The Draper family lived down the road and their dad Tom was a bargee. Sometimes he would moor his forty foot coal barge in the village and clean out the hold so that we could all go on a special trip up the canal to Parbold top locks. Here a group of locks in the canal raised the level of the canal to start the climb up towards Wigan and the famous Wigan pier.
Three or four families would pack up a lunch. The dads would go down to the pub and bring bottles of beer and lemonade. It would take us about two hours to travel the six or seven miles to Parbold where Tom would moor the barge. Everyone would get off and the kids really thought that they had travelled to other end of the world. The field that we moored up to was between the railway and the canal. The railway was on top of a high cutting and was about fifty yards from the canal. There were locks on the canal as well. The locks had overflows that the water ran through at two or three inches deep but you could not stand up in because of the green weed that grew in the clear oxygenated water. A stream flowed under the railway embankment across the field meandering in a long S shape.
Occasionally a young trout would come down the stream and much fun would be had trying to catch it. If you followed the stream under the embankment it went underground for about fifty feet. The tunnel was brick built and about three feet high and two feet wide, plenty big enough for an eight year old to walk through hunched over if you were brave enough.
There were mini stalactites hanging from the roof where the rain water had filtered down from above depositing calcium from the limestone under the rails . When you made it to the other side there was a lake overhung with willow trees in the middle of a park with big wrought iron gates. It was probably some ones private trout lake but we didn’t know or care, it was a magical land where we could play without the adults telling us not to do this or that. My mates and I would lie alongside the stream and reach under the overhanging bank trying see if we could tickle the trout, no matter how hard we tried they always swam away from our probing fingers. We decided to build a dam in the stream to create a swimming pool. Rocks were gathered and piled up in the flow at a narrow point, turf sods ripped from the bank were placed between the rocks to seal the dam. We got the water to over two feet deep before it started to over flow the dam and it had taken us over an hour. It was wonderful fun to wash all the mud off in the cool clear water and watch the brown water flow over the dam and down the stream. We were all completely shattered after all the work we had done building this wonderful construction and lay down on the grass to dry off.
Then all of a sudden we heard shout of “ Oy you lot, What you doing? Clear off this is private, CLEAR OFF” . Panic set in and we ran off towards the tunnel, running without looking back, expecting a hail of shot gun pellets to come up and sting us on the arse as we ran, we could hear the tractor now reving, chasing us we thought it’s going run us down. We got to the tunnel and didn’t stop to see how close he was. Half way through we felt the water getting deeper, he had crushed the dam and it was catching us up. We burst out into bright daylight and dived for the grassy bank just in time to see a wall of water come out of the brickwork like someone had turned on a gigantic tap. We were so relieved but we couldn’t tell the grownups what had happened because that would have meant that we would have got a clip round the ear hole each from our dads.
As we sailed home towards the setting sun we would sit with our legs over the prow of barge dangling above the black shiny canal water. We would sing songs together as the water slid under our feet and the adults would be at the stern drinking the last of the beer and smoking Woodbines. My younger twin brothers would be asleep in their twin pram in the hold of the barge. The rhythmic throbbing of the engine seemed to make everyone feel tired and sleepy but when we got to the mooring everyone woke up as the barge was tied up and made fast for the night.
Tomorrow she would load up with sacks of flour at Ainscoughs mill which would then go to Wigan to the bakery. Then she would go to the coal mines to load up with coal which was taken to Liverpool docks for the steam ships. Her homeward trip was with Canadian wheat to the flour mill at Burscough.
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