Northwich
Yesterday we went to Northwich. We found a fab farm shop just off the M56 J10 which stocks all manner of scrumptious foods including home made frozen ready meals. We bought a steak and red wine pie for tea which was absolutely yummy and not really any more expensive than M&S - we’ll definitely be going again.
We also bought bread and cheese for our lunch which we ate in the car park outside the Anderton Boat Lift. Now, it was raining, which probably didn’t endear the place to me, but the Anderton Boat Lift seems a bit overrated. Unfortuntely we’d missed all the boat trips (which I suspect is an essential part of the experience) but they still wanted £2 off each of us just to wander around the grounds. We’d already paid £2 for the car park so since we felt this was a bit of a rip off we left and went in search of the Salt Museum instead.
I don’t think Cheshire County Council rate the Salt Museum very highly as they are not big with the signage - at least not from the Boat Lift direction anyway. But we found it and for £2.50 each it was pretty good. Not as good as the Plague museum in Eyam (which is an absolute gem), but an interesting way to spend an hour or so nevertheless. Subsidence caused by salt mining (well brine extraction) was a huge problem in Cheshire in the 1800s and early 1900s with houses and shops disappearing into big holes overnight - some of the photos from the time are amazing. This is why a lot of the buildings are timber framed and look like tudor houses - they don’t collapse like brick houses and you can jack them up on stilts to keep the floors straight. So now you know.