Foulridge Tunnel and the descent to Burnley

On across the summit today and the rain is coming more convincingly. Dad is often in his poncho up on the back deck while we dogs, who do not need to be out there, are quite often at the bottom of the stairs from the rear hatch, on the double bed, looking up at him from the warm and dry, supervising baby R. There are, though, breaks in the rain where we can get off the boat, and Dad is even sent off on a hike to Barnoldswick at one stage to buy essentials, in which he does not get rained on.

The summit pound is 6 miles long here and brings us past a shopping stop in Salterforth to the famous Foulridge Tunnel. Foulridge is 1640 yards long and takes a good 20 minutes to chug through, so it's controlled by traffic lights. You can start to "go" westward for 10 minutes on the hour, and Eastward for 10 mins on the half hour. We just miss the slot, so we stop for lunch at Foulridge wharf (those beef rolls).

Our chug through is uneventful, but the roof is very drippy, so you are advised to keep rain-gear on - and at the three vertical vent-shafts, it's more like driving under a waterfall. Meg and Haggis retreat into the boat, but I stay out on the aft deck to help Mum and Dad. The photo's give you some idea, but really, that tiny speck of light from the far end, almost a mile away is quite a dramatic clue to how long the thing is.

A boat full of "tarts" (says Dad) ask us nervously if they might follow us through, and then proceed to make hollering, whooping, echo-ey noises all the way through, which is mildly annoying.. Once through the tunnel, we must begin the descent to Burnley, down the Barrowford flight of (7) locks and here, unfotrtunately, the "tarts" decide to share our water.

You can't really say "no" - etiquette and water-conservation demand that you share locks, but by the time we've been cut up, shoved and delayed for the umpteenth time, Dad is saying more colourful words than "tart" beneath his breath and muttering stuff about "you'd think that after a week of hire they'd be able to steer the thing, and might even have learned some boating- manners". No wonder private owners have such a low opinion of holiday hire crews. Sigh.

Now we're coming to the end of our mission and, sadly, we finish off in the good city of Burnley. Burnley is probably a perfectly nice place to live, but seen only from the canal it is a city of derilect warehouses, gutted factories, graffiti'd underpasses and bridge stanchions, and a rubbish-filled canal. We have to stop several times to un-wedge big pieces opf timber from the bow, we pass pallets and floating 8' x 4' warehouse insulation panels (6 inches of expanded polystyrene with a sheet of tin either side) and a rake of other debris. The poor ol' prop bangs against so many bits of rubbish, Dad worries for it getting fouled and or damaged.

All this is rather depressing and has us worried about what you'd think of canal boating if the Burnley start was your first ever introduction to the activity.

There's one more tunnel (Gannow) before we reach the safety of another locked British Waterways compound, in the sweetly named "Rose Grove Wharf". Here we moor up for the final night, and Mrs Silverwood treats us all to a lovely supper of Chinese and fish'n'chips, which the humans wash down with the fizz Dad bought in Barnoldswick. That's it for another year. Tomorrow we must tidy out the boat and give it back, then meet the taxi-minibus for our run back to be re-united with the cars in Sowerby Bridge (a week by boat - only 45 minutes by taxi!). There we must bid farewell to the Silverwoods and the showery weather of Yorkshire, and head home to a tinder-dry Kent, where it's not rained all week.

It's been a blast. Now we just have to persuade Mum that it doesn't always rain, and we can maybe do it next year. I've seen her plotting routes and checking out Ashton, Manchester and Littleborough in the canal guides, so we might be on for a winner.

Deefer