"Ducks, Geese, Fish" (E3 – Middlewood Locks Fest Special)

This week we're doing something a little bit different, and focusing in on Middlewood Locks Festival, which takes place every year on the canal . The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal was abandoned in 1961, but some parts of it have been restored, and one of of those sections is Middlewood Locks. This section was restored and reopened in 2008, and since 2024 there's been a festival on this section of the canal called Middlewood Locks Festival, which is a free, family-friendly celebration of the canal, and the community and neighbourhood around it.

This year's festival is on Saturday 4th July, and to celebrate the upcoming festival, here's an episode made up entirely of interviews with people at Middlewood Locks Festival 2025. We're going to hear from some narrowboat owners, we'll hear about some heroic attempts to look after the local wildlife, and we'll also hear about the lost art of trout tickling.

Find out more right here: https://middlewood-locks.co.uk/middlewood-locks-fest-2025/

This project was created by Walk the Plank and the Manchester Bury and Bolton Canal Society with Whose Art Whose Culture funding from Salford CVS and the GMCA.

Recorded and produced by David McFarlane.

Music by David McFarlane and Ugnė Makselytė. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_10 0:09

Welcome to the Hidden Canal Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Hidden Canal Podcast, and once again we're hearing from the people of Salford to find out what are their memories, thoughts, and feelings around canals. And this week we're doing something a little bit different, which is focusing in on Middlewood Locks Festival, which takes place every year on the canal. The Manchester Bolton and Bury Canal was abandoned in 1961, but some parts of it have been restored. And one of those parts is Middlewood Locks, and it was reopened in 2008. And since 2024, there's been a festival on this section of the canal called Middlewood Locks Festival, which is a free, family-friendly celebration of the canal and the community and neighbourhood around it. This year's festival is on Saturday, the 4th of July. And if you're listening to this podcast now on the day it comes out, that's the very next Saturday at Middlewood Locks in Salford. So to celebrate the upcoming festival, here's an episode made up entirely of interviews with people at the festival in 2025. We're going to hear from some narrowboat owners, we'll hear about some heroic attempts to look after the local wildlife, and we'll also hear about the lost art of trout tickling. If you fancy coming to the festival this year, that's on Saturday, July the 4th. Anybody's welcome. There's live music, there's food, there's drink, there's face painting, there's a fire installation at dusk, and of course, there'll be a lovely canal that you can go out on in a canoe if you want. I'll be back on the other side of this episode, and I'll maybe see you on Saturday.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

I think when it comes to canals, really, it's just it's a place of like serenity and very chilled out. So I think maybe all memories kind of merge into one of it being just nice, you never have a bad experience. Yeah, it's beautiful, so I'm glad we can have it here in the city centre.

SPEAKER_04 2:30

What I I'd like particularly though is the way it's they're being used now as walking, cycling routes. I don't run a car, we both walk. So we can walk along the bridgewater come out and tourists like or even as well as me if we're really energetic as well.

SPEAKER_09 2:47

Just generally gain for walks down, really. Uh it's quite uh I think in cities it can be quite uh quite difficult to sort of get out into sort of green spaces, so it's kind of the the next best thing, really. Um but yeah, it's kind of an easy concept to sort of you know on a on a day like today, really. But should we go for a walk? You know, just a walk along the canal and so on. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

I think that in the time where everyone is moving so fast and everything moves so quickly, I think it's lovely to come to a place where the boats don't speed down the water, they're going slow, it slows things down, and it's just a place where it does have a such a rich history that not everyone might know about, but even they can still enjoy it.

SPEAKER_06 3:33

So fishing in canals when I was a kid. Very small.

SPEAKER_04 3:38

I suppose the earliest. I just I can remember my dad taking me to parts of the bridgewater. I mean we if I travel from Swinton to Eccles by a bus, I go along that stretch and Patrick Rock, and you'd see the house roads there all the time. And I used to travel along that route as a child, so that was probably the oldest memory. But then when you got to the end and you crossed, then you had to cross Ship Canal, and of course the bridgewater also crossed the ship canal, so those memories will go back to my early childhood, I guess.

SPEAKER_07 4:18

Well, originally obviously perhaps a bit annoying to me mum. I used to go around to the canal a bit, which was some way off where we lived, but uh I'd be about nine nine years old, then I suppose. Just beginning to go off a bit on my own. Uh but I had a couple of friends that I used to go around with a lot. We spent a lot of time in the countryside. We had a stream round near us, which would be fast as a feeder, really, as it went into a lodge. But it what I want to tell you is one of the lads could tickle under the stones and catch trout. You know, you're just going to tickle under the back end, and he could get catch a trout in his hand.

SPEAKER_05 5:02

Trout tickling is, to the best of my knowledge. Um you can lie down by a trout stream, and the trouts will come into the pools by the water's edge. And if you're nice and careful, you know what you're doing. You could actually tickle them under the chin to the point where you can actually grab them and fish them in that way.

SPEAKER_07 5:18

Yeah, yeah, you call it tickling for trout, yeah, yeah. You you know in the shadows where they where they you know don't they don't sort of sleep in the sun or rest in the sun, they go out of the sun.

SPEAKER_05 5:30

So they had they'd probably be sheltering in alcoves and overhangs.

SPEAKER_07 5:34

So it used to go along the edge of the brook and you just feel one and then yeah, he had it off. Really? That's one of the things I remember when I was very young.

SPEAKER_05 5:44

But I've never heard of trout in a canal, they tend to be freshwater, so if they were in a canal, then that implies that there was a fair amount of fresh coming down.

SPEAKER_07 5:52

So that's what I remember about the canals, really, and I also have a friend who was brought up in Manchester who tells me when he was young he used to jump in the canal down at Stretford and swim in it. But I mean maybe it weren't quite as polluted, I don't know, but he's he's he's he's still living, he's not quite as old as me, being his late 70s now.

SPEAKER_04 6:13

Yeah. I think what's intrigued me though in recent years is just how many canals there are. You know, you to me it was a ship canal on the bridge, it was a canal, but you look in the centre of Manchester, it's like a convergence of so many different canals, isn't it? We have some friends who have a canal boat, and of course we've been to visit them at their boat, and uh it was interesting to see uh where they berthed the canal.

SPEAKER_08 6:39

Uh we own a narrow boat actually, so we've uh we're actually moored just uh down the way there. So yes, yeah, we're in the green one down the front. Uh boat's called sunny afternoon, so a lot of people don't get a lot of people seem to think it's some kind of weather forecast. So as you're driving past and it's drizzling on an afternoon, they go, Oh, got that wrong, and we say, Well, no, it's not a weather forecast, it's just the name of a boat. But it is, it's after the name of the kink song because my wife and I share a birthday, and that apparently was number one, I think, the week after we were born. We've probably always been aware of canals, I think. Um, and then um just before lockdown or the first lockdown, we booked a holiday to go abroad, and it was going to be quite a nice trip for us, but obviously couldn't go on that. Um, so the one of the only alternatives we were looking at was booking a higher boat because we'd often thought about doing it, but never really got around to doing it. Um so we had a week on a higher boat, bumped off the towpath side and off the banks all the way along, which was fine because it was a higher boat, it goes back, um, and we really enjoyed it, and then later that year we hired another one, uh, and the year after we hired two more, and we started thinking this is getting a bit daft, you know, there's got to be a cheaper way of doing this. So uh so we ended up buying one, and that was it. So that was about four or five years ago now.

SPEAKER_07 7:58

Our recent connections, which is during my married life, obviously, and in the last what 20 years, we decided we would go on the canals ourselves and have a boat. And we looked at a couple of boats, we couldn't really get sorted out what style they were or if they were a good enough condition. So in the end, we planned to have a new uh base pass, a new hull, which was built in Yorkshire. That was brought over to uh Patrickhoff, Manchester, and we had it fitted out to our liking. But before we did that, we hired one and did a section on from sort of up black on the Lees Liverpool up towards Blackburn area, through some locks accessory, because I wanted my wife obviously to see what it was like, she would be working the locks quite frequently, and uh before I bought the boat, and she said, Yeah, I'd love this. So, and we've had the boat now for nearly 20 years now. Yeah, we've been to also two trips to the Langoland Canal, which takes you over this uh very famous aqueduct in Wales.

SPEAKER_08 9:06

Again on the Flangohland Canal, is there's a famous, world famous aqueduct called the Ponte Silti Aqueduct, uh which is like I was gonna say it's 300 foot, it's probably nowhere near 300 foot, but it's it's a very, very high across this valley. Uh and it's it's one of these where there's a towpath on one side, and on the other side of the canal of the water, uh is just like a six well, maybe maybe a 10 millimetre steel plate, and that's it. So as you're going along, you can see right down to the very bottom of the valley underneath. Um, and it's a one of my favourite things about that is thinking it remembering my wife sitting there holding on to the side like it was some kind of you know roller coaster rice, she was absolutely terrified. Probably shouldn't say that was my favourite, maybe should I?

SPEAKER_07 9:56

My wife thought I wouldn't maybe not go over there because I'm not good with heights, but I just looked where I was going, I didn't keep looking down the side. And it is quite a test for you because on one side there's no there's no edge to it, it's you're literally in like a long trough. One side you've got a walkway on, so you feel alright there, but this side there's nothing. And if you stood on the deck at the back steering, you know, she was saying, Have a look over there, have a look, there's I said, You enjoy the view, I'm looking where I'm going.

SPEAKER_08 10:28

So yeah, yeah. It's such a slow pace of life as well. You you can't really get too stressed when you're already going at four miles an hour. Plus, we can we can take the dogs, uh, we can just go out and moor wherever you want. You can moor next to a pub if you want to go for something to eat or drink, or you can moor in the middle nowhere and just wake up in the morning and you've got the birds singing and the sun's shining, hopefully. Um but it's just yeah, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_11 10:53

I mean you've been at the nature that surrounds them is quite nice as well. Um, and I think it's quite nice to be around that. Um, it's important for just the overall mental health and well-being, I think, being around life. Um can also provide a lot of that when you get it with uh the geese here, um with our cousins every year, and although the geese are stupid, nice to see life. I think it's cool.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

Okay, later back the duckies in the camera and the geese. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 11:24

I heard the rata.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Well, asking you here, but what are those with the on the boards? Oh there. What's that? Good. Yes, it's a good job.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Better money. Oh many so my partner actually used to live on the balcony that overlooked it. So I think that was I would literally sit out there on my dinner every single day and just watch like all the geese swimming about or the birds come in, because you get like we get ducks in here as well. There's none here at the minute, but we get loads of ducks, we get loads of dragonflies, there's lots of butterflies around here as well, which is exciting. Um, they're always like skim in the water. It's just watching it. I just enjoy watching the canal. So I only became acquainted with the canals, could you say about three years ago when my partner moved into Middlewood Locks? Um I think for me it was more like the goose aspect of it that brought me over here, but then I think I've realised how important keeping the canals as clean and clear as possible is for them to thrive.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

When it comes to the wildlife of the canals, um when it comes to Manchester especially, I think I myself and my girlfriend and Thomas as well, we try to keep this canal clean as much as we can because we like being near it, we like going to it.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

So he moved here, yeah, like I say, about three years ago. And there was about I think at the time there was like 14 geese living here, and the first year that they had their goslins we had quite a lot of deaths, it was quite sad. Um, there was quite a lot of rubbish in here. Um at the time, like where railings is on the left hand side was still a construction site, and it was just it was a very like difficult place for them to nest, and I think obviously the geese don't know any better, unfortunately. They just set up camp over here and it wasn't accessible at all, and we had quite a lot of them pass away. So then last year, me and a lot of the builders from the construction of railings put together like little scaffolding ramps, and I think we managed I believe there was about 22 goslins, and only six of them pass away, which I think naturally that's why they have a lot of goslins because they pass away. Um but we managed to keep quite a lot of them alive, and then this year we've only had one goslin pass away. So me and my partner came out and we litter picked the canal because it does it gets quite a lot like over that side there.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

I have two litter pickers, and uh every now and then if we if we notice that this canal is feeling a bit well before before we did my legging anyway. But um before my yeah, we we we've done it before where we've cleared we've cleared yeah before the incident before the incident. No um it's we've got filled three shopping bags, uh bin liners full of rubbish from this canal. Um because you know we live here, we feel like we've got that sense of responsibility and we should all look after it because at the end of the day, um if you make if you make effort like that, other people sh might probably follow suit.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

We came out, litter picked it. We got about three bin bags full of rubbish. Um and like I say, so they've all survived this year, bar one, which I think is like a massive, massive win on our side. Um, and I'm actually setting up like a canal litter-picking society organisation with work. Um, so we're gonna come out and try and keep this canal as clear as possible, and the canal's around Castlefield as well.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

And yeah, um there's a bit of a community, we understand who spent. I think there's a bit of a split, it's people who like the canal and people who like the geese and the canal. Um, and we've even thought about buying some of them ramps for the geese ourselves and seeing if we can install them in. Um girlfriend's got three of them in a car actually. We're just waiting, we're just waiting for the right time to put them in.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

So and I just think even with there's about me and like three or four other residents that have been doing it, and I think even with just that many people keeping the canals as clear as possible, we've managed to keep that many goslins alive. So I feel like if we can try and get more people on board with it, I think it'd make a massive change, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 15:48

But the further you go into the city, I don't think they're respected enough. So um the one by Dean's gonna be yeah, it's just full of litter. Um and we yeah, I just wish there could be something more done about that because it's the minute it's covered with litter, it doesn't it doesn't feel like um it's a place that you want to be anymore necessarily. And you you feel disheartened that you're there and you have to look at it. So yeah, I wish they need to be kept on on top of a bit more.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Rivers, canal well canals in our case have been there for possibly you know thousands of years. There is that grounding effect that it has on on our psyche, doesn't it? When we th when we sit here, we can think about industrial revolution and you know hundreds of years before that, about Vikings, and it just I don't know, it seems to bring peace. Water always brings peace, and canals obviously man-made um structures just celebrating what human beings can do. Yeah, so as as my rest was saying, bringing people together, how how wonderful. This is probably the one of the definite.

SPEAKER_10 17:03

Well, that's us done for this week. Thanks for listening, and if you have a canal story you'd like to share with us, you can leave us a voice message at www.speakpipe.com forward slash hidden canal. This project was created by Walk the Plank and the Manchester Bolton and Berry Canal Society, with Who's Art, Who's Culture Funding from Salford CVS and the GMCA. It was produced and recorded by me, David McFarlane, with music from me and Ugner and Max Elite. See you next time.