Huddersfield Narrow Canal
Britain's highest canal, climbing over the Pennines through Standedge Tunnel between Huddersfield and Ashton-under-Lyne
The Huddersfield Narrow Canal crosses the Pennines in about twenty miles, from Aspley Basin in Huddersfield to Portland Basin at Ashton-under-Lyne, where it meets the Ashton and Peak Forest canals. Into that short distance it packs 74 locks and the deepest canal summit in the country, so it climbs and drops hard at both ends. It is a narrow canal, built for single boats about seven feet wide, which is what the name records.
The great feat is Standedge Tunnel, between Marsden and Diggle under the moors of Saddleworth. At just over three miles it is the longest, highest and deepest canal tunnel in Britain, and it very nearly bankrupted the company that dug it. There is no towpath through it: boats book a passage and walkers follow a marked path over the top. The summit here stands around 645 feet above sea level.
The canal was authorised in 1794 and opened throughout in 1811, carrying trade over the hills between the mill towns of Lancashire and West Yorkshire. Railways took its traffic, commercial boats stopped in the 1920s, and it was formally closed in 1944. A long volunteer-led restoration reopened it in 2001, tunnel and all.
For walkers it makes a strong linear route, following the Colne valley up from Huddersfield and the Tame valley down towards Greater Manchester, through Marsden and the villages of the Peak District fringe. Both ends have stations, and the trans-Pennine railway shadows the canal through Standedge, which makes it easy to walk in sections and take the train back.
