Friday 18th to Sunday 20th March 2022 It was a misty start to Day 31 in Todmorden. Lock 19, on the Rochdale Canal, is right by the main road through the town of Todmorden and when the road was widened in the 1920s the traditional gates were replaced with a guillotine gate at one end to save space. Matilda is unaccountably always a little anxious at guillotine locks in case the mechanism goes wrong. Unsurprisingly, we negotiated the Todmorden Guillotine Lock No. 19 safely and, on the other side, The Duke was dwarfed by the Great Wall of Todmorden. Built in 1881 as a retaining wall to support the railway as it enters the town from Lancashire it is said to contain some four million bricks. We could well believe it. After the Todmorden Guillotine Lock 19 and the Great Wall of Todmorden, we were beginning to realise that hereabouts, the place names are very literal. Research could not provide the background to Shade Lock No. 21 but presumably it is, at least for some of the time, in the shade. Matilda was particularly impressed by the splendid railway bridge with ornate castellated turrets between Locks 21 and 22. This is apparently […]
Daily Archives: 21/03/2022
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