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Today, I had a couple of
meetings near Manchester,

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and I had a bit of spare time,
so I visited three river crossings,

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all a bit strange, and all
with something in common.

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Although, I guess technically
these are canal crossings.

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But some of the canal is a diverted river.

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So... I went with river crossings,
it sounds better.

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My first stop was the Hulmes Ferry,
and I took my GoPro and my drone with me.

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Like all the three crossings, the Hulmes Ferry
goes over the Manchester Ship Canal.

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That canal runs for nearly 60 kilometres,

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starting in the Mersey Estuary
in the Irish Sea near Liverpool,

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and running through to Manchester.

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It's more than a century old.

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The canal is a massive engineering achievement.

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But it's not like the builders just smashed
through anything that was in their way.

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It was the Industrial Revolution, but still.

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The Act of Parliament that gave
permission for the canal, back in 1885,

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included a lot of requirements to make sure
all the landowners along the route were...

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well, if not happy, at least satisfied.

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Embankments or channels had to be
maintained or built,

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access had to be provided,
fees had to be paid.

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300 pages of
technical legal details,

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some of which still apply to this day.

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Also, you'd think that by now,

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every bit of UK law would be
online and freely available,

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but no, I found most of this

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in archived Freedom of Information
on obscure things from years ago.

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Anyway. One of those legal requirements
from 1885 is a ferry,

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"by night and by day whenever required",

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to replace a low bridge
they had to knock down.

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If I'm being honest, there's not really
much need to have a ferry like that

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in the 21st century. You wouldn't start
a new ferry service there today.

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Yes, it was useful in the past,

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it's an hour's walk to get
to the other side...

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but unless you happen to live
really close to one side

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and work really close to the other,

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it's not much use.

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For almost every practical purpose,
it's quicker to drive.

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There are regular passengers:
so the ferry driver said

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in an interview a couple
of years ago, but not many.

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It's mostly walkers and cyclists
out for the fun of it.

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But my travel on it was logged,

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one more on the count of "people
who actually use this ferry".

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And I'll get back to why that happened later.

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A few kilometres west was my second stop,
the Thelwall Ferry.

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Actually, it might be "Tell-wall".
I didn’t meet anyone to ask,

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and there’s no official web site
or information about it,

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but it’s much the same arrangement,

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although this time with a small charge.

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Eleven pence.

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Oh, and that boat doesn't have an engine,

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it's just powered by a hard-working man
rowing you across, just as there's been

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for more than 120 years.

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Not the same man, obviously,

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and not the same boat either.

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And when I turned up, there was a small sign
in the window of the ferryman's cottage,

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saying that the service was suspended
due to low water levels in the canal.

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I'll be honest, those water levels looked
fine to me, but I'm not the expert.

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Low water levels aside,
the ferry continues,

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because the law says that “the Company shall work
the said ferry whenever required”.

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The Company, by the way, is called
the Peel Group these days,

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after a lot of buying and selling
and corporate renaming and mergers.

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They're an enormous property investment firm
who own the entire Manchester Ship Canal

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along with what seems like every major bit of land
and private infrastructure around Manchester.

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I've reached out to them with interview
requests before for other stuff,

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and they've always turned me down,

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so for this video I have to rely
on secondary sources,

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newspaper articles and quotes.
I don't like doing that,

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but from the look of some of those articles,

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it's not just me that they've
turn down requests from.

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Which is fair, they're absolutely
within their rights to do that.

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And, if I'm honest, the second reason that
I'm sorta-improvising here and relying

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on those quotes and articles...

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I only found out I was travelling
to Manchester yesterday morning!

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So I had to spend the entire rest
of the day just researching at home

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trying to get the law right.

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So: the Thelwall Ferry. Or Tell-wall.

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About 600 crossings a year, they say:

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some days there's barely anyone, other days
a whole walking club might turn up

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and want to go across
at eleven pence each.

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The third crossing, inbetween those two
ferries, is the Warburton Toll Bridge.

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Which is a deeply frustrating bridge
for a lot of people,

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because the toll to cross in a car

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is twelve pence.

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Or 25 pence, if you want a day pass.

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And there is often a queue.
Cash only, no change given.

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And it seems almost farcical
to have a toll collector,

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and a barrier, and sometimes
very long queues...

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for twelve pence a time.

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Except: when I got there
and I drove up…

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No charges! But, wanting to get the shot,
I turned round and went back over,

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and they were charging that way,

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but no day passes either. Just a man
with a coin bucket and no change.

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Uh... no daily ticket?

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That's 20p then! Thank you.

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[Toll operator] "Right, cheers pal."

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One of the nice things about
improvising this video is

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that I’ve seen things
as they actually were,

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not as the PR teams
would want them to be.

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Anyway, this toll. It made sense
when the bridge was built.

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"For every Carriage drawn or propelled by
Steam or any Means other than Animal Power,

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"Two Shillings and Sixpence".

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Back then, that was worth collecting,
adjusted for inflation,

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that'd be about £15.

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But the law did not mention inflation.

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The company could choose to
waive the tolls at any time,

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they did that during the
Covid lockdown last year,

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and I guess they're doing that
one way now.

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But if you stop collecting tolls
for the long term,

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it's a lot more difficult
to bring them back.

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And they'd still be required
to maintain the bridge.

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If there's one car in each direction
every 30 seconds on average,

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and looking at that, yeah, there is:

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well, that's still about a quarter
million pounds of revenue every year.

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So you'll see people talk about
story of old quirky British laws

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that mean you still have these ferries,
and you still that toll bridge,

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oh, and they must be maintained by law,

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and isn't it weird what happens
in rural Britain?

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But I don't think the law is the
reason those crossings are still there.

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Because there are two ways you could
interpret "whenever required"

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in those old legal documents.
"Whenever required" could mean:

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whenever anyone asks for it.

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If someone turns up, any hour of any day,
the ferry must be there waiting for them.

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It's a valid interpretation, but that's not
how those words been read through history.

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And it's not how they're being read now.

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The Hulmes ferry only runs for a few hours,
three or four days a week,

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and never in winter.

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And it stopped running for
a year back in 2010,

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it took a campaign and local effort
to get it reinstated.

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As for the Thelwall Ferry,
it runs most days,

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but only for a few hours.

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And apparently not when the water’s low?

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Remember I said my crossing was
logged and counted?

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Well, you can also interpret
"whenever required" to mean

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"if there is reasonable demand".

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There's an unofficial web site
for the Hulmes ferry, and it says:

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"use it or lose it".

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Those old laws mention other ferries.
They've all gone.

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I don't know if they were removed
through legal process or just

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forgotten about, because ultimately:
no-one's complaining.

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And if someone did complain, who in
government is going to take action

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about a ferry that
almost no-one uses?

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I think these ferries,
and the 12 pence toll,

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have stuck around because
it would be more effort

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for the giant corporation
to try and stop them.

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It's a minor thing for a
multi-billion-pound company

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to pay for a couple of ferry-boats,

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compared to having to deal with
angry locals and bad press.

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And I think the toll on that bridge
has stayed at 12 pence for so long

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because increasing it would have
required a change in the law,

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and trying to get that is way more
time-consuming and expensive

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than just keeping things as they are.
In our own lives,

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we all make do with a lot of small
bothersome things and irritations

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because it's less work than
trying to fix them.

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Different scale, same principle.

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Although I'm not saying the ferries
are a bothersome thing,

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I think they're brilliant,

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I think we should have more
quirky useful things funded

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by multi-billion-dollar corporations.

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I'm just saying that the company has
many bigger things to deal with.

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If they wanted to, they could probably
get away without the ferries.

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And at a guess… I reckon it's not
worth the hassle of not running them.

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But one thing is changing soon.

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That bridge needs expensive refurbishment,
maybe even replacement soon.

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Which means that the company
has noticed it, and suddenly

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changing the law might be
worth their time.

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There was a consultation process
for the locals last month.

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The company would like to raise
the toll up to a whole...

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...one pound.

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And replace the ticket booths
with automatic systems.

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So if you do want the novelty
of the 12 pence toll...

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now's the time to go.

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Because the law will probably
change quite soon.

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As for the ferries... I do hope that
the locals will make sure that

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removing them never becomes
the easy option.