Leeds and Liverpool Canal:Astley Green

nb Clements Clan was passed fairly early in the cruise.   This boat left Liverpool with our convoy and we seem to have been leapfrogging since then.   Pat wanted to get shopping in Wigan at the large ASDA store on the outskirts, so we moored up by Seven Stars Bridge and Clements Clan passed us there.   Due to other traffic, when Pat returned and we got moving, we were right behind them at the next lock, so they waited at Henhurst Lock for us.   Then there were just two more in the Leigh Branch to go.   Plank Lane lift bridge is now user operated so we were surprised to see what we though was a bridge keeper operating it for us.  No! It was a convoy of 3 boats coming the other way and then letting us through.   Pat would have hated this one being on a busy road, so we were in the end well ahead.  At Leigh we join the Bridgewater Canal.  Passing through Leigh, busy with towpath traffic we reached our destination, Astley Green.   There is a busy canalside pub here, but more interestingly a Mining Museum with the prize exhibit of the largest stationary steam engine in the country, once used as the pit winding engine.    It truly is massive and can still run, although only on compressed air.   The 15 Lancashire boilers which once fed it with steam are also gone and so, of course is the pit, so it has little work to actually do, just turn.   In many ways, apart from this the Museum is rather sad resembling a scrap yard of rusting equipment, although there is a small historical exhibit telling the story of coal mining in general, and some stationary small engines of various sorts which can also be run, again on compressed air.   It is all maintained by voluntary effort and of course money is very short.