摘要 : In the first part of this two-part guide to the Shropshire Union Canal, we headed north from Autherley Junction near Wolverhampton via the deep cuttings, high embankments and lock flights of the southern part of the canal to end a... 展开 In the first part of this two-part guide to the Shropshire Union Canal, we headed north from Autherley Junction near Wolverhampton via the deep cuttings, high embankments and lock flights of the southern part of the canal to end at Nantwich in Cheshire. Here, the 'Shroppie' undergoes a sudden change - and that's because historically we would have been leaving one waterway and joining another.We're leaving what was originally the Birmingham & Liverpool Junction Canal, conceived as part of a more direct and faster long-distance route from the Midlands to the Northwest, and engineered by Thomas Telford at the very end of the main canal-building era as a state-of-the-art 1820s waterway; and we're joining the former Chester Canal. Over 50 years older, it was built to the less advanced engineering of the 1770s, and today, that's left us with a gentler waterway that fits in with its mostly rural surroundings, rather than striding across the landscape and cutting through the hills. 收起