Climbing over the Pennines

We are now on new waters for Leo, having started in the last couple of days to climb up the many locks of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal to reach the highest point on the canal system in England or Wales.  Our last posting was from Bugsworth Basin which we left on Wednesday.  We worked our way back along the Upper Peak Forest Canal and moored just short of Marple in a place we had spotted with great views North East over the Peak District.

Here is the view from our mooring at Strines.  All the way along this stretch of the Peak Forest Canal you travel along the side of the Goyt Valley with great views looking across towards Kinder.

We did a short walk from our mooring down into the Goyt Valley.  This is called 'Roman Bridge' but in fact has nothing to do with the Romans.  Rather it was a more romantic name introduced by the Victorians.









On Thursday we went down the 16 locks of the Marple flight, mostly in pouring rain.  The flight takes you down 214 feet so the average lock depth is over 13 feet.  The paddles are also under geared so are very hard to operate.  And the slope of the flight is such that you often have to move lock gate arms which are above your head.  All in all quite hard work.  We were pursued down by another boat with a crew of 5, so eventually we let them go ahead.  At the bottom you go over a lovely stone aqueduct over the River Goyt.  We moored soon after this in a lovely spot with views of sheep across the canal.

Part way down the Marple flight is this lovely old warehouse called Samuel Oldknow's Warehouse.  At one time boats could go inside for loading and unloading.

This is lock 3 near the bottom of the flight.  You can see how the gate arms project over the bridge parapet and make it a high push to close them.  You can see Helen pushing the left one.

Here is Leo coming out of the bottom lock.  Though it was a hard flight, everything worked (except one paddle on the top lock) and we had no shortage of water.  The fact that it was pouring with rain may have influenced that.

Here you can see Leo on the Aqueduct below the locks.  A railway also crosses the river on a slightly higher viaduct.  The canal is over 100 feet above the river and looking down is a bit unnerving, though there is a wide stone parapet.

Once we had moored we did a short walk which included passing under the aqueduct.  Though it is difficult to take a picture because of the trees, you can just see the circular hole in the aqueduct designed to lighten its weight.

And here's one from the top with a train crossing.















On Friday we carried on the few miles to the end of the Peak Forest Canal at Dukinfield Junction where it meets both the Ashton Canal which leads left into Manchester and the Huddersfield Narrow Canal which climbs over the Pennines.

As you approach the junction you see this huge mill chimney and below it is the River Tame.

 At first we moored opposite the museum in Portland Basin.  This proved to be a mistake as this is not a safe place for boats and, while we were in the museum we had our back rope stolen.  Not just cast off, but totally missing.  Later we saw three lads who pinched the rope off another boat.  We talked to the chaps running the Community Boat and they kindly allowed us to moor next to them on the offside for the night.

This photo is looking down the Ashton Canal towards the chimney and the Peak Forest Canal goes under the bridge to the left.  You can see Leo moored on the side away from the towpath breasted up with the Community Boat.  Lilith in the foreground is one of a number of old wooden narrowboats moored at the museum.  Some work, some don't and one was sunk!





So, having booked our passage through the Standedge Tunnel for Wednesday we set off on Saturday up the Huddersfield Narrow.

There are 32 locks up the Western side of the canal to the summit and all have a 'W' suffix.  This was lock 3W.  The canal climbs 334 feet to the summit at 645 feet above sea level.  There are 42 locks down the other side, but more of that later.  The surroundings are a bit industrial as you come out of Ashton.

Canals tend to have different paddle gear.  We had seen hydraulic paddles like this before but look at the pepperpot below.  These act as vents for the paddles and we'd not seen anything quite like them before.

An narrow iron aqueduct carries the canal over the River Tame whose valley it follows up to the summit.  Interestingly the towpath is a separate stone arch bridge.

Here is the view of the River Tame from the aqueduct.

An odd feature just before we moored was the canal passing underneath an electricity pylon which had its feet on both sides of the canal!

And here is Helen's atmospheric picture of the view looking up as we went underneath.













We moored outside the service block in a not very nice place just outside Stalybridge.  Though a great deal of money and effort has been spent in restoring the canal through that town, the area now looks rather run down and is not as attractive as we were expecting.  None of the area round Stalybridge struck us as very safe for boats so we carried on.  Possibly opposite Tesco with its CCTV cameras might be OK, but it was very noisy.  The service block where we stopped and its yard had oodles of razor wire around it - enough said!  In the event another boat drew up behind us and we had no trouble.  Much of the Huddersfield Narrow has shallow sides so it is difficult to moor other than at designated places.

Today we've come up another few locks and are moored just below Roaches Lock on the far side of Mossley.  This feels much safer and we are replete after a good lunch at the pub called the Roaches Lock which has good food and superb beer.

We've been used to signs like this on rivers which have a level indicator to show when the river is flooded and unsafe.  But look at this one.  The green (safe) marking is at the top and the red (unsafe) marking is at the bottom.  It seems this is to indicate when the pound above the lock is too empty to safely cross.  At the moment with the rain we've had absolutely no problem with pounds being low!

 Here we are at lock 12W and you can just see behind us to the portal of Scout Tunnel which we went through this morning.  The tunnel is roughly cut through rock for the most part.

We can't recall a canal before where the hills are so close.  Perhaps the top section of the Rochdale Canal comes close, but here the hills will be with us for days.  They seem to close in as you get further up. Walking a short way up the valley sides gives superb views.








The Huddersfield Narrow, on our present experience, is not one for novices.  The canal is often shallow, the locks are deep and there are some strong bywashes as you drive into the locks.  Sometimes it is difficult to land crew to operate the locks because the sides are so shallow.  Where we are moored tonight we are two or three feet out from the edge of the canal and sitting at a slight angle on the rocks, not mud, that is below us.  Fortunately other boats are rare so we are not being bumped by passing boats.

Probably our next posting will include the story of the passage of Leo through the infamous Standedge Tunnel, so keep watching.