Linking the Locks

摘要

First, a confession. I've always harboured some rather unfairly negative feelings about the Sankey Canal, along with a handful of other industrial northern restorations. It's not that I don't want them restored - quite the opposite - nor that I don't believe it can be done. It's just a feeling that they're 'difficult' ones, with not much original canal surviving, and a lot of new construction needed. So having already explored the entire Barnsley Canal and Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal and found this impression to be grossly over-pessimistic, recently it was the turn of the Sankey. And here, too, exploration on foot or bike reveals there's a lot more canal left than might have been expected for a canal running through a populous ex-industrial area.