Saturday 6 April 2013

Budworth Mere and the Anderton Boat Lift

Saturday 6th April 2013 

A sunny afternoon wander along the Trent & Mersey Canal and Budworth Mere

Distance: 5.5km; Ascent: negligible; Sunny; with Lynsey, Isabel, Mum & Dad

It was a lovely sunny weekend so we decided to head out for an afternoon pushchair walk.  There was a walk around Marbury Country Park in one of our ATP walks books, which we remembered being quite nice when we last walked it back in 2011, so we decided to head there for the afternoon.

Trent & Mersey Canal near Anderton
Therefore we set off walking from the Anderton Boat Lift carpark at around 2:30pm and headed north-eastwards along the Trent & Mersey Canal towpath in the sunshine.  A few hundred metres after crossing Marbury Lane we reached a footbridge that took us over the water into Big Wood.  This was a pleasant woodland, which looked like it would be a good place to return to in a few weeks once the bluebells were out.

Trent & Mersey canal on the edge of Big Wood
After nearly a kilometre of wandering through the woods, we reached the shores of Budworth Mere, where we spotted a black swan.  We followed the southern shoreline more or less for the next 500m, before heading south through Marbury Country Park to reach the main road.  Due to the time we decided to take a shortcut along the road for a few hundred metres, which was slightly tricky due to the intermittent pavement!

A Black Swan
Budworth Mere
Marbury Park
Soon we were back on the Trent & Mersey Canal towpath and headed for the Anderton Boat Lift visitor centre, where we enjoyed tea and cake before taking a look at the impressive boat lift ourselves.  The lift was built in 1875 to provide a link between the Weaver Navigation and Trent & Mersey Canal, which is 15m higher.  After falling into disuse in the 1980s it was restored and re-opened in 2002; more information can be found here.  Unfortunately we didn't have time for a boat trip in the lift today so we’ll have to return another time for that!

Anderton Boat Lift

N.B. 03/06/13 - Post date updated to actual date of walk, i.e. 06/04/13 (from 17/04/13) 


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