Chesterfield Canal

I joined Paul and Christine for a cruise on narrowboat Waterway Routes from Gainsborough on the River Trent and up the navigable length of the Chesterfield Canal, to help in filming for their Chesterfield Canal DVD in their excellent series of waterway DVDs. Later, I went round to the far side of the derelict Norwood Tunnel for a walk up the canal past the sites of locks 7 to 19 as far as the western tunnel mouth. Hopefully one day I will be able to travel this way by boat.

Near the top on the navigable, eastern, side
No way through here, for the moment, but it is recognisably a canal
The locks here have had gardens built right up to the edge, reportedly without permission and that will need to be resolved as part of the restoration on this side
Approaching the western portal of the tunnel
The western portal. At one stage the restoration plans called for six more new locks to raise the canal higher than the original route, but more recently a new shorter tunnel has been proposed which would avoid a number of problems associated with the earlier proposals.

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