Ninety-three miles of Brindley's 'Grand Trunk' across the Midlands, from the Bridgewater Canal to the Trent at Shardlow
The Trent & Mersey Canal runs 93 miles across the Midlands, from Preston Brook, where it joins the Bridgewater Canal, to Shardlow and the River Trent. Engineered by James Brindley and opened in 1777, it was the first of the great long-distance canals, and was known in its day as the Grand Trunk because so many later waterways branched off it. It falls and climbs through 76 locks, and passes through Cheshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire on its way. For a walker or cyclist the towpath is continuous and mostly easy going, with the industrial heart of the route around Stoke-on-Trent.
Its engineering set-pieces are among the most striking on the network. At Kidsgrove the canal runs through the Harecastle Tunnel, over a mile and a half long; Brindley’s original bore took eleven years to dig, and boats now use the parallel tunnel Thomas Telford completed in 1827. Near Northwich the Anderton Boat Lift, built in 1875, lowers boats some fifty feet down to the River Weaver in a great iron frame. At Fradley Junction the canal meets the Coventry Canal, and the long flight of the Cheshire locks earned the nickname Heartbreak Hill.
The canal owed much to Josiah Wedgwood, who backed it to carry raw clay and flint to the Potteries and his fragile finished ware safely away by water. It also moved salt from the Cheshire towns and served the breweries of Burton upon Trent, and it transformed the fortunes of every district it touched.
Stoke-on-Trent is on the main rail line, so sections are easily walked in stages. At the eastern end, Shardlow remains one of the best-preserved inland canal ports in England.
