ALTHOUGH it is now nigh on half a century since I left my native North West there are still times I quite miss the mills and misery of Macclesfield.

I still can’t get over the fact that you can’t get steamed steak and kidney pudding with chips and gravy at any chip shop within 100 miles, no pubs serve dark mild on a regular basis and hot Vimto is a rarity on any cafe menu.

Being at the heart of the Cheshire plain means that cycling in Macclesfield is also mostly on the flat, not the lung-bursting four miles uphill and three miles down of the North Tyne circuit.

Older Macclesfield people tend to shout a lot, and then repeat themselves, a la the peerless Fred Elliott on Coronation Street, supposedly a relic of the days when everything had to be repeated to be understood over the thunder of flying shuttles in the town’s innumerable silk mills.

What I miss more than anything about Macclesfield though is the canal, the jaunty artificial waterway which zig-zags for 26 miles through the lovely Cheshire countryside.

It may have lacked the natural beauty of the North Tyne, and no trout or salmon every exploded from its murky depths, but it was a magical place where wildlife flourished, and unwanted dogs were done to death.

Nowadays, it is the haunt of the Cheshire set, with their cabin cruisers and designer narrow boats who dress as though they are in Monaco or Cannes rather than a relic of the industrial revolution, lovingly restored by the sort of delightfully eccentric enthusiasts who revived the Haltwhistle to Alston railway line.

In my mind though, the canal will always be one of the great playgrounds of my childhood, where many happy hours were spent on the towpath, on the water, and occasionally and unfortunately, in the water.

We used to go for family walks along the canal, and watched it change from sullen sewer close to the town centre, to glittering ribbon of silver as it progressed through the countryside.

In the rural bits, there were exciting plips and plops as unseen creatures slid into the water, mallards guided their unruly broods through the bulrushes and there were sudden swirls in the water as some mighty fish moved away into the depths.

We wondered whether it might be Moby Dick, the giant pike which my father insisted was so big it could only swim in one direction because the canal was not wide enough for it to turn round, except for the loading wharves at the massive Hovis mill, where the famous brown bread was originally founded, despite what Joe Gladwyn would have you believe in his famous television advert.

The canal was also home to innumerable strains of dragonfly, darting jewels of every imaginable colour dancing and cavorting around the water’s edge.

I was once buzzed by one about the size of a Tiger Moth bi-plane, and would not have been surprised to have been strafed by the rear gunner.

I once took my bike along the towpath to go to a carnival 10 miles away at Congleton, even though it would have been quicker my road.

I never got to the carnival – I was so enchanted by the sight of a heron on the canal bank that I over-balanced and plunged into the water.

For two shillings and sixpence, you could hire a canoe for the day, an option my brother and I took up on numerous occasions, despite the fact a notorious gang of ruffians was always lying in wait to relieve would be canoeists of their half crowns.

We usually managed to give them the slip my taking a labyrinthine route to the the depot, where we were issued with our canoe and two paddles for a day’s messing about in boats.

We spent more time extricating the craft from canalside reeds and weeds than making forward progress, and got into more fights with each other than we would have had with the local toughs, but it was bliss.

There were occasional encounters with snooty cabin cruiser owners, who got their cravats in a twist at having their stately progress impeded by a wildly zig-zagging canoe, and more regular ones with the surly anglers who for some reason disliked having their lines wrapped round a careless paddle.

We were showered with maggots on one occasions by a man who claimed we had ruined his chances of catching the roach he had been stalking all day.