During July/August 2019, I walked the canals from Manchester to Cooper Bridge (near Brighouse). I did 30M of the Rochdale Canal from Manchester to Sowerby Bridge and 10M of the Calder&Hebble Canal from Sowerby Bridge to Cooper Bridge. Although the Calder&Hebble Canal ends in Wakefield, I finished at Cooper Bridge because that's where it joins the Huddersfield Broad Canal and I've already done that.
On Sunday July 28th, the forecast was for heavy rain all day long for the Rochdale area and a lot drier in the East. So on that day I chose to do what was going to be my last day of walking, i.e., the section of the Calder&Hebble Canal from Salterhebble to Cooper Bridge.
The map below shows where I walked. Each day I travelled by public transport from a hotel in Manchester to where I finished walking the previous day. Each x on the map shows the places where I stopped/started each day's walking. Here is an index to the abbreviations that are used on the maps for those places.
| PB | Piccadilly Basin | M1 2HG | Google Map |
| MH | Mills Hill | M24 2EH | Google Map |
| R | Rochdale | OL16 5RD | Google Map |
| W | Walsden | OL14 7QQ | Google Map |
| M | Mytholmroyd | HX7 5NU | Google Map |
| S | Salterhebble | HX3 0QH | Google Map |
| CB | Cooper Bridge | HD5 0RP | Google Map |
To help me walk along these canals, I looked at the Pearson's Canal Companion for the "Cheshire Ring" as this has lots of details about the canals in this area. The numbers on the map below refer to the map numbers in the Pearson's Guide.
Manchester Rochdale Todmorden Hebden Mytholmroyd Sowerby Brighouse
PB MH R W Bridge M Bridge S CB
x-----------x-------x------------x-------------------------------x------------------x----------------------x
26 27 27 28 29 30 30 31 32 32 33 34 34 35 35
summit Elland
Here are links to web pages that give more details about each day's walking.
Each of these web pages has a map and some photos:
Sat Jul 27: Rochdale: from Manchester Piccadilly to Mills Hill
Sun Jul 28: Calder&Hebble: from Salterhebble to Cooper Bridge
Mon Jul 29: Rochdale: from Mills Hill to Rochdale
Tue Jul 30: Rochdale: from Rochdale to Walsden
Wed Jul 31: Rochdale: from Walsden to Mytholmroyd
Wed Jul 32: Rochdale/Calder&Hebble: from Mytholmroyd to Salterhebble