Call The Lock Keeper...

It rained overnight on Sunday but Monday was clear enough to make a move toward the immediate objective and that was to get over the summit on the Rochdale Canal and start heading down hill toward Manchester...
It was about 7.5 miles and 27 locks to work and the locks have been generally heavy to open /shut and some hard winding...

We set off and by about 1.30pm we had reached...

Todmordon ... Waiouru  needed water and so did the canal... Some of the pounds between locks were getting low and getting to the jetty here was not on....

Hire a NB and by early afternoon...

The first bottle of wine nearly gone adding to the enjoyment....

The town of Todmordon in the early days benefitted from the philanthropy of wealthy manufacturing residents the Fielden family...

Their choice of architecture can be seen in the town centre...

 

The Town Hall.....

The Library....

And the Unitarian Church.....

Another feature in the town is the ....

Great Wall of Tod.. A large Railway retaining wall that stops the railway falling in the cut...
Built with bricks and not the usual stone... 4 million of them.... A complete apprenticeship could have been completed on this one job......

Looking from one end it continues around the far bend....

A little farther on and...

Tom decided to set up a NB version of a NZ Police D. I. C. (drunk in charge) roadblock...
the hire boat never came along.......

A dozen or or so locks done...

Guaxholme Middle Lock with the Railway bridge behind...

Another 8 locks, that made 20 for the day, in five miles....

And it was time to moor up.....

We passed 2-3 NBs going the other way during the day and all said there was a shortage of water problem to get over the summit. One had waited two days for Canal and River workers to remedy the flow....
With this in mind Tom decided to go on a "Reccy", like check out the waterway ahead and see if any NBs were ahead of us..
Donning cammo gear and the standard nugget to dull the shine on the face he set off in the darkness walking the 5 mile return trip..
On return the debrief alerted us to the fact their were 10 NBs and at least 4-5 of those were in position to tackle the summit.
As Ex, Army Tom knows that surprise and stealth is the best weapon so the plan was to get past the waiting NBs and be first to make use of any available water...

So the alarms were set and....

We were up and ready to go before "Sparrow Fart"... in fact we had to wait 40 minutes for it to get light enough...

The plan worked. The enemy were still asleep, well they were until we used the water in the pound they were moored in two locks from the summit to fill our lock and it drained the pound with the result their NBs sat on the bottom and tipped over about 40 degrees.
Then as we exited the lock and passed them, marooned, heads appeared.
I shouted at one NBer, "Can't you sleep"? to which he gave me a "Tipping over Sign.
His sign language could have required the use of only two fingers.
As we passed the second NB the couple yelled out " you can't go up" and were quite insistent that you have to Call the Lock Keeper...
They had been waiting since the day before..

We made it into the second to top lock only to find, as we knew from the "Reccy"...

The above pound was too low to fill the lock.....

So there we were....

Ahead of the queue but stranded, at least we are sitting flat, as the water wasn't deep enough to exit the lock.
The post on the RH side marks the boundary line of Yorkshire and Lancashire.....

A couple of the NBers from below made their way up and were still talking "Call The Lock Keeper" so I did only to get shoveled on to different phones and eventually an answer phone. We knew what we were going to do from the start so we went up to the next lock and run water down from the above pound and eventually regulated the water flow to get us moving.
We made it to the summit and  then the Lock keepers turned up.. They did the same as we had at the next couple of down hill locks and we were well on our way....

About to exit the....

 

Top Lock.. 600 ft above sea level.....

A lock keeper uses measuring stick...

A tape measure to check the fall of the pound on the other side of the gate...

Four locks farther on and...

There's so much water it was over the grass...

And pours over the lock gate as we try to empty the lock to exit...
Mind you, it is now going down hill.....

We ended up doing 16 locks and three miles so it's been two big tiring days, 36 locks and 8 miles.
tomorrow a later start and easier day....