New TV programme, worth a look.

[LovelyLadyLux]

The Liberal Toxic Crew in the USA have picked up the mantra that 'we' need to make amends to all who were slaves by way of paying them for reparations. Totally slippery slope and total craziness IMO unless they're well prepared to pay me cause my ancestors also suffered and I want it going right back to the Roman invasion - probably even the Vikings had responsibility too.

[Horus]

Glad you found it interesting Grandad, but it could and should have been more informative and accurate.
For example:
The fans are to remove diesel fumes and not really for circulation as such, it certainly isn't 10' 0" wide as that guy said it was, more like about 8'-0". Worst of all they kept saying about how James Brindly died before it was completed, well considering it was not even built when he was alive I am hardly surprised by that fact because they took the boats through the 'Thomas Telford' tunnel and not the one that James Brindley built 50 years earlier.

Neither does the tunnel pass beneath his grave as they implied, nor is he buried above the tunnel. The church he visited is at Newchapel and he is buried there, but the Harecastle Hill that it cuts through is quite some way from there, nowhere near to Newchapel and again we had Michael Buerk moving the tunnel and half of their journey from its rightful location of the Trent & Mersey and calling it the Caldon Canal. The Kidsgrove 'Bogart' is in fact a big black dog and not a headless woman, The original Brindley tunnel can be seen alongside the entrance/exit at both ends of the Telford tunnel, but they never even mentioned it let alone showed the viewers.

Further back at Westport lake they managed to make a local fast food 'The Staffordshire Oat Cake' look like the most disgusting food imaginable, no wonder Michael Buerk refused to eat his, it looked awful and I can assure you no one around here would have eaten it either. They are not cooked in frying pans, but on a large heated griddle and it is a rare skill, we still have Oatcakes being made and served from window type openings in old terraced houses as they were a hundred years ago and on a Saturday morning you cannot get near the places after breakfast time, so why did they not show a traditional one? It was like doing a programme in Birmingham about Indian food and then buying a ready meal from Tesco and warming it up in a pan.

The actual junction where they turned onto the Macclesfield canal is a very interesting place and all we had from the crew was "why is it such a tight turn?" and that was it. The reason is actually quite interesting and very relevant to the first lock at Hall Green where the lady in the house was talking to them, no one bothered to ask why the lock was so shallow, but again all the more interesting facts seemed to get overlooked.

The walk up to 'Mow Cop' castle was also a joke, not because our friend Mr Buerk insisted on calling it 'Mo Cop' as in cutting the grass instead of Mow Cop as in Chairman 'Mao' their research is abysmal. I was laughing as they started off and looking for the taxi to take them there, there is no way that other guy with Michael Buerk was going to make it up to the top unaided. It is miles from the canal and involves going up a hill known locally as 'The Killer Mile' there is even an annual event of people running up it for charity. They managed (apart from the name) to get the information correct and out of interest I live directly opposite the castle on the highest point on the other side of the valley and can see it clearly from my living room window.

Next we had a 'stroll' to the nearby pub The Edgerton Arms, again they must have had a taxi as the canal is miles away. They completly missed out a short stroll just off the canal to a beautiful Tudor Manor House called 'Little Moreton Hall' now a National Trust property, They also just skipped passed a lovely old stately hall called Ramsden Hall that sits alongside the canal and had an interesting interaction with the canal builders at the time, again not a mention. They then flirted off to another distant venue of Rode Hall (you have seen me post photos of the Snowdrops in the Spring from this location) again miles away from the canal to look at a Farmers Market, I was tempted to go the next day, but thought better of it. The girls by this time were about 5 miles away in Congleton as the boys 'strolled' back to them from the market, I am still trying to work out who moved their barge up the canal.

The one nice touch was the girls having a artistic day with the lady on the barge (we should strictly speaking call them 'Narrow Boats'). I often see that lady on our travells and stop for a chat, I once asked her about a portrait of Annie and she said she would do me one at a special rate, she does beautiful work and can do painted images from a photograph. I will stop my moan here as there is so much more I could comment on, mainly because it could have been so much better and I believe more interesting for the viewer.

[Kiya]

I enjoyed reading your stant on it Horus, far more interesting than the programm

[Horus]

I shouldn't really be surprised Kiya, many years ago I was on a real underground rescue of several students who were trapped in a rapidly flooding tunnel, we managed to get them all out after a very long day. Our caving/potholing club was based at a pub quite near to the Macclesfield canal they were travelling on and in sight of Mow Cop castle. Because of our proximity we had been called out by the police and fire brigade to assist them in the neighbouring county of Derbyshire because those two organisations have no real experience of that sort of thing. Some months later we were asked to reinact the rescue for a (supposedly) real life drama programme called '999 police rescue' and since then I never believe anything I see on TV. It was a total fiasco and nothing like the true events of the day, we were asked to do all sorts of staged events that never happened.

I will admit to being critical of TV programmes and often get annoyed when I see them get their facts wrong about Egypt in the documentaries they often make, but this last offering from channel 5 really annoyed me because it was so inaccurate in important detail and seemed to show the most trivial stuff but leave out the interesting bits. To be honest it was more about the so called celebrities than the actual trip they made and knowing the locations they used to moor up the narrow boats I would not be surprised if they were not staying overnight in some of the very nice hotels and pubs near by rather than on the canal itself.

[Grandad]

I enjoyed reading all that H. I like the way you write it and it really should be sent to Channel 5 with a critical letter. But you know the reply you would get, "We are in the business of entertainment and use editorial license to balance the characters with the history". But I do agree, they could at least get the history correct.
It is misleading to put out programs SO inaccurate like this series. My daughter and her husband will, I am sure, start holidaying on the canals and if they watched these programs they might even take note of some of the detail only to find that the actual situation is not as presented. That really is misleading the public.
We have said it before and I say it again, you really do know your part of the country. At least we bebnefit with true facts when you post about your area.

PS: Did you watch Bethany Hughes' 2 hour program Saturday evening about her top 10 treasures of Egypt. There were probably inaccuracies in that but it all seemed genuine and there were some facts I had never heard before. We enjoyed it, I just wish she would hide her cleavage a bit, most distracting.

[LovelyLadyLux]

I wonder sometimes IF it is the actual film makers on the ground who miss historical facts OR is it the Editors back in the office who have never even been to the place chopping and hacking out facts so they can get the film down to a precise timeline so as to make it fit into the schedule of a time slot they have to fill.

[Horus]

Grandad I smiled at one part as I remembered you saying about your daughter and her husband wanting to do a canal boat trip. They actually passed one of the largest mariners in the area and it never got a mention as they passed by it, maybe because it was not a part of the boat hire company they were sponsored by, at that point they were “off to the pub”. Oh lovely I thought, they are popping into The Rising Sun which was just by the bridge they had gone under, the next thing they were in the village of Astbury miles away having a drink, as I said before I reckon they were kipping there for the night. Right opposite is a lovely old sandstone church and if they had bothered to find out more interesting facts they would have realised that it holds the grave of a medieval knight who actually fought at the battle of Agincourt and had connections to the Willberham family that they mentioned twice in the programme. They also totally ignored the huge mariner up at the Festival Park which never got as much as a passing comment saying as it was purposely built for the second of the National Flower Festivals that were held in this country and the location of The China Gardens pub that I recommended you consider for your lunch when you last visited. I was tempted to write to channel 5 and offer to do it properly ha ha, but as you say they would just say it was entertainment done to a budget, another exercise in dumbing down.

Yes I did watch the Bettany Hughes programme on Egypt, can't say I found anything new from my own visits having been in all of those places other than the Serapeum. Interesting enough there was another programme a few days ago (an old repeat) about ‘The Screaming Mummy’ which is thought to be that of Prince Pentewere the hanged son of Ramesses III for his part in the ‘Harem Conspiracy’ at Medinet Habu when a successful plot was hatched to kill his own father. I noticed that amongst the Royal Mummies in the Mummy Room at Cairo on Bettany’s visit was also the mummy of Pentewere alongside that of Ramesses III, all found of course in the Deir el Bahari cache. Now although that was quite a factual programme I didn’t spot any obvious errors even though it was aimed at the tourist market and generally rehashed the usual topics and locations, so really nothing new, just some stuff brought up to date. Now on the subject of our Bettany I am afraid I cannot agree with your last comment of her covering up, my apologies to all the ladies but I sometimes find it a struggle to decide if I should be looking at the monuments or our Bettany, usually she wins.

[Grandad]

Ha Ha Ha Ha! Me too H. There is still a bit of red blood left in the old veins yet.

[Horus]

Carefull now Grandad, you will be needing a replacement battery sooner than anticipated

[Kiya]

I too saw the program, really interesting, some facts I did'nt know

I agree about Bettany, I understand it's hot but really !

[Grandad]

@Horus
Just been reading up about James Brindley on Wiki. I don't remember him being mentioned at school, I do remember Watt, Trevithick and Stephenson from my school days. Brindley is certainly up there with the best of our early engineers along with I K Brunel. Sadly both he and Brunel died long before their time in their fifties probably denying us of even more great achievements.

[Horus]

All clever men and mostly self taught

[Grandad]

@Horus
H, we started to watch the latest offering on the canals but after just a few minutes we were already bored. We had started recording the John Wilson orchestra prom from 8pm so we switched to watch that.
Glad we did, what a fantastic musical evening of music from Warner Bros films from the thirties forward . Absolutely brilliant.

[Horus]

Watched it myself, but it seems to be much of the same although you do have to wonder why John Prescott is on a barge of his own. Is this a new series or a continuation of the other one? if so why are they on the Grand Union canal as in the last programme they had only just started on the Cheshire Ring part of the canal system. Not so sure I like Micheal Buerk that much either, he comes across as being a bit up his own backside and miserable most of the time. The main annoyance to me with this programme is that they visit some good places then show you absolutely nothing about them.