Photo-a-Day  (Tuesday, 28th July, 2009)

Hey Dave what would Gerald Durrell say about this photo ?

It could only happen in Wigan....your councillors should wake up from their thousand year sleep & take a look at other canals around the UK.

On the DVD's The Leeds and Liverpool Canal the above ugly mess along with scrap yards is shown in all its glory. All the way from Leeds the boaters are welcomed with nice buildings and wonderful views only to enter into Wigan to be greeted with this view, and what an awful memory of Wigan to take back with them. I totally agree with you Helen, but as long as the councillors can't see it, they're not bothered, out of sight out of mind as they say.

Industry isn't the nicest scene ,but is a necessary evil. On the whole this flight of locks is attractive. Don't condemn it for this small bit.For as the picture shows , Machinery is working on it.Your rubbish has to go some where. I have travelled the canal system extensively ,and on the whole Wigan fares favourably .You should have seen this fifty years ago .An improvement would be the shifting of those dam gates that prevent access for the disabled.

Yes Wigan council do a good job when it comes to it.

But the bottom end of the canal where it joins up with the Leigh branch is far worse because that pile of rubbish stinks rotten.

And that also next to the new road system as well.

I hear what your saying Ron and we are not condemning it, just stating a fact. Why couldn't these areas be screened with fast growing tall trees as after all it is the Wigan flight that attracts the boaters. I can well imagine what it must have been like 50 years ago when heavy industry was king in many areas, but the majority of these as you know are now transformed into very nice and pleasant greenlands. As for the gates if these were removed the local neds would be racing up and down the canal banks on their untaxed, uninsured mini-motorbikes and quad bikes. I do agree the disabled should be able to have access to the canal banks for recreation and leisure pursuits like everyone else; maybe with a Radar Key or such like as they do with WC's, but maybe that is too simple for the powers that be to put into place.

That doesn't look like your average landfill...looks like a scrap yard to me. A scrap yard inside the perimeter of an old mill or it's yard...very true a bit of screening wouldn't come amiss....people pay to go on canalboats nowadays & I believe they don't mind a bit of industrial history but not modern day scrap & tat.

What is or was the building in the foreground