For my next bit of walking I had settled on the Rochdale Canal, which I had crossed over on one of my Pennine Way legs. This time I had my good friend Lee for company and it was nice to have some conversation en route instead of the radio/tapes. The canal is 33 miles in total, running from Sowerby Bridge to Castlefield in Manchester, for today we had settled on a 10 mile leg. One of the handy things about this canal is the Caldervale rail line which runs close to the canal for most of the route with stations at Sowerby Bridge, Mytholmroyd, Hebden Bridge, Todmorden, Walsden, Littleborough, Smithy Bridge & Rochdale. Therefore its a great route to take if you're not too sure how far you want to walk in a day as you're never too far from a station and a return from Manchester Victoria to Sowerby Bridge will cost you about £8.
So it was it was an early start for the train from Victoria, which had one of those old-fashioned type charter trains departing to goodness knows where.
Arriving in Sowerby Bridge, the station is hidden away from the town centre in an industrial area but it wasn't too hard to find our way to the centre and bridge number one of the canal.
With my previous walk having been down the Huddersfield Canal, it was easy to draw comparisons between the two and they were actually in direct competition for traffic. The Rochdale Canal was completed in 1776 and was ultimately the more successful one as it was built as a broad canal allowing for wider boats and had far more space for boats to pass each other.
One of the features of the canal, as it lies in a steep-sided valley, is that there a several streams flowing down the hillsides ending in small waterfalls as they feed into the canal.
For most of the route, the canal is lined with trees which I would imagine provides shelter from the winds on stormy days.
I was certainly impressed with the efforts of the ivy I saw at this point.
Having left Sowerby Bridge a couple of miles behind, we passed the first of many properties that line the side of the canal, most are stone-built and many are three stories. I could quite go for the idea of being able to fish from my back garden.
The canal shares the valley with River Calder and at this point it crosses over the river.
The locks on the canal seem to much less frequent than on the Huddersfield canal, as far as I can remember this was the first encounter of the day.
Further along the trees thinned out, revealing a large meadow to the left and some chickens getting some football practice to the right.
Before long we were approaching the outskirts of Hebden Bridge, and like many others like it, the canal has attracted new property development - nice to see the builder has worked to blend it in with the general feel of the valley.
Another advantage of the nearby River Calder is as a run-off for excess water from the canal.
A fair few of the boats encountered seemed to be full-time homes for the owners, some of them having vegetable plots and even garden sheds. Unfortunately being afloat does not exempt you from council tax, although you can claim a rebate for each day of the year you spend cruising.
Passing through Hebden Bridge, the canal gradually moves from the north side of the valley to the south.
I'm unsure as the correct name for these but this was the first of several, again for the purpose of draining excess water, with the small wooden bridge on the side to keep your feet dry when the water flowing out is deep.
There were plenty of interesting distractions here, with waterfalls joining the canal, geese and fantastically old-looking stone bench.
There were many eye catching properties on the opposite bank with large gardens rolling down to the water edge, this was my favourite.
We were getting into last few miles of the day and as you can see from this lock, the going was downhill now.
Here we met one of the friendliest horses I have ever seen, the one in foreground was straight over to say hello as soon as stopped to take his photo.
One final lock to negotiate and we were in Todmorden done for the day in just about 3 hours. A good mornings work.
