Peter's Waterways Blog Navigating the Huddersfield Narrow This was first published in IWA West Riding's Milepost in November 2016, reporting on our navigational frustrations in reaching the Leeds and Liverpool bi-centenary flotilla in time.

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below Park Nook Lock in January

For the Leeds and Liverpool Canal bicentenary flotilla in October 2016, we decided to bring our narrowboat from the Midlands to be part of it, and there were a number of Navigation Campaign issues that happened along the way. Our planning began a year before with a sketch of which weeks to use, with the potentially tricky question of the November 2016 Stoppage Programme and no information that early on where stoppages might be. As the flotilla was planned to cross the Pennines westwards from Leeds to Liverpool, we signed up our regular navigational co-conspirators for an eastwards crossing on the Rochdale, which they hadn't previously completed. But there was a 'but'. The Rochdale Canal was closed by the 2015 Boxing Day floods.

Plan B was the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, another canalling gem, and that journey created a need of booking Standedge Tunnel. It opened with a seven-day service in 2001 (half-day each way) and is now closed for four days each week, and closed for half-days on the other three. C&RT were then planning to offer an online booking system, and that had the potential to give better information about all the available slots. For 2016, navigators just have to be there on time: miss the time, and it's a two or three day delay for certain: but there is no guarantee of a available slot it two days' time, or even in five days time: there are only four boats each way each day, and all the slots might be booked.

Looking down the Diggle flight

A boat entering the Diggle portal with C&RT chaperone

There was a much-delayed programme of recruiting volunteers to be trained to chaperone boats going through. I fundamentally disagree the need for all this bureaucracy: that's the campaign that we need: let's have a turn-up-and-go service every day, morning one way, afternoon the other, and maybe with a chaperone on the first and last boats each way. And having steered a boat when an engine fire started under my feet, I do understand that risk: had it happened in any of the long tunnels, survival would have been in serious danger: it's just one of those risks which we can't legislate away. Nothing awful happened this time, it was just the need to be certain of being on time that made us arrive with a whole day to spare. And to worry about how many boats are discouraged by the need-to-be-there-then, which circularly feeds C&RT's idea that these restrictions somehow provide an acceptable service.

Sign on the guillotine gate

Through the tunnel we have the declared stoppage at the guillotine lock 24E at Slaithwaite: "Bookings are available on the hour, ... 9am to 2pm with at least 24 hours’ notice". Well, in practice, the people at Marsden Tunnel Entrance said it's much more flexible than that, but trip planners reading the website don't know that, and there's the risk they will find it all looks too hard to begin the journey. This gate has caused stoppages on two of our earlier trips, and needs to work better. This time, winding the mechanism a bit too hard at the end may cause a spring-back for the next user, one of whom suffered injury from a whirling windlass. Fixing it would be best, but advice would be good enough, and maybe users need to be speaking on their phones to a remote expert to avoid this particular problem. With so few people working on the canal, having two of them diverted to wind a paddle is not the best management of their time.

A puddler puddling

Had we booked a specific time for the guillotine, we might have been even more disrupted than we were by the emergency stoppage at lock 29E "A hole has appeared in the bed of the canal ... the canal is closed ... we expect to be able to carry out a temporary repair by tomorrow evening". Next morning the puddle next to the lock wall was taken out, and a well-booted chap was treading it down again in traditional navvy fashion. Sympathies for the emergency were slightly reduced by the conversation that this is a hole behind the lock wall that causes this problem every dozen weeks or so. It needs a proper fix! And having passed this stoppage and phoning for our flexible attendance at the guillotine, nobody was available to come out until the next morning ...

...which was a delay overshadowed by "Wakefield Branch (Aire & Calder) Woodnook ... Navigation Closure until further notice ... Due to engineering problems lock is currently inoperable. We are waiting for new parts to be manufactured ...". That sounded bad, and severs the connection to Leeds and our flotilla from both the Huddersfield and the Rochdale. It's always difficult to work out what so few words actually mean. Manufactured within an hour? a day? a month? We had a week's contingency, but turning-tail and heading for Leeds via the other Cromwell Lock (there's one on the Calder and Hebble too) was 252miles including the tidal Trent: maybe it was just possible with long days, but there was that Tunnel to book back through at best in two days' time, not to mention the guillotine. Phoning the enquiry number for more Woodnook information helpfully had the stoppage notice read back to us, and it sounded just as bad as the written version.

Leaving Woodnock Lock after the stoppage was mended

Flotilla publicity in Leeds

At this point we asked for help from those we speak with at all those C&RT meetings: the job was under the control of the newly-centralised engineering team, so needed internal C&RT conversations to get the best estimate of the options. And in the end it worked out OK. Many thanks to those who helped: I hope that the same level of service was available to all beleaguered boaters: the campaigning issue is to keep the website updated with realistic assessments of all emergency stoppages which we understand may sometimes turn out worse than advertised and sometimes better: it's sharing the latest information that is important.

An update was published in IWA West Riding's Milepost in May 2017; resumption of user-operation of the guillotine lock in Slaithwaite had been achieved during winter stoppages 2016-17, but fixing the hole behind the wall of Lock 29E has recently caused another 'emergency' stoppage, without a proper repair yet. On the campaign for better access to Standedge Tunnel; there was no progress on the maximum number of boats, nor on the number of closures each week, but there was now an online booking system which claimed to show the availability of tunnel passages. The Huddersfield Narrow Canal Society were organising an "Explorer" Cruise later in the year to encourage greater use of the canal.

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Peter Scott @peterjohnscott