Wigan Pier

Tony Robinson visits Liverpool and Lancashire for a towpath exploration of grand industrial engineering along the majestic Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Setting off from Liverpool, Tony takes a three-day walk inland to Wigan, tracing the story of the canal's chaotic construction and its dramatic impact on the development of Lancashire. Today the canal cuts a peaceful, winding route, linking rural farmlands with lost epicentres of the industrial northwest. From the mid-1750s, the population of Liverpool multiplied 20 times in barely a century, helped in no small part by its new canal: a vital link to the coal, factories and labour supply of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Tony's walk takes him from modern Liverpool - where just a few traces of the canal's original terminus remain - to the edge of the city, from where the canal is very much as it has been since it opened in 1774. Before reaching open countryside, he visits the old Hartley's jam factory and Aintree race course with its Canal Turn. In Lancashire Tony investigates the politics and processes that went in to this pioneering transport link. It took almost 50 years to construct 127 miles, with arguments, major delays and heartache along the way, followed by the eventual creation of communities. Looming over these communities was the coal industry, which dominated the latter stages of Tony's walk until the 1970s. The iconic, but rarely visited, Wigan Pier marks the final stage of this walk: a symbol both of the canal's role in Wigan's growth and a sign of the Lancashire industry that's now vanished.