yes yes yes yes yes
ridiculous if it looks ridiculous on camera it's because it is ridiculous right in front
of me is a straight drop down into goodness knows what so need to tread very carefully
to my mind this is find of the day forget nine head this right here is fine of the
day
so i kind of envisaged that this video was going to be more of a relaxed vlog today
we've done quite a few punchy quirky informative style videos lately so i
thought today could be a relaxed one but then i looked at the itinerary and what is
along this canal there's quite a lot of like quirky stories and little snippets
my name is paul and i'm rebecca join us on today's canal adventure
so this is tiverton basin and it marks the start of what is in use today of the grand
western canal and there's all sorts here there's a little heritage center there's a horse drawn horse
drawn barge on bars and a little floating cafe a little floating cat it's all sorts here yeah
well it might be eventually but not today so we're just heading down to the southern tip
of this basin because there's a little um like a tunnel that comes up from below
in the car park and comes up here it's like a an old entrance or something wasn't it yeah so
let's see if we can see the top of part of that before we crack on and tell you some of
the really fascinating stories about this canal so it's kind of it's kind of right here so it's
obviously blocked up because now it's just a picnic table with just concrete floor so there
used to be a step way down here down to the lower level should we go and do the canal let's let's go
so rebecca's just been to the visit center and nicked well it's not been it's not open so outside
there's a little thing which is great because that details the uh all the open parts of this canal
but that's not what we're doing today so there's a huge map about the the open bits of this canal
zone where you can boat but that's not what we're doing today against the abandoned bit of the canal
the way down line goes so we're at way town or where let's say eight miles further on than
Tiverton you may be wondering why we've jumped eight miles of this canal so as we said earlier
in 1814 this section of the canal was built and it was built it was completed it still exists today
and the reason why they built it so quick within a sort of a three or four year period
is because i had no locks no inclines no lifts nothing it was just flat canal roughly at the 95
meter contour that's quite important we'll come back to that shortly but we've skipped
the currently usable bit of the canal which you can go on now in your pleasure boat
and your horse drawn barge we've skipped that bit and we've come right away up to
what is waytown the waytown lime kilns and we're now going to go on the abandoned
bit of the canal because that's where the most interesting stories are
so we're coming up to the first interesting bit and it's a tunnel now i'd fully envisage being
able to get into this tunnel because it's only 40 meters long it's on the abandoned stretch
of the canal but it turns out it's not i mean i've even got my waders and a big stick
sticks are sort of weighing my way in waiters are in the bag just there but actually it's
about five or six feet deep water plus the silt so i'm not getting in there am i and the steep
side and the other interesting thing as well is it's really small now i know that they built
the next section of the canal at least as a tub boat canal so they're gonna have small
tubs that would make sense with the size which would make sense because it's yeah
that's the first thing done that's trees out the river well i can't get the bit that's
over that side because it's it's over that side um questions what is that for
so here we are the first stretch today for us at the abandoned part of this canal we're just north
of lowdswell now as we said that first section between Tiverton and lowdswell the middle section
was all built at the 95 meter contour and it was built by 1814 so they now had to think about the
next phase the next phases of connecting the bristol channel down to the english channel and
avoiding the whole need to go around lands end and cornwall of course that was the original intention
of the canal now a man called james green soon became the the the head engineer should we say
of this canal and he was tasked with a very very important job of getting the canal down
from 95 meters down to pretty much sea level just past taunton so he'd already done the bude canal
and it already worked was moving things up and down not just locks he'd built a really impressive
incline which was successful and it worked so the the problem of getting from here in lowdswell
down to taunton was next on the cards and that's probably the most interesting part of this story
so james green decided to build a balance lift in fact he decided to build seven of them along this
next stretch of the canal we couldn't find the first one at greenham it was long gone
so a quick church stop before we get to some of the good bits
so we thought we'd stop and show you greenham church because it's very beautiful
tiny little church really really quaint come on look at this
i'm not religious or
have any kind of faith at all but do appreciate the um architecture the community and the the
solace that this brings people um and did bring people in the past especially very very beautiful
so it took another 15 or 16 years for things to actually get started 18 28 18 30 before they
actually started building these uh these lifts james green as i said who was responsible for
doing that pretty much started from from a blank canvas he had no blueprints to to look at he
designed these lifts basically on philosophies had gone before the anderson principle
and he decided to build six of them six of them were needed but before we get to um the tangible
lift a little bit further down the line or the canal the cut should we say not the line not room
railways today we're doing railways today we've got something very different we've got an incline
now james green again had already built one of these inclines successfully on the beard
canal but it turns out that this incline wasn't quite as successful and held things up even more
so we're in this really beautiful little wooded bit we found the bottom of the incline
so there's the water there's the canal um full of it's lovely stagnant water we're
going to head this way about 100 yards or so and see if we can find the actual incline
so this is the wellisford incline this is the bottom of the incline up there is towards the
top relatively short incline but it did suffer a few problems and as i said it did cause
the vast majority of the delay on this canal now the reason being is because james green had
calculated perfectly the incline on the butte canal and he had the weight ratio
to the the container for the water that would in turn balance the tub
cast on he had the weight to the cast-on ratio perfectly fit but for this he miscalculated
it completely and subsequently he had problem after problem with the weight balance
that was great so that's the incline you can see the indentation in the field
you can see the bottom of the incline there's some masonry left there here's obviously
the pool at the bottom and obviously the start of the canal further on so
i believe we've now missed two lifts in terms of they aren't there anymore we're now going to
go on to nine head lift nine head lift he's there and has a lot to see so join us there
so we're now looking for a lift that we know exists we're looking for the nine
head lift it's recently been excavated and studied in many different ways here we are now on what
appears to be the first section of this lift which is an aqueduct of what looks like an old trackway
of some kind now we've looked on side by side maps just before we got here and we are assuming
that maybe this was duplicate a landowner because if you look
north it's a grand avenue up towards the nine head manor but it looks very grand isn't it it
is very posh so they built this over the top of it in what 1836-ish and then the railway
came four years later and they've got all that over the top of it it's a real maze of junctions
here it's very beautiful and ahead of us more importantly we've got the first aqueduct section
of where james green had his castle and we'll go look at that in a second after we've taken some
shots of the train that's about to go by because we heard a beep very exciting uh here we go
i am here so we're not going to talk too much about the nine head lock because we're
uh sorry the nine head lift because we're actually gonna do a separate video on it
i think it's such a weird and wonderful thing that we're actually gonna do a separate sort of
a short punchy quick video on more with more a lot more info but it's nevertheless a fascinating um
look at it it's quite impressive yeah
so we just just crossed over the main line there we're just by the
Allerford , no the allerford inn and we're looking for the alfred um
god will look what is this yeah it says the elephant head on the wall look for the allerford
we're looking for theAllerford so it's probably about the fifth or the six of the seven lifts
along here now we don't know how much of it exists you can't even find the canal bed at
the moment can we because we're walking along an old track way but where the canal is i don't know
so in front of me is the canal bed i'm pretty sure that's quite clear but again where would this lift
be because we're looking for a lift the size of the nine head one that we've already seen um
perhaps it's further on that way that looks like what we're cutting there it's gonna have a look
around it people we found it well we think we found it all of a sudden literally all
of a sudden we found a massive gradient here now the the wikipedia article states
that down by the telegraph pole you can see in the distance that's where
the allerford lift, allerford lift is not here but i'm now pretty sure this
is a massive embankment just to just come next to us on this part
somehow people somehow we've got to get in there
we're going to do this all right this looks ridiculous
if it looks ridiculous on camera it's because it is ridiculous completely
here because that without doubt is the allerford boat lift
i'll try and find him way up that's not gonna murder us
so far
me
yes yes yes here we are
wow my mind this is find of the day forget nine head this right here is fine of the day it's
so well hidden in this hedge you've got the oh my goodness me you've got the water below there and
you've got just hidden away here this uh crevice this what doesn't you wouldn't even take a second
glance at this but it's this masonry line hidden by nature which is slowly reclaimed right in front
of me is a straight drop down into goodness knows what so need to tread very carefully
okay so now we're at the we're at the top of the boat lift we're at the bit
where the boats would have come into it um just there in front of me to the right
you'll see where the boats would have come in here and they've gone down here and they'd have
gone um left there and they'd have gone into two cassions here two boat lifts here and use your
imagination because right up here by my hand would be a huge great wheel and it would have chains on
it and maybe two or three of these probably three or four actually and they would hold the cassions
and the boats and they would be lifted up and down certainly that was the principle of course
so from this we're in the middle of this hedge i say it's a hedge it's just a whole tree line but
the time of the year it's thick with brambles and we are covered in little cuts and bits and
pieces and just dab rebecca with another brand right down there 25 foot drop was what we've
we found and we're looking for it's been such a rubbish late may day hasn't it yeah
it's been windy raining it's just been terrible basically been a bit wintery it's been winter at
best 10 degrees and we're nearly in june but this this here that drop down there is made
up for it really has made up for it so we're going to leave you in peace we've got a little
bit of walking to do before we get to taunton which is only a couple of miles that way so our
journey has nearly come to an end we thought we would be beautiful to end in this hedgerow
having found the allerford wheel, allerford lift will how many people know where this is
i don't know because it's nowhere near where it's marked on the actual map is it so and you
mean lift lift sorry well wheels because you've got wheel turning things it did it doesn't now
right so we hope you enjoyed today's adventure along the canal we're gonna
have another video come out soon based purely just on the nine head uh will will no sorry no
right we'll see you next week thanks for thanks for watching if you liked the video
and you want to watch more silliness from me and rebecca about history and our vlogs click
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we enjoy making so we're not stopping anytime soon and we'll see you next week