THE GREAT WALL OF TOD

SATURDAY 3RD JULY 2010

A meeting was arranged for this evening with friends Geoff and Annie who live at Marsden, which is at the East end of the Standedge Tunnel, on The Hudderfield Narrow Canal. The decision had been taken not to cruise this route as neither Jacquie or I really fancied the three mile plus trip through the tunnel or the 42 locks leading to it, so Geoff and Annie agreed to meet us at Todmordon

We stopped for water after the first two locks and then continued down the remaining 10 locks, under the first skew railway bridge in England, probably the world and past the immense brick wall that stops the railway line from falling into the canal, four million bricks it took to build, but sadly it doesn’t make for a particularly exciting photo
.

Ahead of us was the first guillotine lock that I had encountered, John operated it via our BW key and we passed under it and the road and emerged right into the centre of Todmorden where BW had provided excellent moorings with full facilities. The Golden Lion pub shared the same stretch, but it seemed very quite.

We were enjoying an al fresco dinner on the canal side with Geoff and Annie when unfortunately it was cut short when they were called away to collect a sick daughter, but we agreed to meet up again on Wednesday, probably at Cooper Bridge.

It was noticed how quiet the pub was when we turned in earlier than expected, but at one o’clock in the morning we were awakened by lots of shouting and yelling, I was already out of bed and pulling on my shorts when I felt the boat rock as somebody jumped onto the roof,. Fearful for Jacquie’s roof-top flowers, I shot out the rear hatch, letting everybody know that I was prepared to kill if they didn’t get of the boat. They must have thought I sounded as if I meant it, as I by the time I got fully onto the rear deck there was no one on the boat.

John joined me moments later and we stood guard until two o’clock when the pub closed and the noisy revellers tottered off home. This has been our only experience of silliness and is to be expected if you moor close to a pub especially at a weekend.
Our wives welcomed us back to bed and we slept soundly late into Sunday morning.