Trev's travails: Trains and boats

Today I made my inaugural trip with my latest investment - a Senior Railcard! I bought a South Pennine Day Ranger ticket and initially travelled from Sheffield to Manchester Piccadilly.

I walked across the city to Manchester Victoria Station, which has been around for almost 170 years. In 1838 Samuel Brooks, vice-chairman of the Manchester and Leeds Railway (M&LR) bought land at Hunt's Bank close to the cathedral and presented it to the company for a station to replace the inconveniently located Manchester Oldham Road railway station. The station was initially a long, low single-storey building designed by George Stephenson and completed by John Brogden on 1 January 1844. It was named Victoria by permission of Her Majesty.

The building’s facade carries an iron and glass canopy bearing the names of the original destinations served, and a tile mural depicting the routes of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, which operated most of the trains from the station between 1847 and 1923 (when it became part of the LMS). Here is a photo of what used to be the First Class Refreshment Room.

My next destination was Todmorden, in Calderdale, some 17 miles from Manchester.

The historic county boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire is marked by the River Calder and its tributary, the Walsden Water, which runs through the centre of the town

I was heading for the Rochdale Canal and planned to walk along the towpath to Sowerby Bridge, some 10 miles away.

The Rochdale Canal runs for 33 miles between Manchester and Sowerby Bridge. As originally built, the canal had 92 locks. Whilst the traditional lock numbering has been retained on all restored locks, and on all the relocated locks, the canal now has only 91 locks. The former locks 3 and 4 have been replaced with a single deep lock (Tuel Lane Lock), which is numbered as 3/4.

The Rochdale Canal was conceived in 1776, when a group of 48 eminent men from Rochdale raised £237 and commissioned James Brindley to conduct a survey of possible routes between Sowerby Bridge and Manchester. The canal was opened up in stages, as it was completed, with the Rochdale Branch being the first in 1798, further sections in 1799, and the bottom nine locks opening in 1800.

Because of its width, the canal became the main highway of commerce between Lancashire and Yorkshire. Cotton, wool, coal, limestone, timber, salt and general merchandise were transported.

With the arrival of the railways, traffic on the canal began to drop. Apart from a short profitable section in Manchester linking the Bridgewater and Ashton Canals, most of the length was closed in 1952. The last complete journey had taken place in 1937, and by the mid 1960s the remainder was almost unusable. Construction of the M62 motorway in the late 1960s took no account of the canal, cutting it in two.

View of Stoodley Pike Monument, which overlooks Todmorden. It was designed in 1854 by local architect James Green, and completed in 1856 at the end of the Crimean War. The monument replaced an earlier structure, started in 1814 and commemorating the defeat of Napoleon and the surrender of Paris. It was completed in 1815, after the Battle of Waterloo, but collapsed in 1854 after an earlier lightning strike, and decades of weathering.

The Rochdale Canal re-opened to boats in 2002 after an ambitious volunteer restoration project that brought an end to more than 50 years without through navigation. Today the Rochdale Canal is significant for leisure boating in that it is one of the three canals which cross the Pennines and thus join north-western canals with the waterways of the North East, as well as opening the possibilities of touring various Pennine Rings (the Huddersfield Narrow Canal had reopened the year before, and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal had never closed).

A great attraction of the Rochdale Canal for the leisure boater lies in the fact that (unlike the Leeds and Liverpool and the Huddersfield Narrow) it climbs high over the Pennine moors rather than tunnelling through them, and the boater is surrounded by scenery which is correspondingly more spectacular (with the "penalty" of having to work more locks ...

... and these guys were taking it at an even more leisurely pace. They had been on the barge since April and had already completed the Leeds - Liverpool Canal before embarking on this Canal.

I lunched at Hebden Bridge - good to see that it was seemingly back to normal after the recent floods - there were plenty of visitors

Hebden Bridge forms part of the Upper Calder Valley and lies 8 miles west of Halifax and 14 miles north east of Rochdale, at the confluence of the River Calder and the River Hebden (Hebden Water).

The original settlement was the hilltop village of Heptonstall. Hebden Bridge (originally Heptenbryge) started as a settlement where the Halifax to Burnley hilltop packhorse route dropped down into the valley.

The route crossed the River Hebden at the spot where the old bridge (from where Hebden Bridge gets its name) stands. The word Hebden comes from the Anglo-Saxon Heopa Denu, 'Bramble(or possibly Wild Rose) Valley'.

I decided against stopping off for a game of bowls ...

... and walked on to Sowerby Bridge. Further details of the Rochdale Canal can be found by clicking on the link Rochdale Canal.

Sowerby Bridge, about three miles from Halifax, is at the confluence of the River Calder and River Ryburn. The town is at the junction of the Calder and Hebble Navigation and the Rochdale Canal. Sowerby Bridge has been a crossing point on the Calder and Ryburn rivers since the Middle Ages and probably long before that. Domestic weaving in the hilltop villages of Sowerby and Norland gave way to the building of large water powered mills by the River Calder. Most of the mills are now closed.

Wainhouse Tower, built in the 19th century and stands 253ft tall. Visitors can walk up its 403 steps in order to see a magnificent view of the district.The original concept came from John Edward Wainhouse who owned the Washer Lane Dyeworks, in 1854. At the time, Halifax Corporation was urgently trying to implement measures to control the amount of smoke in the atmosphere. As the Dyeworks was contributing to the pollution problem, Wainhouse decided that it would be a good idea to build a chimney, which would be connected to the Dyeworks by an underground flue. Wainhouse had a good appreciation of architecture, and insisted that the chimney be an object of beauty.

John Edward Wainhouse died in July 1883 and the Tower was offered for sale by auction. The Tower had been in the ownership of several people when in 1918, the Halifax Courier organised a public subscription in order for Halifax Corporation to purchase the structure. On May 30 1919, the deed of ownership passed to the Council where it has remained ever since.