"I DON'T BELIEVE IT", but alas it is true—The Anderton Boat Lift will be closed all next year!
As you will already know it has been closed all this year and now comes the news that it will be closed all next year too, Keith Gudgin reports.
It was closed because a mere gate lifting wire had failed, and CaRT tells it cannot now use the system that has been in use since 2002!
It tells us the original rope—it is wire not rope—and pulley mechanism will be replaced on all gates with a more modern, robust and safer lifting system making the lift more reliable.
Surely the wire that obviously rusted away could have been simply replaced to keep the lift moving, and at least release the trapped boaters. (Our picture of the reopening is shown.)
But no, let's make a real meal out of it that will take all 2026, and bugger the boaters. But why all year we are not told.
CaRT won't like this
There is a colourful picture of a Chinook helicopter that has become an unofficial symbol of Whaley Bridge.
The symbol of the town where the helicopter helped it to avoid catastrophic flooding when a reservoir bank collapsed through lack of maintenance. (As the resulting enquiry found.)
It was early October when the posters started appearing and they are now swamping the town in houses, shops, offices and pubs along Whaley Bridge's high street.
But I reckon that bringing this massive failure of CaRT to properly maintain or even inspect the dam that broke, will go down like a lead balloon! Showing its failure eh?
But with more than 1,000 homes having to to be evacuated by the rush of water from the collapsed dam of Toddbrook Reservoir, the people of Whaley Bridge were very pleased that the Chinook was piling aggregate onto the dam bank to prevent it collapsing completely.
So in a 'thank you' to the RAF and its helicopter, residents and shopkeepers have started displaying posters featuring the Chinook image to recall and celebrate the way it helped the community pull together during the crisis.
The artist who designed the poster has requested to keep her identity a secret but revealed her inspiration to the BBC, explaining:
"I decided to create a new symbol of hope that is unique to Whaley Bridge," she said.
"It's a symbol of what the town was so rightly proud of in 2019, with new meaning in 2025, a year where we have needed unity and hope to speak more loudly than symbols of division."
No comment from Canal & River Trust—perhaps it is not amused!
New mooring bollard
There is a new bollard on the way—the Accessible Mooring Bollard. And here's a picture by Matthew Symonds of the trust.
It carried the disabled sign, so I gather that is what it is for.
Anyway it was awarded the Inclusive Values Award from Canal & River Trust.
It has been installed as a trial at Icknield Port Loop in Birmingham as a temporary installation, as this would be the first time the theory was to be put into practice.
I find it a bit difficult to understand as when we moor-up we use a method told us by a sailor who gave up the sea for the inland waterways.
He formed a loop with the rope and dropped in on the bollard then another loop that he twisted and also dropped on the bollard, that has held us tight for 25 years!
Perhaps being for the disabled there is a special method of securing, of which I do not know...
Common sense
Comes the Autumn and comes the host of suggestions of how to keep our boats safe through the winter.
Individual marinas, publications and others all tell what you should do, with even police forces now at it! With most of the scribes not even boaters!
Yet all it needs is common sense!
That's what we have used for all the many years we have been boating, never bothering with all the hogwash—and ner a single problem!
Couldn't resist
Couldn't resist another picture (Courtesy of the BBC) of the Whaley Bridge symbol, with a picture of shop owner Lisa Wharmby with her poster who tells the town had faced a series of disruptions
Victor Swift—telling tales for 25 years...