FIGHTING THE ROCHDALE - OVER THE TOP

The Rochdale canal is not to be attempted lightly. Sections of the canal have to be pre-booked 24 hours in advance with British Waterways Warrington Office on 01925 847700 - yes I know Warrington is not on the canal system but BW like to get away from it. The sections to be booked have varied since the Rochdale was restored. In July 2004, at the time of writing the first booking is for Tuel Lane Lock (well I write ‘booking’ but I have been given different instructions, the best I have is that the lockeeper likes 24 hours notice as he has lots of work to do, to me that’s a booking). Tuel Lane is a large lock which combines two of the old locks to form a 19ft deep lock. The lock takes a huge amount of water which has to be lifted from the river with permission of the Environment Agency, this can cause delays during a dry weather spell, we were delayed on one trip for two days because of water shortage. It was surreal we sat on the boat stranded for lack of water whilst rain drummed on the boat roof. The next booking is for the summit pound. Lock 36 is padlocked and boats strictly allowed through only by booking, not only is the summit pound liable to be low but the pounds around Locks 40 and 41 can be very difficult. The last booking is to be escorted down through the vandalism area of the Rochdale 19 (Locks 65 -83) to Manchester, the padlocked Lock 65 is assembly area. The Warrington BW office say 24 hours notice but we discovered on our second trip that booking way in advance is best. We were delayed 48 hours when giving 24 hour notice for the Rochdale 19 as others had booked prior to ourselves.

In addition to booking arrangements you need to consider if you have enough crew, the locks are hard water flowing over the back gates mean the bottom gates are difficult to budge it is an exhausting process. You will meet with problems - logs stuck in gate paddles, grounding, youths; consider therefore taking the trip with another boat to make life easier. It is a hard canal with 91 locks and is not homogenised for safety or modern softies. You will need a long-handled windlass, rain gear, a ‘T’ anti-vandal screw key and time. You will also need to keep the front door and all windows closed as some of the locks leak astonishingly. Forget 10-15 minutes a lock, these can take you 30 minutes and don’t count the miles - you can complete seven locks and only cover a mile in distance. In return for your efforts you get stunning views and peaceful isolation, many friendly walkers and wonderful Pennine pubs. The canal scenery is so beautiful that this canal is destined to become a jewel in the waterways crown. The Llangollen pales beside the craggy grandeur of the Rochdale. “Get on with it!” you say.

The eastern portal of the Rochdale Canal is at Sowerby Bridge. Just to the right of the entrance is the Sowerby Bridge Basin, gradually being re-developed. It is currently the home of Shire Cruisers whose hireboats will accompany you on the Rochdale. We found here old friends, cheap diesel, and pumpouts. As the last two are in short supply on the Rochdale, it is worth topping up the diesel and emptying the holding tank (have I got that right?)

If you moor overnight below lock 1, having given 24 hour notice to the lock keeper he will probably visit, brief you and give you a start time,. Once you begin the ascend locks 1 and 2 are standard stone locks and no trouble to anyone, locks 3 and 4 are now Tuel Lane Lock. On rising to the top of lock 2 you see a curving bridge tunnel ahead, do not proceed. The pound will probably look a little low. You can ring the lock keeper to tell him you are waiting and he will blow his whistle three times for you to proceed when the lock is ready; or you can send a member of the crew ahead to talk to him. The wait here can be up to 30-45 minutes if there is a boat coming down the locks. You can tell when the lock is being discharged as the water creates a bore and raises the pound level over the top of the lock gates.

When given permission to proceed you will find the tunnel is wide and well lit. You come directly into the damp gloom of the lock, past two sets of gates then a frightening cill looms before you. Plastic covered steel hawsers run down the sides of the lock and you need to rope front and back with, if you can a crew member on each rope. The lock keeper eases the boat up whilst you try to forget you have 19 feet of water beneath you. Reaching the top is like entering a different world, bright and shining. Here you are given a navigation guide and a useful navigation update sheet. If only I had read it!

That’s the last help before the summit. Although the bridges are not numbered you cannot get lost as most of the locks are named and numbered. The crew gets an undeserved rest as the pound here is nearly three miles long but can be at times very shallow. You can moor in the pound but you will need spikes and sometimes a plank. The area is very attractive with romantic hillsides and stone mills. The locks are built in the main with huge stone blocks and many lock walls have revetments in the lock sides which were intended to be fitted with a second gate set to save water. The attractive architectural features of the canal are immediately apparent in the small detailing such as the rustic walkways and enticing stone lock steps.

Beware at Fallingroyd Tunnel after Lock 7 given as a bridge in Nicholson’s guide this is a sharp right-hand tunnel which you enter in pitch darkness. Once inside, a little dim light can be seen from the other end. Should you enter too fast, like this fool, and attempt to slow, you will make love to the left hand wall and scratch your boat. The correct procedure is given in the navigation update, but of course, I had not yet read this. So dead slow, sound your horn, keep to the centre of the tunnel and you should be fine and in a better mood than I, who seeing the scratches kicked everything I could find.

Into Hebden Bridge - sanitary station, water point, open dry dock and two tame geese. Hebden Bridge is one of the Pennine tourist spots, being a super little town with wonderful stone buildings, craft shops, a working pottery and a clog museum. We stayed overnight on a wooden mooring platform on the right, but most of the space is taken by permanent mooring and there was only room for us. On the left there are mooring rings along the towpath, but expect to be disturbed by the horse trip boat which takes visitors down to the clog museum.

Above Hebden Bridge is Black Pit Lock (not as bad as it sounds) with a small alternative power community and store, so if you have an interest in solar power these are the people for you. You are passing through a valley of stone chimneys and a sequence of locks each with its own quirks and eccentricities for you to discover and note. Above lock 11 there are 24 hour moorings at Stubbing Wharf. You now leave the towns behind and enter a narrow valley with wooded sides plus a small river running alongside you. This is a stunning canal. Then the woods begin to break up and the first bare headland appears. At Lock 16 the paddles were especially difficult and heavy. The lock wash on several of the locks is now very fierce and the landing bollards are not well positioned so you are advised to moor the boat with the front rope and one other rope to prevent the bow being blasted from the bank by the rush of water. We did this stretch on a Sunday with the inevitable fishing match, two hundred of the most miserable maggot chewers I have ever encountered, no smile, no talk, no acknowledgement. The match had been pegged right up to the lock gates thus causing problems with landing and pickup. I don’t know who won the match but the club gained the epithet as the Grumpy Fishing Society. There is a water point and services at the Baltimore Marina. The people there seemed extremely friendly, or was it just the contrast after the fish torturers?
Safe(ish) spiked mooring below lock 18, the aptly named Shop Lock, with more room above the lock. These moorings are very handy for shopping in Todmorden where we found an excellent small Sunday market. Despite several good looking pubs in the town we were driven out to the Staff of Life at Knotts on the Burnley Road; good real ale, excellent food and a voluptuous waitress - the visit marred only by the fact that I paid the bill.

Lock 19 is a Guillotine lock, unusually with hand operated paddles. It is easy to work and quite quick for a guillotine. Foot access to the lock area is by a hidden horse tunnel. We bring you everything! Beyond the guillotine you glimpse ‘The Great Wall of Tod’ which holds back the hillside. This wall is not to be confused with ‘The Great Wall of China’, which is smaller and is in errr... China.
After the excitement of Todmorden you are now out in the hills. Small groups of cottages, with local women pegging out the washing looking like women villagers the world over. The more wistful of you might imagine an Afghanistan valley and expect Soviet gunships to sweep over the hill any moment; the realistic would expect hordes of yob vandals from Manchester, of whom more later.

After working hard through the locks above Lock 27 in Walsden you will meet the glad sight of ‘Gramma Pollard’s Chippy’ with superb pies. The village of Walsden should in fact be called ‘Dog Droppings’ as the entire towpath is covered in old and fresh. Above Lock 27 is the first real chance to moor since Todmorden and above lock 28 there is a water point with several moorings outside the Cross Keys Inn. You now leave dogshit land and enter into more hilly wilds. After Lock 29 you enter two stretches of wide water, a beautiful area where we spent the night only slightly disturbed by the occasional train.

The next morning we had problems with Lock 31. The balance beams are short and have balance weights beneath. The gates have been fitted with a ratchet arm and capstan, but one gate’s fitting had not been completed and on the other the capstan could not be budged. The one gate, which could be opened would not open fully and therefore traversing the lock despite modern technology took some time. Unlike the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, houses and civilisation follow you all the way up the valley. Bare hillsides complete with sheep appear but you are never out of sight of stunning stone cottages. As you rise through Lock 34 the sight of an unusual battlemented wall appears outside the village. I attempted to gain more information from a fisherman but he said: “I don’t know nowt about it, I’ve only been fishing here ten year!”

The pound between lock 34 and 35 offers a very quiet secluded spike mooring. The tree cover has now virtually disappeared. Only specimen singletons and the odd copse can be seen. A few yards past Lock 35 is a swing bridge, the first on the canal and the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire. At Lock 36 the notes originally asked you to ring the lock keeper 30 minutes before arrival to arrange to have the gates unlocked, but the telephone number was not working on our first trip. On our latest trip you had to give 24 hour notice and moor overnight below lock 36. The usual magnificent help was provided from the BW workers who completed the lock for us and gave good updates on where to moor and where to take care on the next part of the canal.

The summit, by name and by location. On our first trip we spent the night moored to an old pair of metal rings above the top lock, having bought a newspaper and milk from the village shop. You can also buy a summit plaque should that be your bag. Now for the arduous bit. If you think going up is tough, going down is even more testing. Little renovation work has been done on the next group of locks and they are hard, hard work. Lock 40 is the first of the restricted width locks; only one boat can lock at a time. The lock has short beam arms and two of us could not budge the gate. We borrowed labour at the hire company next to the lock and three of us could just budge the gate. Lock 41 - the paddle gear was so stiff that it bent my new lightweight long-handled windlass, can I have my money back Billy? Both bottom paddles would only lift a quarter no matter how much weight was put onto them. Lock 42 - the paddles continually slipped making attempts to raise them very difficult. Lock 43 was less of a problem but the paddle gear was hard and could only be worked with a long-handled windlass and brute application. By lock 45 your troubles are lessening, the land flattens and water ceases to flow over the top of the lock gates. We found it best to have me walk ahead to the next lock and prepare it before we drove the boat out of the previous lock. After lock 46 there is a water point on the off-side with a rubbish skip; a good area to rest, revive and fill with water - both you and the boat. Lock 47 can only be completed singly being just over 13 feet wide.

There are old wharf mooring rings just outside Littleborough but be careful the length is very shallow, we found deep water just past and tied to old railings. The mooring is convenient for shopping. A huge flock of Canada Geese and ducks live around the mooring and masses of people come and feed wildlife, consequentially the moorings are covered in the result. The first sign of new major canal construction is the new road bridge outside the Waterside Inn just past the Littleborough mooring. On this stretch of canal all along the left side a dam of wooden poles and plastic has been constructed to prevent erosion and is being used for dredging fill. On the right, the bank is walled but too shallow to moor. You are now back amongst the trees, grass thicker and lush, probably because we are in Lancashire.

The first swing bridge down from the summit is at the edge of a large housing estate. No landing stages have yet been provided and it is difficult to drop off the crew. The locking mechanism for the bridge was broken, probably by an Impi of Greater Manchester yobs, but the bridge was free to swing open. You can now see Rochdale, the first awakening of council house land with the unemployable sitting fishing and the first shopping trolley awash with rust. The canal here is very shallow and the water black, oily and smelly. There is a modern garden centre past the second swing bridge, the centre protected as if it were a young offenders institution, but here the security is attempting to stop them getting in.

Down into Rochdale past Lock 49 with only one paddle gear on the off side fitted with a modern handcuff, beneath the lock were two car parked in the navigation channel. Local youths have taken to stealing car and abandoning them in the canal. We just managed to cruise past the left hand side of a Volkswagen Golf. Water lilies mixing with old warehouses, boats still a curiosity and there are plenty of watchers as you complete the lock. Lock 50 is a very leaky lock and you need to ensure your windows are closed. As a compensation you do get the boat washed. Out of lock and under a bridge, to the right is a short wharf arm, which if renovated and fenced would provide a perfect safe mooring site for boaters wanting to visit Rochdale. There is an attractive park area when leaving Rochdale, but an awful amount of rubbish in and around the canal.

Just before the M62, a huge shopping village including a B&Q Warehouse has been constructed but if you want to visit you will have to make a spiked mooring before entering the new M62 canal construction. A drain type culvert takes you under the traffic island by B&Q. The whole length is a twisty concrete culvert with blind bends and passing areas. You pass the old defunct lock and then meet the new modern brutish lock. The lock works well enough but is no oil painting, nor photographic beauty.

After the lock you have an easy run to a good spike mooring at Slattocks. We were tempted to try a couple of mooring spots by the stone bank prior to this mooring, but the water was too shallow. By the moorings you have a garage for newspapers and milk, a couple of pubs and regular buses to Rochdale and Manchester, should you wish to visit civilisation.

Locks 54 to 58 were standard double locks, which gave no problem with the exception of Lock 54 which was very wet. Make sure you have not left any windows open. At the top of the locks you have heavy Manchester traffic; when you get to the bottom only the railway disturbs the quiet. This area is one of those north west passages of countryside, scrub farmland between towns. B&Qs, store depots and new houses now despoil the land because it is cheaper than to re-use the brown field sites. Lock 59; bottom gates paddles are put high on the gate, which makes it difficult for the smaller person, doesn’t it Brenda? Lock 60 has a very poor landing - just a few stones attached to the bank and it was easy to run aground. Lock 61 has no landing stage unless you counted the two wooden poles by a rubbish area on the offside. At Lock 62 there is nowhere at all to land as trees and bushes fill the bank. Lock 62 paddles are very stiff, I had to get off the boat and help out; again. At Lock 63 the bywash runs fast from your right. You need to leave the lock at speed to avoid being thrown against the bridge wall.
There is very little choice in overnight moorings. The best is at ‘The Rose of Lancaster’. It’s a quiet area apart from the railway and the extractor fan from the pub but quite acceptable for a single night. We left the mooring early at 6.45am wanting to be on time at Lock 65 to meet the BW escort crew and not knowing what to expect. As you leave The Rose you pass beneath two bridges and are in a wooded cutting with reed beds on both sides making a single channel down the centre.

Lock 64 is on its own by a bus depot only 10 minutes sailing time from The Rose. We had trouble closing the gates and noted that the pound below was very shallow. A small arm below the lock was blocked by dredging spoil; this arm would make a useful dry-dock or mooring. Just further on is the dramatic new hydraulic horizontal lift bridge over what will be a busy road. Looking left you see a lovely panorama of industrial mills, chimneys, church steeples all shining in the sun. Autumn - the geese are in the air. I don’t mind the Canada Geese when they are flying.
Past several old wharfs and a wide complicated decking walkway beneath a road bridge marked ‘Oldham Broadway 1993’. You pass the ‘Coach and Horses’ pub on the left, poles set in the water well off the bank to give a very simple mooring. We were advised not to moor here as the area has become troublesome, but we saw no sign of any trouble as we passed through early in the morning.

The canal is now a concrete channel running alongside the M60 motorway with passing places, and sharp bends. Beside the M60 you slip under in a drainage ditch, the canal lined with escape steps every 100 yards. This entire area, although not old, is already extensively covered in graffiti, some confirming my worry of Manchester Impis with the name ‘Zulu’ continually repeated. Once under a wide brick bridge you are out of the clutches of the motorway.

At eight o’clock we arrived at the isolated Lock 65; chains, handcuffs and padlock or is that my sex life, and with nowhere to tie the boat up whilst you wait. British Waterways arrived with six men, the other two boats have not yet arrived and we are sent off without an escort locking with Keith on Nb ‘Going Places’ which he is building himself, through the lock in a twisty concrete block culvert to Lock 66. The canal by the lock appears inviting for mooring but turns out to be completely silted up; we could not get near the bank and nearly ran aground.

Lock 67 was easier to get to; of note in the right is a sign of our times, a very large mill has be destroyed and a very large Morrisons supermarket built. The bywash on most of these locks at Failsworth comes in from the right, heavily. At Lock 68 we can get in to the bank with difficulty, but in this length hessian bales have been put down for wash protection. Now I am not the brightest spark in the firework but on my first visit I noted that the bales did not look very strong or robust and that there could be a disaster if they start to come apart. On my second visit I noted that many of them have burst and clunk my engine stopped as hessian became trapped on my prop. Wooden poles set in the cut have signs denoting ‘Underwater obstruction’. The navigation channel is therefore very narrow and shallow we were very lucky to get the boat through.

Lock 69; by a busy shopping road at Newton Heath with a wide variety of shops and a market on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday good for bacon butties for the crew. Most of the locks around here do not have landing stages or bollards yet. The bottom gates at this lock are opened by capstans which were stiff and hard work.

First signs of young yobs throwing wood into the canal from the bank; on taking their photograph they become very polite! Locks 70 – 76 are standard with no trouble, at lock 74 the by-wash for a change is piped in from the left. After lock 76 the canal in front is straight with a sloping concrete lining; it would be difficult to get the boat to the edge in an emergency. Wooden planking replaces the concrete by the lock but no bollards have been positioned to hold the boat.

Lock 77 is interesting, a new concrete top has been fitted on the old stone lock beneath. It is now a deep lock. At lock 78 I used the bollard to stop the boat as I came into the lock. I was not going fast, honest, but the bollard came clear away. Note to BW: Very, very sorry but you may consider seating the bollards more firmly. More dangerous obstructions are marked after lock 78.
Lock 79 - the advance guard of a Manchester Impi was exercising. After refusing to give them a ride on the boat, we bribed them with chocolate and took a photograph of these dangerous characters. Between Lock 79 and 81 the area easily becomes flooded. Reports are that the canal is to be dredged here during the winter. At lock 80, a dead pub ‘The Navigation’, sob!

After lock 81 you are in a narrow channel running straight past housing. You feel very exposed here to stone throwing, but it is not a long stretch and the buildings of Piccadilly can now be seen ahead. At lock 82 there are capstans to open the gates. The paddle gear is fitted beneath a low bridge and can just be worked without banging your head. Lock 83 was an old stone chamber with water flowing over the gates and out of stonewalls.

We enter Manchester in the rain, leaving mills and warehouses and entering exclusive apartment world. On the outskirts of Manchester we note groups of children with one adult male who obviously is not a parent; who are they, what are they doing with the children? It is rather unsettling. Below lock 83 are mooring rings these were only for the brave, but urban regeneration has reached this area and it is now safe to moor. Whilst safe, it is noisy with shouts of Manchester night clubbers and your boat will be repeatedly passed by prowling single gentlemen. Here we left the Rochdale and turned onto the Ashton narrow locks and the safest mooring in Manchester at the Piccadilly Village basin. The only downside is that you cannot get out of the security compound. If you are continuing down the ‘Rochdale Nine’ into Castlefields you need to be aware it will take you about three hours. You may wish to read my detailed description of the nine entitled ‘Ropey Rough Rochdale & Awful Assaulting Ashton?’ available at very little cost.