What will happen over the weekend? Not much unless the contractors are being paid extra to undertake certain works – which could include the completion of the secondary cofferdam, the inspection and towing of the two retrieved narrowboats. Possibly other sundry work here and there, as well as taking all the winching equipment away and tidying up the field these were based in.
If not, well its a weekend of rest of everyone involved and it’ll all kick off again on Monday. But beyond thence, there’s not really a lot else that can be done, unless they continue using the spider excavator for some work such as shifting bits of the embankment and perhaps exploring to see what the possible breach causes could have been. Nevertheless, at some point quite soon, it’ll all fade away and the stricken embankment will remain in its grotesque glory for a few months to come, with just the occasional surveyor or engineer visit. Things won’t get into full swing again until possibly Easter or early Summer when work to rebuild the embankment will begin in earnest.
One thing is certain (as I said right at the beginning, 22nd December 2025) is there is every possibility this breach at Whitchurch could be completed and navigation reopened before any work on the Bridgewater’s Bolin embankment is even completed!
Besides, nothing is happening over at Bolin currently! That breach occurred more than a year ago. Compare with the Llangollen where so much has been done in the short space of just over three weeks! The work they did before Xmas on the Bridgewater isn’t even finished by a long shot – and its a total mystery as to what they’ve done because, well, it seems rather pointless work as it stands. The idea evidently back then before Xmas, was to build solid dams and remove the temporary cofferdams. All that was envisaged to be finished before Xmas. In a sense it feels as if the Bridgewater works have been completely abandoned.
That sort of thing wont happen at Whitchurch because too much is at stake including CRT’s duty as a water supplier for much of West Cheshire (this goes via United Utilities’ treatment works at Hurleston and is then distributed as clean tap water). There are the emergency pumps that do the job of course (and that costs a lot of money). At the same time an empty canal brings no benefits of any sort and it severely will affect the holiday/tourist takings throughout 2026 locally and also among the various hire companies sited on the Shropshire and Trent and Mersey canals – doubly so because they all are suffering from the curtailment of the Bridgewater canal itself as a through route. With the Llangollen’s closure (and also the Anderton boat lift shut too indefinitely) there’s far less potential for boating in the area and even the Llangollen will be affected because most of its traffic came from the other canals. Businesses will most likely feel the downside of it all. It too will affect CRT’s revenue so its not a good outlook at all.
Update: 20.50pm on 16th January 2025.
And now for something completely different! HS2! Even though HS2 were somewhat tentatively involved with regards to the Whitchurch canal breach around Xmas time but this is not about that. HS2 have just published their latest video and what a stopper it is! It extols the many delights of HS2 described by Mark Wild including the designs for the new stock – yet it seems they can’t afford real plugs/sockets in their new trains! They gave the game away in this scene shown below:
Why bother with real electrical sockets when stick on ones will do? Definitely cheaper to print sockets than produce real ones. HS2 January Project Update Youtube.
As Mark Wild says, its a means of ‘breaking the cycle of continual cost increases’. No doubt its part of HS2’s programme reset…
Update: 18.30pm on 16th January 2026.
The two boats, Ganymede and Sefton have now been secured together at the top end of the embankment where they were winched yesterday. A cofferdam is now being installed just in front (or behind – depending on which way one looks at it) the two boats in order that these can be refloated and towed away from the site.
The other thing of note is compared to the earlier picture of Sefton’s mud covered bows, that has now been cleared out and its looking quite splendid as the video below depicts.
All that can be seen in this video released just a few minutes ago by SS Skies.
Update: 18.00 on 16th January 2026.
Diverting away from the main news of today for it appears little else can be done with the two boats Ganymede and Sefton until perhaps next week. Plenty of coverage has been given by Youtubers with their drones and on-site reports/interviews. Hence there’s this news item from the Whitchurch Herald. It describes how the cafe at Grindley Brook has fallen on hard times.
Lockside Café in Grindley Brook has been a part of the canal community for 25 years, run by our family with a lot of love, even through tough times. The recent canal embankment collapse and towpath closure will hit us hard. So much of our trade comes from boaters, walkers and canal users, and with the towpath closed for an unknown period of time, we’re facing a real challenge. After much thought and encouragement from our community, we’ve set up this page for anyone who’s enjoyed a stop at Lockside Café over the years and wants to help us weather this storm.
News source: Whitchurch Herald.
The cafe at Grindley Brook adjacent to the canal’s famed staircase locks. Google Streets.
Next. I spotted a close up shot of Sefton’s bows on a newcomer’s Youtube video and here it is:
Close-up of the bows of N/B Sefton. Despite the mess it doesn’t look as bad as had been feared. This shot is from a video made by a newbie – Beagle Bum. When I screencapped this image the video only had 300 views. Three hours later it has 8,500 views! Not bad going for a Youtuber who has just 87 subscribers!
Update: 17.15pm on 16th January 2026.
The dramatic rescue of N/B Sefton from the breach site continues to make the news despite the late hour at which the operation was conducted. Court on the Cut has an excellent video showing the operation as well as other details of yesterday’s work. Court’s video is here.
Court on the Cut says the operation to shift Sefton was made at the last minute. Initially it had been thought it could be done the next day (eg Friday 16th January) then they decided to begin the winching operation anyway and do part of that Thursday early evening and the rest the next day. As it stands they decided to go the whole distance and did the whole job last night. He also adds that despite popular opinion, Sefton is in fact wholly salvageable and can be restored to use. Its not going to be scrapped – well not at this point in time anyway. Court’s comments are as below:
So, let’s talk about narrow boat Sefton, shall we? Now, Sefton is in a bad position. It’s sunk on the front where it went down first and a lot kind of flowed over it. Sefton isn’t a write-off despite popular comments online. That comes from commercial boat services who are the ones rescuing the boat and also comes from the family as well. So, please respect the boat owner when you’re spreading stuff online. This that’s someone’s home. It’s not a write off. These people do it for a living. This is what they do. At this stage, the boat is considered salvageable. It may need some fit out on the inside. And it may be at a later date when it’s examined, something’s found that does write it off. But at this stage, it’s not.
A great shot of the operation at the breach site involving the walking/spider excavator. Screenshot from CP Overview’s video.
Steve Court also talked about the spider digger operator. The vehicle had been hired and the woman operating it has only just learnt to use it and there is great applause for her quickly acquired skills especially as aspects of the task involved being perched precariously on the remains of the embankment whilst scouring around the breach site to form more space for the winching of both Ganymede and Sefton. Note of irony. Many of the comments on Youtube and forums re the excavator driver are no doubt tainted with what can only be a patriarch’s view.
Steve also discussed the problems with winching Ganymede where it initially began digging into the embankment as it was dragged:
So on the front of Ganymede, they welded a plate on uh and that’s basically acting as a ski. So when they pull up that slope, it doesn’t dig in because otherwise the bow is just going to try and go down into the bank. So I think what’s happening at the moment is they’re clearing that. You can see a guy at the front with a shovel and he’s just digging that out. So uh when they’re pulling, it’s not going to completely bury into the bank. It also looks like they’ve added another cable as well.
Court on the Cut’s video also had a short interview with CRT’s Julie Sharman:
Hi, I’m Julie Charman. I’m the chief operating officer for the Canal and River Trust. So, what we’re doing here today is um rescuing two of the boats that ended up in the breach hole. Um the equipment that’s on the far side is some heavy duty winching equipment and we’ve created a ramp in order to pull the boats out safely as we can. And then once we’ve got them up on the right level on the far side, we’ll be refloating and um hopefully getting them away for further work because they need a bit of work uh after this incident.
A short while after Ganymede was pulled up to safety there was a longer interview with Julie Sharman:
Well, it’s been a good um morning afternoon so far. We’ve managed to move Ganymede out of the breach hole and um you know it’s a real delight to see that happening um because um there’s been a huge amount of planning going into this um there’s some significant um team on the other side who’ve uh set up to assist us with this recovery of the two boats and um we’ve been planning this really and um since uh the breach just before Christmas uh when we moved pacemaker uh in the emergency situation to secure that boat so there’s been an awful lot of work behind behind the scenes getting ready for today. We’ve also moved a lot of the dams around in order to achieve this move. And what will happen next over on the other side will be we’ll pull out Sefton and um bring it alongside Ganymede and then hopefully refloat the pair um together uh and then we’ll be able to take them away on for the works that are needed u to the boats. I think that the thing that’s been um caused the biggest interest here is this is a real this is the first time for me in 30 years working with waterways where we’ve had boats in this position and this incident happened just before Christmas. Three of the boats were living aboard the ones that were impacted. They had to be moved to temporary accommodation. Um it’s a real um terrible time of year for anybody to be displaced from their home and that’s been um you know one of the most challenging things when people are winding down for holidays and we mobilized up to deal with this emergency. I’m really proud of the team and all the work that went into um ensuring over Christmas things were maintained that dams were secure that there was no further deterioration of the embankments given the breach. Um but it’s um it’s a terrible time of year for anybody to have to deal with a major incident.
Julie Sharman is right when its said nothing of this sort has been seen in the thirty years she has been working on the waterways. The last time I remember this sort of thing happening was when the Coventry canal burst its banks right in the centre of the city. It was a massive media event. That was the 15th December 1978 – and I was there to view the damage.
Curiously its said on Court on the Cut’s video that Sefton** was built in Coventry – which means it was possibly built by Club Line Cruisers – a company I worked for during the 1970s! My boss was of course Reg Neale. The company was established in January 1972 and sold off in 2000. Of course this is how I got to work with some of the canal pioneers including Bert Dunkeley and David Hutchings – my interest then was canal restoration. The 1970s wasn’t any sort of good time in term of the state of Britain’s canal system. The extent of navigable waterways we have today were merely a dream back then!
Update: 08.50am on 16th January 2026
**A comment on Canal World Forum says Sefton is a Mike Heyward boat not a ‘Coventry’ one. I had said it was a Heywood boat a few days ago, but it was Steve’s assertion which made me think I had the wrong boat from the listing as there are a number of other Seftons. The commentator doubtless says Steve Court got his wires crossed.
Club Line built few bespoke boats. Any were usually a variation of their standard range. Never mind, it was a chance to detail a little bit of my very early canal history!
Update: 14.00 on 16th January 2025.
Narrowboat Sefton was freed from the Whitchurch breach site tonight. It was no doubt a night time operation. The rescue is shown in the video below. Sefton, like Ganymede, had spent three and half weeks stuck in the mire at the bottom of the Llangollen canal breach.
The full video (8 mins) covering tonight’s Sefton winching operation. No doubt there’ll be more videos and reports tomorrow!
Night-time shot of Sefton being winched from the breach site. Screencap from Riley Robey’s Youtube video.
Update: 20.55pm on 15th January 2026.
Although Ganymede has been winched out of the breach site, its still early days yet – and that because Sefton has yet to be rescued. On the Kieran and Lottie video it was being said work was behind schedule. Hence it appears the other boat will be rescued tomorrow.
Ganymede was winched out in the short space of half an hour – but not without difficulty. For the first part of the work the boat wanted to dig straight into the remaining part of the embankment. Adjustments were made but even so the boat continued to prove difficult. It was only when it had reached a halfway point along its hull that the rear end dropped down slightly and this finally lifted the front bows up and clear of the remaining stretch of canal that had been levelled to make a sort of soft roadway.
I assumed they would make a sort of wooden roadway using old sleepers but they didn’t. The boat was just dragged through the mud/clay puddling/remains of the embankment (all of that now being mixed up because it has been turned over and levelled for access).
I’m not sure what the next step is. It looks like they are leaving the boats at the top of the slope near the field where all the winching gear is sited. That possibly could indicate a second stage to this operation – which is an inspection of the boats once they are both here – and an assessment on whether one or both can be saved will be made. No doubt that will be down to the insurers. If they are not salvageable then they will be emptied of any valuable contents and cut up on site.
Observers and armchair engineers both hold the opinion Ganymede might possibly be salvageable, whereas Sefton will almost likely be scrapped.
Keeping the two boats at this holding site would of course be possible because no-one is going to do any construction work to the area for quite a few months thus the boats can be left where they are whilst assessments are on the boats’ salvage potential. This would of course also enable further examination of the actual breach site before any work is undertaken to sample the soils and gain any further insight as to why the breach occurred.
Updated: 17.45pm on 15th January 2026.
One of the stricken narrowboats – Ganymede – has been winched away from the breach site. This evidently leaves Sefton, the one in the most difficult position. Possibly a lot of digging around the boat will be necessary before work can even begin to winch it out.
The latest video from Riley Robey is below. There were videos from Taylors and Kieran/Lottie however the one I chose is because its fairly short. If anyone wants to watch longer videos of the same thing please head over to Youtube!
Update: 16.50pm on 15th January 2025
Preparations are still underway for the boat rescue at the site of the canal breach in Whitchurch, Shropshire. It looks somewhat unlikely any will be rescued today – unless its during the late afternoon.
At least Riley Robey had direct access to the work site this morning. Court on the Cut yesterday had access but Riley Robey got even closer today – no doubt that was with the permission of the contractors. His video is below.
I’ll try formatting this post in chronological order with the most recent item placed at top and older entries downward. Its easy to forget which is why it hasn’t been done the last few couple of posts or so.
Posted 13.40pm on 15th January 2026
The feature image is from Riley Robey’s video published 15th January 2026.
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