It was
goodbye to Hebden Bridge this morning. I
made a quick dash into the town while Richard used the services. The weather is good so I wanted to get
something for the barbecue and also Muffin was running out of food!! He has dry food and we have a large box of it
in the cratch but I worked it out that he wouldn’t have any food for our last
day on the boat. We weighed up whether
or not to starve him for 24 hours or go and find a pet shop – I went shopping!!
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| Hebden Bridge |
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Hebden Bridge
|
I didn’t
see much of the canal today as I had ironing to do – there were no more
t-shirts and we are going to need them – hopefully! I also had washing to do – it’s all very well
stopping in a place for a few days but I do get behind with the chores. I keep hinting to Richard that we could do
with a generator but I guess that when we stop for any length of time we are
usually in a built up area so we couldn’t run a generator anyway.
We passed
through Mytholmroyd (pronounced My-tham-royd) – the birthplace of the poet Ted
Hughes (I studied him for O Level many moons ago!)
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| Blackpit Lock |
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| My lock!!! |
We
finally arrived in Sowerby (pronounced Sorby) Bridge and the infamous Tuel
Lock. There used to be four locks in
Sowerby but the top two were filled in for a road improvement scheme in the
late 1960s. When the canal was restored
locks 3 and 4 were made into one at a depth of 19 feet and 6 inches – the
deepest in the country! We had to wait
for a good half an hour as there were hire boats coming up from Shire Cruises. I went for a quick wander round the town but
there wasn’t much to see. There had been
a market today but at 3pm it was more or less cleared away.
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| Sowerby Bridge |
We were
called into the lock and started our descent.
It is very quick and very deep!
As we came out of the lock we found a curved tunnel but knew that
nothing was coming the other way – or so the lock keeper told us! Suddenly we were back out in the daylight
with two more locks to go. There were
two hire boats waiting to go back through the tunnel and up Tuel lock. We had to wait for the bottom lock as a Shire
Cruiser was in there. The short pound
had already serviced one lock full of water with the earlier two hire boats but
instead of waiting for us to empty the middle lock into the, already, low
pound, the last boat didn’t wait and Mary H was aground by the lock waiting
point. She listed quite badly and I began
to panic – I had
visions of cupboards opening and stuff everywhere. As it turns out it was only some drawers that
had come open and a couple of deck chairs had fallen over. I would like to point out at this stage that
the culprits were Shire Cruises employees.
They were showing the new hirers what to do – some instructing!
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| Tuel lock |
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| Tuel lock |
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| Exiting Tuel lock |
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| Exiting Tuel lock |
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| Exiting the curved tunnel |
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In Lock 2
|
We pulled
over just after the bottom lock where Richard cooked a scrummy barbecue. We are
just yards away from the end of the Rochdale Canal. We have done 92 locks and 32 miles – it’s
been hard work but worth it for the scenery.
Hebden Bridge to
Sowerby Bridge
5.51 miles
7 locks
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