Day Eight

April 8, 2019

Keighley to Smithy Bridge

My intention had been to get the train from Kirkby Stephen to Keighley on the Wednesday morning, then square the circle by cycling through to Rochdale for the short train journey home. Dismal weather put a stop to that, but I had a return ticket and decided to use it. Rather than do it as a day ride, I packed gear for an overnight bivi and caught a Sunday afternoon train to Keighley via Leeds....

Easy riding, roads less busy than I'd feared, took me through to Haworth - or Bronte World™ as it should perhaps be called.

Chippie tea for a fiver in Haworth, about as close to credit card touring as I get.

No matter, I was through it quick enough and climbing steeply onto the moors along rough tracks. Dropping into the valleys that feed Upper Calderdale, I swung west with the wind behind me for a sheltered spot in trees below a high reservoir dam.

Sleeping in the trees to get out of a stiff easterly.

Early away the next morning, a freezing east wind failing to blow away murky conditions. A quick hammer along an offshoot of the PBW took me through the old weaving community of Heptonstall and down a steep cobbled lane into Hebden Bridge...

The Buttress is a hill climbing test piece (discussed about halfway down this page). There's a regular hill climb event held on it, so it is possible to cycle up but, all things considered, I was happy enough to be riding the other way.

I like Hebden Bridge - and Todmorden, one stop up the train line. The first time I cycled into the latter, a few years back, I remember coming up behind a well built chap striding along in high heels, a knee length dress and a brown wig. That's different, I thought, and subsequent visits have confirmed my opinion that these are indeed funky little communities. Hebden Bridge apparently has the largest lesbian community in the UK, something of which I heartily approve, and in fact the town reminds me of many places I've cycled through in SW China. I'm not sure why; maybe the plain houses tumbling down steep hillsides, or the parks and constant proximity of water in the valley bottom. I could happily live here, I think.

But not just yet, and after a coffee I was hauling myself steeply back up onto the hills. I mentioned old packhorse trails earlier in the journal, and it's in this area that the sheer density of such tracks hits its peak. The Buttress is one example, but they're actually everywhere, in varying stages of preservation. This network was developed prior to the Nineteenth Century to facilitate the important cottage weaving industry. However, as this Calderdale Timeline states, increasing industrialisation led to the trade becoming concentrated in urban centres that sprang up along the new canals and railways. The packhorse trails gradually fell into disuse – but they're still there, and make great mountain biking.

I was back on the PBW again, riding round the hillside and over the watershed into the Greater Manchester conurbation...

Descending towards the Rochdale Canal; somehow they managed to fit a canal, a railway AND a road through the narrow Calder Valley.

The Rochdale Canal was conceived about the same time as the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and completed earlier (1804). Built to connect the emerging city of Manchester with the Yorkshire textile towns, it's the highest canal in the UK, rising to over 600ft via a system of 92 locks.

Like the L&LC, much of the towpath along the canal has been designated a Sustrans cycling route. While the bits passing through towns can get congested with dog walkers and pedestrians, the rural sections make a good way to bypass some unpleasantly busy roads (there's no way I'd consider cycling the main connecting roads through these narrow, steep sided and densely populated valleys). I was only on the Rochdale Canal briefly but my route choice happened to coincide with its highest section.

The Rochdale Canal tops out at the aptly named village of Summit then drops steadily towards Greater Manchester - but I turned away uphill at this point.

I guess I could've just coasted downhill towards Rochdale, but I wanted to get back on the Pennine Bridleway again. Climbing away to the east, I passed first the Lower then the Upper Chelburn Reservoirs. The moors around here are covered in small bodies of water, and I mentioned earlier in the journal that there have been several phases of Pennine reservoir construction. The ones at Chelburn, built in the early 1800s, were some of the earliest. They weren't designed with drinking water in mind, but to provide water for the canal locks as barge traffic moved through them.

Chelburn Reservoir, one of the many reservoirs built in the early Nineteenth Century to service the Rochdale Canal locks.

These reservoirs are now an integral part of the landscape, and were appropriated solely for drinking water following WWI. This act partially contributed to the Rochdale Canal falling into disuse such that, unlike the L&LC, it was un-navigable by the 1950s. It was only from the 1970s onwards that enthusiasts and volunteers gradually reopened the canal for traffic. Today, like so much of the UK's once thriving industrial heritage, it's used mainly for the purposes of leisure and tourism.

I carried on, bridleways taking me past the western end of the Blackstone Edge 'Roman Road' at Lydgate. This is a good way up onto the Lancashire-Yorkshire watershed, enabling one to access a maze of tracks linking up all these Victorian reservoirs...but not today. I rode on through, descending to Hollingworth Lake along...yep, more packhorse trails. And guess what, Hollingworth was also a feeder for the Rochdale Canal...but, sited at a lower level than the locks, it meant the water had to be pumped up with huge steam engines. Stuck between the moors and the city, it now feels strangely like a seaside resort, with boating marinas, pubs, ice cream parlours and amusement arcades. But that's not a recent phenomenon; as early as the 1860s this had become a bustling destination for day trippers, with paddle steamers, and outdoor dancing platforms lit by gaslight.

That elegance has faded now and, on a day when the waves were rolling in on a freezing wind off the moors, it was just me and a few ducks and geese, hunkered down at the shoreline. It seemed like a good place to finally end the project so, with a tailwind behind me I hurtled downhill to the nearby station of Smithy Bridge, one stop up the line from Rochdale. The 11:05 came in just as I reached the station, and I literally rode my bike up onto the platform and into the train. Home for lunch, job done.

Height gain: 1281m/4203ft

Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 452 km (281 miles)

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