Thursday 26th May
We had originally booked to go over the summit today -it was a good job we changed our minds! The forecast was for heavy showers, what we actually got was heavy rain interspersed with light rain! In fact it has only just stopped raining since the early hours of this morning. Hopefully this should alleviate the water level problem a bit.
Talking of the water level problem, there are a couple of boats the other side of the summit who were sitting on the bottom yesterday, the water was so low over there. They can’t come over here until we go over there because if the lock keeper lets some of our water down to help float them we will have the same problem over here. When we go down the first lock we will take that water with us and it will, hopefully fill their pound a bit. Of course they may have been helped by today’s incessant rain! The problems caused by lack of water is why they only allow 4 boats over the summit in one day.
Anyway, as the weather was so awful and didn’t encourage us to do any walking or sightseeing, we couldn’t see the scenery through the low cloud and rain, Ken and I went into Rochdale on the bus (£4-20 for me but it was a 30 min journey). Apparently Rochdale is the benefit capital of England and this may be in evidence in the high street where every other shop is a pawn brokers or cheque cashing place. It’s not a bad town though with a covered market, as is usual up here, three shopping malls with all the usual shops and a very grand Town Hall. I did take a couple of photos of it but the weather was so appalling they didn’t come out too well.
Opposite the Town Hall we found ——- the Wetherspoon’s, The Regal Moon, which used to be a cinema, like the one in Rugeley. It wasn’t as busy as most other Wetherspoon’s we’ve been in, may be another sign of a lack of affluence in the town.
So tomorrow we go over the summit and start the descent to Todmorden, Hebden Bridge and Sowerby Bridge, where we join the Calder and Hebble.
