Places to explore near Rochdale

The Pennines for horse and bike — old packhorse trails and drovers' roads.

3.6 km N · spans 6 counties

The first and toughest of them all — 268 miles along England's rocky spine from the Peak to the Cheviots.

8.3 km NE · spans 8 counties

Handsome Saddleworth conservation village of weavers' cottages around a sloping cobbled square.

11 km SE · Greater Manchester

Britain's first national park: gritstone edges in the Dark Peak, limestone dales in the White.

12 km E

Canal-side Uppermill museum tracing the woollen trade and Roman past of the Saddleworth villages.

12.1 km SE

Tall Victorian monument to Sir Robert Peel crowning Holcombe Hill above Ramsbottom, with wide Pennine views.

12.5 km W

Britain's longest and highest canal tunnel, with boat trips beneath the Pennine moors from Marsden.

12.8 km E

A 121-foot peace monument of 1856 crowning the moor above the Calder Valley.

13.8 km NE

Handsome reservoir ringed by gritstone edges and RSPB moorland where Saddleworth meets the Peak District.

15 km SE

Bohemian mill town in the Calder gorge, its double-decker houses stacked above the Rochdale Canal and independent shops.

17.6 km NE · West Yorkshire

Hilltop weavers' village of gritstone cottages, a ruined medieval church beside its Georgian replacement and Sylvia Plath's grave.

17.8 km NE · West Yorkshire

Burnley's grand 440-acre park of woodland, lawns and lakes around the Grade I hall, gallery and museum.

18.7 km N

National Trust wooded gorge of the Hebden Water, threaded with paths past the old Gibson Mill.

18.8 km NE

The world's first swing aqueduct — a 235-foot iron trough that pivots aside, water and all, to let ships pass on the Manchester Ship Canal.

19.8 km SW

The longest single canal in Britain, crossing the Pennines by Bingley's Five Rise Locks and the moors above Burnley.

20.1 km N · spans 5 counties

Secluded waterfall and packhorse bridge in the wooded Crimsworth Dean above Hebden Bridge.

21 km NE

The world's only surviving Georgian cloth hall, a grand colonnaded courtyard of shops and events in Halifax.

23.3 km NE

Ruined moorland farmhouse widely linked to Wuthering Heights, high on the Pennine watershed above Haworth.

24.2 km N

Flight of sixteen canal locks and a towering stone aqueduct where the Peak Forest Canal climbs out of the Goyt valley.

24.8 km S

Huddled Holme Valley town of terraced hillsides, famous as the setting for Last of the Summer Wine.

24.8 km E · West Yorkshire

The first canal across the Pennines — 91 broad locks between Manchester and Sowerby Bridge, reopened whole in 2002.

0.7 km SE · Greater Manchester & West Yorkshire

A country park in Greater Manchester.

3.7 km S

A country park in Greater Manchester.

4 km NE

Near Littleborough, this canal-feeder reservoir became a Victorian resort, the so-called Weighver's Seaport of the Pennine mill towns.

4.6 km NE

A hill in Greater Manchester.

8.4 km NE

The first public park in Oldham, built in 1865 to employ idle cotton workers.

9.2 km S

A country park in Greater Manchester.

9.4 km W

Stone Saddleworth village in the Tame valley, with old bridges, mills and moorland walks close at hand.

9.8 km SE · Greater Manchester

A hill in West Yorkshire.

10.3 km E