Plank Lane, Leigh

Here I am Rune

Distance 5.6 miles

Total 3665 Locks  229 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5461.2 miles

A fairly short day taking us from Wigan to Plank Lane on the outskirts of Leigh. Because the Wigan main flight of locks is closed for the majority of the day it leaves the pound to get onto the Leigh Branch a bit shallow since water it leaving the pound via two locks but isn’t coming in from the main flight. What this meant was that whilst waiting for Poolstock Top lock I couldn’t go onto the lock moorings because the boat was grounding so had to spend about 20 minutes or so drifting around waiting for the boats ahead of me to clear the lock. Eventually turned out that it took us over an hour to clear both of the Poolstock Locks, which is pretty slow by any measure.

Once beyond the locks it was then fairly straightforward to get to Plank Lane where we took the opportunity to top up the water tank as services along the Bridgewater Canal are a bit thin on the ground.