - I don’t think there’s any better analogy than being in a time machine - plodding away at four miles per hour and suddenly arriving in the future, with a gentle nudge as you stop on your own private mooring bollard.