Author Archives: Mike Higginbottom

Losing track

1 Reply
Douglas Corporation Tramway, Isle of Man: trackwork at Derby Castle (2010)

Douglas Corporation Tramway, Isle of Man: trackwork at Derby Castle (2010)

In the Isle of Man, if something works it doesn’t need fixing.  That’s why the island is a treasure-house of Victorian transport.  Eventually, though, even the simplest engineering wears out.

So Douglas Corporation, confronting its decaying promenade road-surface, has to make a decision about its unique horse-tram service.  Like-for-like replacement of the present double track is estimated at between £3 and £4½ million.

2010 passenger figures for the summer-season service are up slightly over the previous year at 54,286.  Last year’s annual loss is similarly down slightly to £207,700.  In 1938 the horse trams carried 2¾ million passengers and contributed to the transport department’s clear profit of nearly £10,000 (over £350,000 at current values).  As late as 1955 they still carried 1½ million people.

The tramway dates back to 1876, when it was built by Thomas Lightfoot, who moved to the island after inaugurating Sheffield’s horse trams.  The Douglas horse tramway survived because the seafront hoteliers objected to overhead electric wires in front of their premises.

Because there’s an efficient, faster bus service alongside the horse trams they are in effect a tourist ride.  The £3.00 flat fare means that nobody in their right mind uses them to travel a few stops.  Their only practical use is to travel from the Sea Terminal to the Derby Castle terminus of the Manx Electric Railway.

Alternative plans being discussed include building a replacement track for the horse-trams on the broad pedestrian seaward side of the promenade, segregating them from motor traffic.  Whether this would result in fewer or more collisions on the promenade is open to question:  the trams would no longer provide an obstruction, enabling the boy racers to accelerate.

Deciding to get rid of horse trams is a decision most towns made 120 years ago.  Maybe the 1890s proposal to electrify the line as a continuation of the Manx Electric Railway and to extend it to the railway station is worth looking at.  Not only would it integrate the three rail systems and delight enthusiasts, but it would still allow the horses and horse-trams to survive as a heritage feature.

This worked well in San Francisco, where the temporary suspension of the cable-car service in effect saved the surviving electric streetcars.

Indeed, a 2013 proposal specified that the relocated single-and-passing-loops horse-tram track should be designed to carry Manx Electric “or more modern rolling stock”:  http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/plan-for-single-track-horse-tram-to-run-on-sea-ward-side-of-prom-1-6198526.

There are detailed instructions for catching a Douglas horse tram (and for patting the horse) at http://www.iomguide.com/horsetram.php.  Further information about the Douglas horse tramway can be found at http://www.douglashorsetramway.net.

Amateur footage of the tramway is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYl4JiQ7cV8&app=desktop.

The 72-page, A4 handbook for the 2014 Manx Heritage tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Streetcar survivors

Leave a Reply
Market Street, San Francisco: streetcar 1055

Market Street, San Francisco: PCC streetcar 1055

San Francisco’s historic streetcars, which ply between Castro and Fisherman’s Wharf along Market Street and the Embarcadero, are an ironic survival.

Most San Francisco streetcar lines gave place to trolleybuses and motor buses after the Second World War.  A small number of routes survived because they used tunnels that couldn’t be adapted to non-guided vehicles.  By 1982 the transport authority, Muni, converted the remaining streetcar routes to light-rail and built a twin-level subway along Market Street with light-rail on the upper deck and the inter-bay, heavy-rail BART line below.

In that same year, the utterly worn-out cable-car system shut down for complete rebuilding over a two-year period.  In an attempt to maintain tourist interest, Muni, in conjunction with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, ran some of the surviving streetcars along the Market Street surface tracks as a summertime tourist attraction.

These Historic Trolley Festivals were so successful that they were retained after the cable-cars returned in 1984, and from 1987 the Market Street lines were relaid and a fresh fleet bought second-hand from Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey.

When the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished after the 1989 earthquake, opening up the harbour piers to the city centre, streetcar tracks were laid all the way from the Ferry Terminal, the focal point of the original cable-car and streetcar systems, past Pier 39 to Fisherman’s Wharf.

The current F-Market & Wharves line is a fully functioning component of the city’s public transport, serving the suburb of Castro as well as the tourist honeypots downtown.  A further E-Embarcadero line south from the Ferry Terminal reopened in 2015 but has remained suspended, initially because of pandemic restrictions, since 2020.

Most of the vehicles are the ubiquitous PCC cars, designed in the early 1930s and mass-produced until the 1950s, spacious, comfortable cars with impressive acceleration, painted in liveries from a range of American cities.  There are also some older vehicles, Peter Witt cars, originally designed for Cleveland and successfully exported to Europe.  These exceptionally noisy vehicles are from Milan, and still contain charming Italian notices inside – Vietato fumare, Vietato sputare, Uscita.  And, on special occasions, a historic fleet is wheeled out, including a 1934 Blackpool open “Boat” tram.

It’s ironic that, while San Francisco’s two successive light-rail fleets have been plagued by technical faults and remain far from popular with passengers, the seventy-year-old PCC cars and their older Peter Witt cousins trundle back and forth smoothly, fairly quietly and efficiently.

For practical information about the F-Market & Wharves streetcar service, see https://www.sfmta.com/routes/f-market-wharves or to indulge your inner anorak look up the cars at http://www.streetcar.org/streetcars.  The latter site belongs to the San Francisco Railway Museum, which is about streetcars, not railways, and is to all practical purposes a shop:  http://www.streetcar.org/museum/.

Halfway to the stars

1 Reply
San Francisco cable car 6

San Francisco cable car 6

San Francisco is the city where “cable cars climb halfway to the stars”, and if you stand in the right place at night, they really do.

That the cable cars are indelibly linked with the visitor’s image of San Francisco is the cause of, but not the reason for, their survival.

The very first cable-hauled streetcars in the world, they were developed by a wire-rope manufacturer, Andrew Smith Hallidie (1836-1900), as an alternative to the inefficient and cruel horse-drawn streetcars that simply couldn’t cope with the city’s precipitous inclines.  His first line, on Clay Street, opened in 1873.  On the first run, the original gripman, a steam-locomotive driver (or – in American English – engineer) called Hewitt, lost his nerve at the brow of the hill, and resigned on the spot:  the first car was driven by Hallidie himself.

By 1894, 103 miles of cable-car track were in operation with a combined fleet of about five hundred cars.  In the recovery from the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire, several cable-car lines were converted to electric operation.  Even so, electric streetcars were unequal to the 10% grades that cable-cars took in their slow but inexorable stride.  Only rubber-tyred trolleybuses eventually stood a chance of competing.

After the Second World War city politicians, supported by a powerful lobby of oil, rubber and motor-vehicle interests, aimed to close down the five surviving lines, but were ultimately defeated by the sheer weight of public-opinion.  In 1956 three remaining routes, comprising nine track-miles, gained legal protection by popular demand.  The system was designated a National Landmark in November 1964, and when it finally wore out was completely rebuilt in 1982-4.

To a modern eye the cars look absurd, but when you climb aboard they immediately make sense.  Because they attach to an underground cable running at a constant speed of 9½ miles per hour, they tackle the steepest inclines with as much equanimity as dead level, and crawl downgrade as steadily.

Riding the cable cars is an experience for the early morning:  after about 9.30am the crush is such that all you see sitting inside is buttocks.  Outside your view is often blocked by passengers standing on the running board.

There is a practical alternative to being crushed on a cable car.  San Francisco is festooned with trolleybus routes, operated by surprisingly noisy single-deck vehicles, some of them articulated.  They’re spacious, speedy, and effective as urban transport.  I learned years ago, when I bought a plastic salad spinner to dry lettuce, that the moaning sound I remember Sheffield trams making when I was a kid, which is also distinctive of the London Underground, is not in fact the electric motors but the gears.

The single-deck San Francisco trolleybuses, with their long trolley booms, also make a distinctive slapping noise overhead as they progress through junctions.  They’re nowhere near as noisy as the cable cars, though.  And totally clean, unlike their diesel cousins.

See http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passports.htm for further details of fares and visitor passes on Muni services.

Eat your way round San Francisco

Leave a Reply
San Francisco Ferry Terminal

San Francisco Ferry Terminal

There’s no shortage of good food in San Francisco.  All you need do is avoid obvious tourist traps and eat where the locals eat.

If you ride the F-line all the way to its Castro terminus, you more or less fall into Orphan Andy’s, within yards of the streetcar terminus, where I ate a classic burger and fries for a little over $10, including a properly made pot of English Teatime tea.

Another time I tried the memorably named and nearby Squat & Gobble [http://www.squatandgobble.com] which offered good food (corned beef toasted sandwich) at a very reasonable price served with wit and panache.  If I lived in Castro I’d go there for brunch.

I ate Kobe (having first had to ask what it was) at the Market Bar [http://www.marketbar.com], at the magnificent Ferry Terminal on the Embarcadero.  Kobe, so Juan Carlo the waiter told me, is a special breed of cattle which the Japanese raise in idle luxury so that the animal does not develop much muscle:  apparently, they also massage the animal’s buttocks (while it’s still alive).  Once dead it is indeed exceptionally tender.

Wikipedia tells me [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef] that Kobe beef is from the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyu cattle, though in the USA it is usually crossbred with Angus to suit the American taste for darker meat.

Market Bar is a splendid lunch venue for people-watching and listening, in my case to a ball-busting lady executive laying into a male colleague in high-pitched staccato:  when she left it was, as my Yorkshire friends say, “like t’mill stoppin'”.  The restrooms are a long walk across the food hall, however:  when I nipped out to take precautions during a kitchen delay, an over-zealous waiter cleared my table and had to lay it again, to his embarrassment.

I also fancied, but did not have time to try, Butterfly [http://www.butterflysf.com] at Pier 33 on the Embarcadero, right next to the Alcatraz Cruise terminal.  This is not a recommendation, but a suggested alternative to the perfunctory, cheap and cheerful Alcatraz Landing Café, where I dined with a persistent pigeon that resisted the waitress’s attempts to drive it out with a water-pistol.

My adviser about Italian food in San Francisco, John Rozatti, recommended I eat at the Molinari Delicatessen [http://maps.google.ca/maps/place?oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&q=molinari+deli+san+francisco&fb=1&gl=ca&hq=molinari+deli&hnear=San+Francisco,+CA,+USA&cid=15255183613653254552&z=14] on Columbus Avenue.  When I went looking for it, after dark, I missed it because it closes at 5.30pm and I ended up instead people-watching in the front window of Pinocchio [http://www.trattoriapinocchio.com/about.html], eating an excellent fettucine con salmone with a glass of Montepulciano, an attractive red wine I hadn’t previously heard of.

John would no doubt still vote for Molinari:  he says, “order a number 8 (Renzo’s Special – request imported meat).  You will leave there (1) content and (2) full.”  I trust John:  he has Italian ancestry and a sister who lives in San Francisco.

Palimpsest of the Peak 1

1 Reply
Chatsworth House, Derbyshire

Chatsworth House, Derbyshire

About fifteen years ago Andrew, 11th Duke of Devonshire, commissioned an extensive archaeological survey of the Chatsworth estate, a summary of which was published as John Barnatt & Tom Williamson, Chatsworth:  a landscape history (Windgather 2005).

It’s a revelation.

Chatsworth has, of course, been repeatedly written up, ever since the Bachelor 6th Duke produced his privately printed Handbook of Chatsworth and Hardwick in 1845.  The recent survey pulls together a full review of the archaeology and the estate’s enormous archive, backed by the evidence of maps, illustrations and modern photography.

This reveals a layered chronology of a significant area of the upland Derbyshire Peak back to prehistoric times.  In particular, since the mid-eighteenth century much of the landscape has been undisturbed, leaving evidence of prehistoric, medieval and early modern agriculture and industry that has been obliterated elsewhere in the county.

The shadowy presence of the great landscape designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who is mentioned only once in the entire Chatsworth archive, is made clearer because almost all payments in the estate accounts were addressed to his “foreman” or contractor, Michael Millican.  Their work in creating the naturalistic landscape that stretches from Chatsworth House to the horizon began in 1759, financed to a great extent by the 4th Duke’s lucrative copper mine at Ecton in Staffordshire.

Another recent discovery is the complexity of the patterns of drives and roads around the estate.  It seems that the eighteenth-century landscape was primarily designed to be seen from and near the house, and largely enjoyed on foot, rather like the characters’ explorations of Mr Rushworth’s Sotherton property in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814).

During the early Victorian period, the time of the Bachelor Duke, the park was crisscrossed with wide drives, carefully contrived to give advantageous views.  Many of these have since been grassed over and largely forgotten.  It seems that in the Bachelor’s time visitors were encouraged to enjoy the mature landscape in the comfort of a carriage.

When I take groups to Chatsworth, particularly visitors from outside the UK, I make a point as the coach climbs the steep road (realigned in the early nineteenth century) from Beeley Bridge (1759) of explaining that everything within sight – buildings, grass, trees, water – is in fact contrived by man.  And you wouldn’t get planning permission for it now.  Especially as it lies in a National Park.

The portal for information about visiting Chatsworth is http://www.chatsworth.org.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 The Derbyshire Derwent Valley tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral (Gibberd version)

Leave a Reply

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool

When I take groups to Liverpool, I love to lead them from one cathedral to the other, usually from the Anglican Cathedral, which has pointed arches and a vista towards a distant high altar, to the spectacular circular space of the uncompromisingly modern Catholic Cathedral.

The Metropolitan Cathedral, as it is properly known, was initiated in 1960 when Archibishop (later Cardinal) John Heenan decided a cathedral had to be built, and quickly, on the Brownlow Hill land that had been a building site since the 1930s.

His brief, in the years before the Second Vatican Council, was to have a building that would give a congregation of two thousand an uninterrupted view of the high altar, would cost no more than a million pounds, and could be built within five years.

The competition winner was Sir Frederick Gibberd, who engineered a circular space, with a corona supported by ring beams held in place by sixteen angled pillars and diagonal concrete buttresses.

Within each bay of this structure he placed a variety of free-standing chapels, most of which were initially left plain for future generations to embellish.  The echoing space of the interior is lit by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens’ deeply coloured glass.

The Metropolitan Cathedral was consecrated in 1967 – completed on time and within budget.

Like so much 1960s architecture, the haste to complete meant that new, untried materials were used which did not stand the test of time.  Within a generation, the leaking roof had to be reinstated and much of the cladding replaced.  The processional approach that Gibberd intended was only constructed at the start of this century.

Nevertheless, the spiky profile of the Metropolitan Cathedral has integrated into the Liverpool skyline with a much lighter touch than Lutyens’ bombastic basilica ever could.

It’s ironic that the architect of the Anglican Cathedral, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was a Catholic;  Sir Frederick Gibberd, architect of the Catholic Cathedral, was in fact a Methodist.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral (Lutyens version)

Leave a Reply

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool: Lutyens crypt (foreground); Gibberd cathedral (background)

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool: Lutyens crypt (foreground); Gibberd cathedral (background)

When Liverpool’s Catholic community returned to the task of erecting a cathedral in 1930 under Archbishop Richard Downey using the site of the former Brownlow Hill Workhouse, they planned a church to dominate the cityscape even more than E W Pugin’s elegant Gothic design of 1853 at Everton would have done.

Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) designed a monster basilica in what he called his “Wrenaissance” style.  Nearly as long, yet wider and higher than St Peter’s in Rome, its dome would have been half as tall again as the tower of the Anglican Cathedral, and significantly larger than the domes of St Peter’s or London’s St Paul’s.  The Victoria Tower of Liverpool University, across the road on Brownlow Hill, would have fitted inside the entrance arch.

A vast architectural model, seventeen feet long and over eleven feet high, was built as an aid to fund-raising:  it has survived and is displayed in the Museum of Liverpool at the Pier Head:  [http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/conservation/departments/models/lutyens]

Lutyens cheerfully declared that the actual cathedral would take four hundred years to build.  The foundation stone was laid in 1933 and the first mass said in the crypt in 1937.  At the time of the 1941 Blitz, the sole remaining mason was obliged to down tools and work stopped entirely.  The crypt, which had already consumed four million blue bricks, was partly adapted as an air-raid shelter, and otherwise left open to the weather.

After the war, a reduced version of Lutyens’ design was commissioned from Adrian Gilbert Scott, brother of the architect of the Anglican Cathedral, but dismissed as unworkable.  The incomplete crypt was put to use for worship and as a parish centre.

What was built of Lutyens’ cathedral is an awesome space which hints at the scale of the unbuilt structure.  Within, under what would have been the high altar, the tombs of some of the early archbishops are contained in a vault guarded by a seven-ton marble rolling stone, representing Christ’s tomb in Gethsemane.

I once saw the rolling stone roll.  It’s operated by the sort of winch that’s still sometimes used for the house-tabs in school assembly halls.  The sound of seven tons of marble rolling into a doorway is like nothing else.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral (Pugin version)

1 Reply

Our Lady Immaculate Roman Catholic Church, Everton, Liverpool (1990)

Our Lady Immaculate Roman Catholic Church, Everton, Liverpool (1990)

Almost as soon as Liverpool became the centre of a re-established Catholic diocese in 1850, the first bishop, Alexander Goss, commissioned Edward Welby Pugin to design a magnificent Gothic cathedral which was to stand on Everton Brow.

There is an image of E W Pugin’s perspective view of the planned St Edward’s Cathedral at https://www.liverpoolmetrocathedral.org.uk/the-first-cathedral.  The complete building would have been a dignified cruciform structure with a tall tower and spire, providing a fine landmark overlooking the Mersey.

From the Wirral bank of the Mersey, or from a vessel in the river, you can pinpoint its location behind and slightly to the north of the existing St George’s Parish Church

Building began in 1853, and stopped again three years later because of the pressure to provide churches, schools and welfare for the huge population of Irish and other immigrants that flooded into mid-nineteenth century Liverpool.  There simply wasn’t the money to spare for grand building projects.

All that was ever built of Pugin’s great cathedral was the Lady Chapel and its two side chapels, and these were converted into an odd-looking parish church, Our Lady Immaculate, which stood on St Domingo Road until it was demolished in the early 1990s.

It was said at that time to be unsafe, though I felt – and still feel – that it was a pity that this relic of the early Victorian growth of Catholic Liverpool wasn’t somehow preserved.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Survivals & Revivals:  past views of English architecture, please click here.

Island of hidden gems

Leave a Reply
Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church, Ramsey, Isle of Man

The Isle of Man lacks a volume of Pevsner’s great buildings series:  Sir Nikolaus spent much of his life compiling the first edition Buildings of England, and since he completed the original series in 1974 his successor editors have additionally laboured at the Buildings of Wales, Buildings of Scotland and Buildings of Ireland.  The Isle of Man belongs to none of these territories, and so far has no comparable catalogue of its architectural heritage.

This is a pity, because the island contains a wealth of structures, from pre-medieval crosses and chapels, called keeills, to high-quality nineteenth- and twentieth-century churches and public buildings.  Among the nationally-known architects who have worked on the island are George Steuart, Peter Paul Pugin, John Loughborough Pearson and his son Frank Loughborough Pearson, Ewan Christian (based in England but descended from an old Manx family), Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott and the theatre-architect Frank Matcham.

Alongside these luminaries, Giles Gilbert Scott built Our Lady Star of the Sea & St Maughold RC Church on the seafront at Ramsey in 1908-10.

It’s immediately recognisable as by the same hand as Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral by its simple, sheer surfaces, tricked out with decorative features high up, including a crucifix high on the liturgical east wall (which actually faces west) and a balcony at the top of the hip-roofed tower.  Carving dies into the stonework, exactly like the Lady Chapel of Liverpool Cathedral.  Much of the Horsforth stone tracery is obscured on the outside by protective glazing.

Within, the interior is lit only on the (geographical) south:  the opposite wall is blank except for a low Gothic arch opening into the Lady Chapel and the windowless wall behind the altar is dominated by a dramatic full-height painted triptych.

Designed when Scott was in his twenties, shortly after he began work on his great cathedral, Our Lady Star of the Sea is an unexpected, precious piece of architectural genius in the wide-open spaces of the under-developed resort-town.

The Isle of Man is full of surprises.

Service times for Our Lady Star of the Sea & St Maughold are available at http://www.ourladyandstmaughold.org.  Background information on all the Catholic churches on the Isle of Man is at http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/parishes/rcath/rc.htm.

The 72-page, A4 handbook for the 2014 Manx Heritage tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Trouble at t’summit

1 Reply

Foulridge Tunnel, Leeds & Liverpool Canal, Lancashire: north-east portal

Foulridge Tunnel, Leeds & Liverpool Canal, Lancashire: north-east portal

When I gave a lecture recently to the Driffield Wolds Decorative & Fine Arts Society [http://www.nadfas.org.uk/default.asp?section=209&page=1046], I met Ian Toon, who was about to canoe the Yorkshire length of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal from Foulridge Tunnel down to Leeds.  I was impressed.

I can see that canoeing a canal is an excellent way to see every yard of waterway at close quarters, and to enjoy the wildlife as well as the history.  How much of the scenery you see from water level is another question, but it’s an experience most of us will miss.

Foulridge (usually pronounced “Foalridge”) is a good place to start an exploration in either direction, by canoe, by narrow boat or on foot, because it’s downhill all the way in either direction.  It’s also a relevant place to consider the dilemmas the original canal surveyors faced as they plotted their routes across the Pennine hills.

The traditional, James Brindley solution was to hug the contours regardless of the distance:  this is what the Leeds & Liverpool Canal does, and it’s 127¼ miles long with two tunnels.  The alternative was to save mileage with a tunnel:  the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, highest in England at 684 feet above sea level, punches the three-mile Standedge Tunnel through the hillside;  it’s not quite twenty miles long, but it took seventeen years to complete.  The Rochdale Canal, 33 miles long, has no tunnel, was finished in ten years, and was bedevilled by water-supply problems.

There was a major argument when the Leeds & Liverpool Canal was under construction about whether it would be cheaper to tunnel at Foulridge, or to carry the canal higher and increase the mileage further.  The engineer, Robert Whitworth, airily declared that building Foulridge Tunnel would be “a small affair…compared with what has been done in other canals”.

In fact, it took five years, 1791-6.  It proved a liability when the lining failed in 1824 and again in 1843, and there were such difficulties in between those dates that the canal company engineer, Samuel Fletcher, estimated it would cost £23,000 to open it out as a cutting.  In the end, the tunnel was repaired, and it’s been kept in repair ever since.

The main problem on the Leeds & Liverpool is and remains, ironically, water supply:  for much of the nineteenth century the company kept building additional reservoirs, the last in 1893.  As recently as 2010 the upper stretch of the canal was closed for lack of water.

Hindsight is easy, of course:  it was a different matter for an eighteenth-century engineer staring at a hillside without so much as an Ordnance Survey map and deciding the best strategy.  All three canals did their job, and the Leeds & Liverpool maintained traffic against rail competition until the early twentieth century and has always remained navigable.  The other two trans-Pennine canals are once again navigable, despite decades of neglect [see The return of the Ring and Longest, highest, deepest].

Now you can walk, cycle, canoe or sail along these waterways with relative ease.

The 48-page, A4 handbook for the 2011 Waterways & Railways across the Northern Pennines tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  To view sample pages click here.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.