NEWS FOR Summer 2008

The opening of a new tourist trail gave Shropshire Union Canal enthusiasts a chance to get a close-up look at a genuine piece of floating history.

The flyboat Saturn moored up on the towpath at Audlem to help celebrate the completion of a signposted route through some of the most beautiful countryside in the Weaver Valley.

It drew plenty of interest from crowds of visitors who were happy to soak up a little of Cheshire's rich canal heritage.

During the heyday of the canals, and even into the middle of the 20th century, flyboats like Saturn were the white vans of their age, hurrying mixed cargoes of general produce - and the occasional passenger - from town to town.

Built in 1904, Saturn saw four decades of service on the Shropshire Union Canal until its fortunes took a dive in the 1940s.

Abandoned and left to become derelict, Saturn's story was apparently over, until its chance rediscovery. Fully restored using traditional materials and methods, it has been charming canal enthusiasts and other visitors to the Weaver Valley since 2005.

Saturn is painted in its original working livery, and even sports a pair of tell-tale black spots on either side of its bow. These markings once advertised its special status as a flyboat to other canal users, who would have been obliged to give way and allow it past.

These days Saturn is in rather less of a hurry as it makes its way up and down the same canal where it once plied its trade. But as the canal becomes ever busier and more popular, you never know - those black spots might one day come in useful again.