Another day, another canal

I went to visit a friend who lives near the Calder and Hebble Navigation. It's a unique waterway, quite different from the Leeds-Liverpool Canal (LLC) that I'm more familiar with. The Navigation is based around the Rivers Calder and Hebble. By the year 1700, they had created 'canal cuts' in places where the rivers are winding or have weirs. These canal cuts allow boats to bypass those tricky sections. It means sometimes you find yourself walking along the river and other times on a stretch of canal. This makes the waterway quite complex, with floodgates to protect the canal sections and locks to adjust the heights between the rivers and canals.

It's more urban than many parts of the LLC too, though still quite attractive in some areas. It has a few marinas, with the usual mix of hire boats, well-kept narrowboats that are used by their owners for leisure and adventures, and quite a lot of smaller, scruffier craft. Those often belong to people who've fallen on hard times and find a boat a more affordable living solution than bricks and mortar. 

Unfortunately, our planned walk was interrupted by the closure of the waterside path, due to the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU). This is a major project to upgrade the railway across the north of England between Manchester and York. The TRU aims to increase capacity by adding extra track, electrifying the entire route, introducing digital signalling, and upgrading stations. It's a huge and costly project. We came up against a large working area, where they are moving and rebuilding Ravensthorpe Station. 

It meant we had to abandon the waterway and strike off along the busy main road, though thankfully after a while we did manage to find a route that led us through quieter woodland and eventually back to the canal towpath. 

It was a good walk, adding another 6 miles on my 'steps app'. My phone must wonder what's going on, since this month I've done many miles more walking than I usually average! 

Skipton Castle Woods

Behind Skipton Castle, the old Springs Branch Canal is now blocked by a landslip but you can still walk that way. It's a pleasant circular walk through Skipton Castle Woods, once a medieval hunting ground, then a source of water power for the town's corn and textile mills and now a nature reserve. The canal ends and the path runs alongside Eller Beck and the various sluices that were made to channel the water to the mill wheels. 

There was a smattering of bluebells but not as many as I expected. Most of the slopes were covered in wild garlic. 

Part way round the trail, you arrive at the Round Dam, another sign of the industrialisation of the waterways in the area. It's now quite a peaceful spot and I sat and ate my lunch there, enjoying the tranquillity. 

At the far end of the dam, a heron was trying to find his lunch too.

Sojourn in Paris #9

Paris 2025 - Canal Saint Martin

I didn't know before this trip that Paris has a canal, the Canal Saint Martin, built in the early 1800s. In the mid-19th century about half of it was covered over, making it a tunnel, to allow the wide boulevards and public spaces now above it towards the centre of the city.  Some stretches remain visible and on our last morning we walked from our accommodation to the Gare du Nord along the side of the canal. It wasn't as picturesque as I'd imagined (I suppose I'd thought 'Amsterdam') and it was too cold to linger outside a café to take in the passing scene but it was still a pleasant walk. It was Sunday morning and there were lots of people about: families strolling, people with model boats, fishermen.

The cast iron bridges cross at frequent intervals and there are a few locks too. We only saw one boat in the distance, albeit we didn't walk the whole open length as we had to veer off towards the station. It's a good job we allowed plenty of time as the trains were packed and at the airport we again faced long, chaotic queues to get through border control. It was quite anxiety-inducing and we were worried whether we'd get to the gate in time for our flight, but we did. 

So now, home and beginning to turn my thoughts to Christmas, though before that I have another upheaval to deal with. A leak on the central heating system means they will have to remove some of the kitchen units to access the rogue pipe. It's not my responsibility, falling to the management company to deal with but since they've taken 22 months and ten engineers to even find the leak (and I found it in the end!), I can perhaps be forgiven for feeling a little sceptical. I could honestly do without it, just before Christmas, but it has to be fixed. Sigh. 

Autumn still life

Following on from yesterday's posting, here's my own version: 

The canal is littered with fallen autumn leaves. In some ways you could see them as an eyesore, cluttering the waterway. Sometimes though, I stop and notice how they've fallen, their different colours and shapes occasionally contriving to create an attractive little 'still life'. 

Late autumn

I think it's been a good year around here for autumn colour. Sometimes the dull, damp, misty days simply serve to emphasise the golden tones. These are a few more photos taken along the towpath of the Rochdale Canal just out of Hebden Bridge.  

The narrow Calder valley has several watercourses running through it, not only the canal. The River Calder and the canal weave around and over each other along its length, which is one reason historically why the valley has been so prone to flooding. Thankfully recent work to build flood barriers, and the 'Slow the Flow' initiative on the valley sides (seeking to build little 'leaky' dams, to spread out and slow the flow of water into the streams and rivers) has seemed to have quite a helpful effect, so far.  

Along the Rochdale Canal

Like the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, the Rochdale is a trans-Pennine route and therefore climbs to a great height, with many locks - in fact, 91 along its 32 mile length. It stretches from Manchester to Sowerby Bridge (where it joins the Calder and Hebble Navigation). It was designed to facilitate the transport of goods between the industrial heartland of Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Manchester docks. It opened in stages between 1798 and 1804. By the 1930s, it was in trouble and it finally closed, unusable, in the 1960s. After many threats to build roads and buildings over it, leading to the formation of various pressure groups and many local fights, it was gradually reopened in stages, until in 2002 the whole length was once again navigable. Like the Leeds-Liverpool, its viability is still fragile owing to issues with water supply, lack of funding and deterioration of the structure and the locks.  Who knows what will happen to these brave reminders of our industrial past? Personally, I love the scenery and stories of our canals and fervently hope they will continue for boaters and walkers to enjoy. 

A buddha on a boat struck me as very 'Hebden Bridge'. It's long been an 'alternative' place, beloved of hippies, arty types and those in search of a certain kind of freedom and peace. 

Hebden Bridge

On Remembrance Sunday, in the relentless drizzle, I decided to make the most of the atmospheric conditions with a walk along the Rochdale Canal in Hebden Bridge. (I am, as you know, quite partial to a walk along a canal towpath! 😉 ) The view above is the iconic panorama, looking east from the bridge near the centre of the town. Whoever had the idea of painting those windows frames, in the weaver's cottages backing on to the canal, in different colours was a genius! 

The building with the chimney (above) was once a mill, but was damaged in a fire in 1964. It was rebuilt around the chimney and now serves as a nursery, where my younger granddaughter happily spent some of her pre-school years. 

This area (above), in the centre of town, is known as Butlers Wharf, presumably at one time an area where boats unloaded and goods were stored. The existing building, whilst resembling a local mill or warehouse, may I suspect be a new-ish build. It holds retail premises, a restaurant and some apartments, and at one time the local visitor information centre, though whether that is still open, I'm not sure. 

The canal continues west towards Todmorden (and ultimately Rochdale and Manchester), passing various repurposed mill buildings and rows of Victorian terraced houses. It has a very different character from my local Leeds-Liverpool Canal but is equally interesting and scenic in its own way. 

 

Fighting back and hanging on

'Walk and Draw' workshop, Elland.  Observing nature on our walk, it's plain to see how strongly the green fights back, already repopulating what was, in the last two centuries, an increasingly heavily industrialised area. 

A broken fence tumbles down towards the river below...

A small gateway in a wall, probably well-used at one time, now almost overgrown... 

Some kind of creeper (last year's growth) tightly twisted around the uprights of a wire fence...

Valerian finding enough grip for roots atop an old mill wall...

Then there is the intricacy of nature's patterns to observe. I'm not sure what the plant above is, nestled in the bracken, but I loved its complex leaf structure, like a loosely packed cabbage.  And then of course there are the dandelion clocks (seedheads), ubiquitous but tiny works of art when studied closely. (So artistic that IKEA have a bestselling lampshade closely mirroring the structure!) 

Also ubiquitous, the Canada geese, intent on raising more even though they've effectively taken over many of our waterways at the expense of other waterbirds. 

My eye was also drawn to little vignettes of artistry - the unconscious marriage, in colour and shape, of elderberry (I think) leaves and graffiti.  Then, a graceful arc of decaying leaves caught in a fence, bleached of all colour and yet full of texture and 'story'.

Walk and Draw

My daughter invited me to accompany her on a 'Walk and Draw' workshop, part of a Hebden Bridge Arts project. I've never really done anything like that before and it was good to be pushed a little beyond my comfort zone. We met in a small group at Project Colt in Elland, alongside the River Calder. Project Colt, in a converted mill complex, is a charity that helps people with addictions to change their lives for good. There's a coffee bar there and a furniture and bric a brac store, whose profits support the charity. 

The first part of the workshop was a short guided walk along the River Calder and the adjacent Calder and Hebble Navigation, a waterway built in the 1700s to extend the routes in the area that were navigable by barges, necessary for trade. Our focus was exploring how the area has been shaped over the years by its industrial past and its impact on the environment. We started on Elland Bridge, built in the 1850s. (The pillared building on the far side was once a bank.)

Off then down Gas Works Lane - no explanation needed there, though the gas works have long since disappeared. Former mill buildings and wharf-side warehouses have been repurposed, many by innovative 'green energy' companies. If only stones could talk... those old stone setts that make up the roadway would have many stories to tell. 

Development continues, with the elegant bowed wall and the revealed tiled floor suggesting the former glory of whatever this building once was. 

A former sheep farming area, the success of the wool trade led to turnpike roads being built in the 18th century, followed by the canals and then the railway, both of which opened the way for the surge of industrialisation in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Eventually a coal-fired power station was built on nearby water meadows, to support the area's textile mills and other industries: coal mining, brick making, quarrying, engineering, sweet manufacture. These industries gradually declined. The power station was closed and demolished in the 1990s and is now an industrial estate. Factories are smaller, cleaner and much more high tech. The majority of goods are now moved by road (and to some extent rail) and sweeping road bridges carry traffic high over the canal and river.

Mills have been repurposed as residential apartments, as well as for business. There is layer upon layer of history and it was interesting to slow down and reflect, noticing too the way nature holds on and gradually reclaims the land, with or without human help. (An area that was once a quarry and ash tip for the power station is now a thriving and ecologically important nature reserve). 

Salford Quays

Whilst in Manchester, we got the tram out to Salford Quays, which is an area of modern development started in the 1980s on the site of the old docks that served the Manchester Ship Canal in its heyday. Much of the brownfield site is now 'Media City UK', home to many media and creative organisations. The BBC moved much of its production from London around 2008 and since then ITV have also located some of its studios here. 

One of the landmark developments, The Lowry arts centre, (left of photo above, and below) opened in 2000 and has two theatres, studios, gallery space, cafés and restaurants. It's named, of course, after the Manchester artist L S Lowry and holds a collection of his work. A futuristic design of shiny metal cladding on the outside and purple and orange walls inside, it already seems a little dated and tired to me. 

On the opposite side of the dock is the Imperial War Museum North, another spectacular modern design opened in 2002. Built in an area that was heavily bombed during WWII, it is designed to be a metaphor for a world shattered by war, with its 'broken' structure. 

Elsewhere in the Quays there are large areas of both low-rise and high-rise housing, with more being built. It's convenient for anyone who works in Media City or the city of Manchester, but somehow a bit soul-less to me, with little trace of the old, apart from the docks themselves and the connecting bridges that have been left.