Granny Buttons

Salterhebble Basin to Sowerby Bridge

A short, sweet day today. Just a short hop of a couple of miles from Salterhebble Basin to Sowerby Bridge.

Met a friendly, cheerful couple - he's an avid bird photographer - on the towpath. Sean Gray has some beautiful avian images on www.grayimages.co.uk.

My leg's only slightly better after last night, and I'm still hobbling. A leisurely breakfast at McDonald's, reading the papers, and then I set off for Sowerby Bridge. 2 1/2 miles, 1 hr, no locks.

After collecting my car from Slowit, cleaning the boat and loading up, I realised that my leg really needs a couple of week's recuperation. So here I'll moor for a couple of weeks in the basin, a paying guest of Shire Cruisers, overlooked by the popular 'The Moorings' pub.

Now to plan my assault on the Rochdale Canal!

Cooper Bridge to Salterhebble

Today was Cooper Bridge to Salterhebble, with a two-hour lunchtime stopover at Brighouse, and thirty minutes of throat refuelling at Elland. 8 1/4 miles and 16 locks, ten of them single-handed with an increasingly gammy knee. 3 hours to Brighouse, 6 1/2 more to Salterhebble.

Gee, this was the hardest, cruellest day's boating I've ever done...

Milnsbridge to Cooper Bridge

Today I went from Milnsbridge to Cooper Bridge, mooring for the night between Locks 3 and 2. Six miles and eighteen locks, including the last eleven on the Narrow Canal. A tiring day, punctuated by a long afternoon break at Aspley Basin. Quite rainy in the morning, cheering up by the time I reached Aspley Basin, with a comfortably bright afternoon and dusk. The last six hours were spirited, thanks largely to the friendly company and help of Graham & Mrs (name?) White and their son Nick, whom I first met coming up Lock 23W less than three days ago.

Slaithwaite - how do you pronounce it?

"They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce", Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad.

Passing through Slaithwaite, I've been told a variety of ways to pronounce this town's name. Oddities of pronounced placed names are nothing new in Britain, but rarely have I encountered as much discussion as about 'Slaythwayt'.

On his Waterways Guides Updates site, Greg Chapman records the following:

Ronald Haigh, interviewed on the BBC TV programme "The Impossible Dream", made the "ai" in "Slaith" a long sound as in the "a" in "add". The narrator of the same programme, while normally pronouncing it with a shorter "a" sound, as in "away", when discussing pronunciation, suggested "Slow-art", with the "ow" to rhyme with "cow".

When people frequenting news:uk.local.yorkshire were asked how it should be pronounced, the most popular response from locals was "Slowit" (the "ow" to rhyme with "cow"). One went as far as quoting Arnold Kellett in the Yorkshire Dictionary (ISBN 1 85825 017 X). Next most popular was "Slawit", but it all seemed to depend upon where, in the county, you were raised.

Martin Underwood related this story:

I was on a train that stopped at Slaithwaite. The guard was announcing the station as we approached. In his normal, homely, West Riding accent, he referred to it as "Slowit". Then, as an afterthought, he said "By the way, that's the place that Namby Pamby Pampered Southerners think is pronounced as" [exaggerated posh accent] "Slaythwayt". The whole of my carriage collapsed in fits of the giggles.

Marsden to Milnsbridge and beyond

Today I descended from Standedge Tunnel North End to Milnsbridge on the outskirts of Huddersfield. 11hr30mins, 31 locks, 4 1/2 miles. One of the longest day's cruising I've done - this doesn't include the three hourse I spent fetching my car and exploring the Standedge ridge.

I left around 8am, stopped at Slaithwaite to return to Uppermill by train to fetch my car (passing through the Standedge hill by rail tunnel in three minutes!), returned to leave the car at Slaithwaite and set off by boat again to reach Lock 12E at Milnsbridge well after 10pm.

Granny Buttons goes through Standedge Tunnel

Standedge Tunnel stands out as one of the most extraordinary experiences of my cruising around England. Few of us forget our first tunnel, but it's seen-one-seen-all as far as most canal tunnels are concerned.

Not so Standedge. It has great variety of appearance in its 3 miles, and there's drama and human interaction in passing through it, too. Little wonder that it ranks as one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways. Some say there should be twelve, and Standedge is on that list too. Martin Clark's website has a good - nay, excellent - pictorial history of the tunnel, as well as the story of its restoration.

They tow your boat through via an electric tug. In the front is the passenger vessel, with a single driver at the open bow section, crocodile-file (two-abreast) seating for twenty in the glassy cabin, and an open stern deck. On the passenger vessel is a driver, steering with a couple of joysticks as though it were a long but unexciting video game, and a guide whose nominal purpose is to be trained in first aid. However, his chief job satisfaction is in giving you a history and running commentary.

Behind is the stubby tug unit, with another steerer, and, behind that, they tow your narrowboats, up to five in a snaking chain tied closely together, each boat separated with an inflatable fender.

Each towed boat is also covered with thick, coarse unrolled rubber, and astern on each (except the first) stands a British Waterways man whose sole job is to fend off the unforgiving rough stone walls of the tunnel with his boots. And they must do this for up to three hours at a stretch. This last job must be the least satisfying of the entire Standedge caravan...

Standedge Tunnel day

It's Standedge Tunnel day, and this has been my most exciting day of boating for some time. Just a short five-mile stretch, more than half of it underground, and with nine locks to start the day, but it turned out quite enthralling.

I travelled from Lock 24W at 8.30am, escorted by a patient BW lengthsman, to the tunnel mouth, arriving two hours later. A couple of locks up, I was greeted by a pretty, smiling lady on a mountain bike, dressed a bit garishly, but that's called bike fashion, I believe! I strained to hear her against my engine noise, and then realised it was Ellie Byram, to whom I'd given the spare padlock for 'North Star' when we reached Stone a few weeks back. I was embarassed by not recognising her in her strange bright apparel, and stammered that "er, sorry, I didn't recognise you with your, er, clothes on." She'd gone before I reflected on what I'd actually said! Ellie lives up on yonder hill at Dobcross. Lucky Ellie; it's a beautiful view to look over there, and it must be a beautiful view looking back.

Reaching the tunnel mouth, I refilled Granny's water tank and waited. And waited. The tunnel mouth was blocked with a rusty BW work boat inside a pair of creaky rusty gates that squeaked as the boat pushed against them every so often. Every quarter of an hour a train would rattle, chunter and then roar out of a parallel rail tunnel nearby, but quickly it would all fall back to silence at the tunnel mouth.

Eventually a white BW van turned up and a BW man darted out, opened the tunnel gates and hauled out the workboat by hand. I learned that he actually drives through a parallel rail tunnel, long disused, popped out through 'cross-adits' every half-mile or so to check on the progress of the tug, and then near the exit finally emerges to clear the boat and the gate for the tunnel tug. I only heard this term 'adits' recently, when reading up about the tunnel, but it's a long-established mining term.

The tug eventually emerged, almost silently in its electric power, towing a single narrowboat southwest towards us. Or 'westwards', as BW insist on calling it. The boat behind was wrapped snugly in thick rubber mats.

An hour later, after the BW tunnel staff had each sat alone quietly for their lunch, it was our turn. I'd early been warned that the rubber mats, whilst protecting the boats against inevitable collision with the rough-hewn rock tunnel, would rub and scratch the roof mushrooms. So I wrapped plastic bags around each of them. (It turned out later that this was correct, because one of them slipped off when the rubber mat was pulled across it, and sure enough, at the end of the trip I found a lot of fine scratching on the mushroom vent).

The passages took from about 12.30 to 3.15pm. We were ushered on the 20-seat tug passenger module, with the motor tug taking most of the strain and our boats in train behind. The hire boat Surrey was immediately behind that, then my own boat, and then Spirit of Fife, the ex hire boat. This boat's crew went over the hill in a BW van, because they had a dog and pets are not allowed in the tunnel. The three dour Scots of Spirit of Fife didn't care to be separated from their dog. How sweet! Or perhaps they were simply scared themselves to be in the tunnel.

The passage was an extraordinary experience. But I'll describe that in another post...

Dobcross and the World Whistling Champion

Tonight I wandered up to the Navigation Inn. We are truly in brass band territory, with band posters, photos and memorabilia lining the pub interior. I was delighted to spot CDs on sale of David Morris, the world champion whistler. I heard one of his works once - Trumpet Triplets - a couple of years ago and never forgot it. I didn't know you could be a virtuoso of whistling until then. Today, I immediately bought the CD on sale behind the bar, and asked about him. Is he local? "Oh yes", they said. "He lives up at Saddleworth Bank".

I thought they were referring perhaps to a geographical feature in the hills, but no. It turns out that there really is a 'Saddleworth Bank'. It's a little house in the square at Dobcross, the village on the hill just above the Navigation Inn.

I took a midnight walk up to Dobcross. It's a beautiful village, oodling character out of its stonework. The village was empty, but the place was simply sleeping, not sleepy. I would like to return here for my honeymoon, should I ever have one.

The house known as Saddleworth Bank actually has 'Saddleworth Bank' in large, friendly letters over the door. No longer a bank, of course, and probably hasn't been one for many a Yorkshire year. But the very name has a sort of quaintly artificial feel, like those false villages erected for film sets. You know the sort: there's a bank called 'Bank', a store called 'General Store', a baker called 'Baker'. I was delighted to discover there's a real history behind this charming nameplate, available on the web. The bank was founded in 1833, but was a victim of the depression in the cotton market in the wake of the American Civil War. From here down to Manchester the Huddersfield Canal traversed and served the area often known as 'Cottonopolis'.

Incidentally, you can hear Trumpet Triplets, a showcase of David's remarkable whistling on his web site. A whole CD of the stuff might get wearisome in a single uninterrupted dispense of half an hour, but there's some wonderful brass band music to back it, and it does pay repeated listening as part of a random iPod selection. You'll need 'Flash', but it's one of the few Flash sites that really uses the technology to good effect. Easy to navigate, simple to use, looks superb.

Canal-related trivia: Kevin Wadsworth, founder of Warble Boats and now Sales Manager of Mastervolt UK, is in the horn section of David's backing band on the CD. Kevin's a grumpy old sod, I thought, when I bought an inverter/charger off his curiously-named Los Angeles & Huddersfield Power Systems company five years ago and he simply forwarded a complaint I had to the manufacturer, saying it was nothing to do with him. But he is (was, now he's sold Warble) a good boatbuilder and still is a good musician. And he's got a strange lookalike story to tell.

Uppermill to Dobcross

A short day, from Uppermill visitor moorings to the transhipment shed below Lock 24W.
I'm awaiting the call tomorrow from the BW staff at 8am, ready for the passage through the tunnel.

This afternoon I visited the local Saddleworth Museum. There's an interesting (if slight)) exhibition about Ivan Hirst, the British army officer popularly credited with restarting production at the VW factory after WW2, and thus effectively restartiing the German automotive industry. A modest man, he came from the Saddleworth area, retired here, and died only two or four years ago. Volkswagen indeed do themselve credit him with saving them. The original plan of the allies was to break up the factory production line and - some say - haul it off as a war trophy.

A hire boat arrived behind me, a Shire Cruisers boat called 'Surrey', from Sowerby Bridge. It's actually on a one-way cruise, and came up from Marple this morning. Aboard are Graham White and his wife, and their son Nick. They seemed impressed with my single-handed work, but I'm just as impressed that they made it Marple to here in twelve hours.

Ashton-under-Lyne to Uppermill

Today I tackled Dukinfield Junction (Ashton-under-Lyne) to Uppermill. Only six miles and one furlong, and twenty locks; nevertheless I'd received so many dark warnings about the rigours of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal that I'd allocated fully two days to this stretch. So I was startled to complete it in just eight hours of cruising, starting at 10.30am, stopping for 90 minutes at Stalybridge for ice cream and Tesco's supermarket, and tying up at the pretty canalside moorings of Uppermill at 8pm. A pair of fit bodies and stout, happy hearts could do it in fewer than six hours, I'm sure.

The route through Stalybridge is almost a complete rebuild of the canal, and it feels a triumphant restoration in this stretch. The canal and the town meet each other face to face, continental-fashion, instead of the canal slinking through the dirty backstreets as it does in almost every other city in England. There's an excellent guide to the Stalybridge restoration on Martin Clark's Pennine Waterways site.

It was a splendid, sunny day, and as I climbed towards Standedge Tunnel the girls - the Towpath Totty - just got prettier and prettier, culminating in two of the most beautiful blonde girls I have ever seen at Whitehead's Lock (how appropriate!). A couple of the canal pounds are shallow, some of them little more than slurried mud, but the locks were easy to operate and being single-handed was no drawback. Indeed, considering how many pretty young girls there were around, being single was a positive boon!

Every canal seems to have its share of unique oddities, and the Hud has more than most. One of them is the chance to take a boat right underneath an electricity pylon, just outside Stalybridge. Another is the startlingly disconcerting aqueduct, almost invisible, that crosses the river Tame, a couple of miles from the start at Portland Basin. One moment you are poking your boat's nose into a narrow cleft in the concrete, the next moment there is nothing there on your left hand side except a twenty foot drop down into the young and stony River Tame.