Saturday 19th June – Dobcross to Diggle
Did a quick tour of the village opposite Dobcross called UpperMills this morning and had a “nooice cuppa tea” served by some bloke who looked a bit like Roy out of Coronation Street. UpperMills is a good enough town with a busy high street.
To access the town we had to cross the river on the stepping stones
On to the main part of the day which was, like yesterday, a continuation of the climb up to the summit of the HNC (Huddersfield Narrow Canal). Today the lock gods were certainly with us all the locks we approached (going uphill) were left without water in them and with their paddles left open. This meant that every time we approached a new lock we could go straight in. This effectively halved the work load on today’s NB lock Boy (Fraser).
Off course it wasn’t actually a lock God doing this it was in fact the crew from the Angle de Leau, the boat ahead of us and their very thoughtful lock boy W who was “setting” all the locks for us.
We finally reached the summit of the canal at around 2pm and celebrated with M+W with W (the lock boy) being rewarded for all of extra work today with the purchase of an ice cream by the NB Lucy crew.
Over the last two days we really haven’t come very far in distance but have just climbed up to the summit of the canal through 18 locks. For two days we have followed the course around a river valley all the time being within sight of the same cell phone hour after hour tower on a hill to our left. We will see this for the last time tomorrow as we head through one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways World – the Standedge Tunnel.
Rowkin Rovings Blog 