Cooper Bridge to Standedge 05/09/12

Catching the 220 bus from Morley to Cooper Bridge seems a much more sensible trip than riding the train to Mirfield and having a couple of miles of extra walking, even though the bus is something of a dawdlebug and wanders all over the Spen Valley en route to Huddersfield. What I hadn't realised is that September coming on means that the school term has started up again, and the service is crawling with children. Kids everywhere, and it's just as horrifying as it was when I was a youngster, and just to add to the ridiculousness, many are travelling from Queen Street to Bruntcliffe college, less than half a mile! Madness, all of it madness, and getting some downtime on the ride into darkest Kirklees is necessary to let the PTS of school memories pass away.

Cooper Bridge to Standedge, via the Huddersfield Broad & Narrow Canal paths. 12.4 miles

Cooper Bridge

Alighting at Cooper Bridge on the Calder at 9.35am on another gorgeous morning immediately throws a realisation my way, that being that the end of Summer is upon us, the quality of the sunlight has changed from what it was only four days age, the tone is ever so slightly yellower and the shadows just a little sharper, and the elevation of the sun is that bit lower that makes the day feel like it's always morning or evening without an obvious noon. The end of Summer might be may favourite seasonal time, especially if it stays nice. I ought to get walking and hit the first lock of the Huddersfield Broad canal, opened in 1776 to link another town to the canal network and having remained virtually intact since, and by the looks of it civil engineers are busy rebuilding the embankment of the neighbouring river which suggests there may have been slippage or erosion problems around here recently. Pass under the railway, on a much more modest bridge than you'd expect for it, and start to count the locks as the Huddersfield Broad & Narrow canals may form the shortest route of the Trans-Pennine canals, they easily have the highest ascent. Soon enough, Bradley Viaduct is met like an old friend, and it's blue bricked glory is a sight to behold, so much different from last time when it rained hard. Two more locks are passed before a another railway viaduct is met, and it's fun to encounter something you cannot put an identity to, and this one was part of the London & North Western Railway branch to Kirkburton which operated from 1867 to 1930. Nice to meet a railway I'd never heard of, going to a town I'd never heard of.

Huddersfield Refuse Incinerator

Bradley Viaduct

Beyond the A62, the Colne valley opens up a bit, and the playing fields beyond the ivy-bedecked mill have grown men playing football on them, men in matching blue kit with prominent crests. It takes a moment to register that they are the players of Huddersfield Town, gearing up for the new season of whichever division they are in (seriously, my football interest has faded irretrievably over this summer of Olympic achievement). Plod on, three more locks are passed, and the railway line is shadowed with the TPEs thundering by regularly, until chimneys appear to disrupt the leafiness and today is such a clear day the Huddersfield refuse incinerator looks good in the landscape. Moving into a much more industrial landscape on the edge of town, the canal swings under the A62 again, on a much bigger over-bridge, and the old mills start to appear at canalside, rough-looking but still largely intact. Then we reach the best bit of engineering on this canal, the Turnbridge Lift Bridge, also known as the Locomotive bridge, where a combination of wheels, chains and counter-weights lift the deck of the bridge out of the way of passing canal barges. Pause for elevenses behind the Sainsbury's at the canalside and wonder if I've gotten lost and wound up in Brighouse, but the sight of Castle Hill in the distance indicates that I am still in the Colne valley. Then on to the end of the Broad canal at Apsley Basin Wharf, home to many boats in a small space, plus a Travelodge and many 'characterful' office developments, and cross the footbridge to the hotel car park to get to the Wakefield Road bridge, which has cut off the canal from its terminus and is now only accessible to narrowboats. However, we can walk on to the site of King Street wharf, now home to the campus of University of Huddersfield , one of the really enduring pieces of late 60's architecture, and a site that has developed extensively over the last decade.

Huddersfield canalside

Turnbridge Lift Bridge

This leads neatly to the Huddersfield Narrow canal, completed in 1811 and build to accommodate only narrow-beamed boats as a cost cutting measure and only enjoyed a 30 year spell of profitability before the railway surpassed it, send it into a century of decline and eventual closure in 1944. As we've seen with the Rochdale canal though, closure is a challenge to be taken on by the enthusiastic and after extensive restoration work, the canal was reopened in its entirety in 2001. The first section, from lock 1E is quite the most satisfying stretch of industrial redevelopment I have encountered so far on my travels, the University having taken on the warehouses and the canal path is an oasis of leafy calm in the middle of the town. Explaining all the various bits of restoration work will turn this blog post into an epic essay, so refer to the Pennine Waterways website for further details as we go, and as the canal dives into a deep channel before disappearing into Bates tunnel, we are compelled to make our way along the roads to rejoin the canal at lock 3E. I immediately love this stretch through Huddersfield, there are so many old mills intact and in use that it makes me glad that one town in Yorkshire did not go in for wanton demolition in the 1960s, and rejoining the canal at Chapel Hill bridge, next to the new Kirklees College we find the newest section of redeveloped canal, rebuilt in 2011 after Sellers Engineering vacated the site and the 2001 tunnel beneath it became unnecessary. This will be the Huddersfield waterfront development when the economy revives, and for now it marks the way out of Huddersfield and into the upper Colne Valley, as the river finally makes an appearance adjacent to us.


Lock 3E

Milnsbridge

St Thomas, Manchester Road, dominates views until in short order we meet the A62 again, a pair of locks, the metal-stone combo that is Longroyd viaduct on the Penistone line, Paddock Foot aqueduct over the Colne and an apartment complex where someone is blasting Dub Reggae at incredible volume. Tree coverage makes you feel like you are slipping into the countryside, but you aren't that for from the town as more impressive mills appear along the canal, and its amongst these that I stop for lunch, by lock 8E at Milnsbridge, another post-industrial idyll. I eat and ponder why I'd found the Yorkshire canals to look unfamiliar, and it's because they are mostly Broad canals, whilst I grew up in Leicestershire, where Narrow canals were the thing. Narrow canals are also massively more terrifying to me, as if you fall into a lock occupied by a boat, you can be sure you are going to die horribly, at least the part of my brain that is still a frightened 5 year old boy thinks that way! Time to press on into the countryside after that, four more locks before we hit Golcar aqueduct, and back to the north side of the Colne where Holme Mill and Ramsden Mill perch between river and canal, and lock 15E leads us into the open valley where Titanic Mill in Linthwaite dominate the view, naturally it's a spa and apartment complex these days. Beyond lock 17E, Westwood Mill might be the oldest in the Colne Valley, but it is a sad sight of utter dereliction, and as the long walk on to Slaithwaite starts I realise that I have travelled with only my copy of Explorer 288 for company, OL 21 has been left at home, so whilst I have limited chances of getting lost, I might want for identifying things as I go.



Titanic Mill, Linthwaite

Slaithwaite

Slaithwaite is met, and the canal here needed significant restoration, largely due to relevelled bridges and the channel being buried by a car park as it ran through the town centre. The first lock in town, 21E has been repositioned and is terrifyingly deep, and next is a nice open marina that seems a little underpopulated, then stop to use the local toilets and find that here too the graffitied requests for swinging and gay sex are in full force. Onwards as the canal follows alongside Carr Road, and I'm surprised that such a modest town can seem so busy on a Wednesday afternoon, past more rebuilt bridges and repositioned locks, and the apparently 'world-famous' Moonraker floating tearoom, to then head out of town by lock 24E, another guillotine lock, and the Handmade brewery, hiding away in Upper Mills. Push on out through a long leafy cut, with many joggers and cyclists, and this seems to be the Colne Valley's exercise path as far as I can tell. Th landscape opens up after lock 27E and I start to look out to the many inviting hillsides, all of the so-far unwalked and start to puzzle about which ones I may have seen from the hillside outside Morley. Also start to puzzle about how far we have to go and how many more corners the canal might have, before Cellars Clough Mill and Sandhill cottages provide a bit of civilisation and the canal passes between two ponds, quite oddly, these being the mill pond / nature reserve and Sparth Reservoir.


Above Lock 31E

Locks 34E & 35E

Lock 33E marks the start of the ascent to Marsden and the locks start to pile up thick and fast, the first bunch almost forming a staircase in their secluded glade of trees, with circular pounds between locks to ensure sufficient water supply for the locks, and as you approach the top you start to realise why the canal was a nightmare to navigate and why it was the first of the Trans-Pennine canals to close. Having enjoyed a climb like you wouldn't expect on canal walk, the top is met just below Marsden station, lock 42E, and that's 51 locks in 12 miles since leaving Cooper Bridge, about 150 metres of ascent. Anyway, we're at the summit level now and we need to hurry along to the conclusion of the walk, underneath the railway and to Standedge Wharf, and the opening of Standedge tunnel, the longest, highest and deepest canal tunnel in Britain. Over 3 miles long, 196 metres above sea level and 194 metres below ground at the deepest point, and largely the reason that the canal never really made a profit and failed to endure. Now it stands as a monument to the age of enterprise and as a tourist attraction, and it's tempting to hop the boat trip in for a few hundred metres ride inside, and the visitor centre is apparently good too, but as is my way, getting my ride home seems more pressing.

Standedge Tunnel

So it's back to Marsden we go, and don't stop at The Railway for a pint either, because I am so predictable, and the time to head home at 2.50 pm, and that is the end of West Yorkshire's canal walks, another scheme which seemed huge, and went by very easily, and of all the days on the towpaths, this was easily my favourite!

1,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 345.3 miles