Wild Goose Chase

This was one good entertainment on the holiday. The banks of the Rochdale Canal are well populated with groups of Canada Geese, which I discovered early on that if no-one was looking I could suddenly charge, and they'd all take to the water with much honking and whooshing. This game lasted quite well into the week, but suddenly came a cropper in Hebden Bridge on the journey home, when I tried it with 4 big white thuggish semi-domesticated geese.

I charged them, and they looked like they'd make good their escape into the canal, but one seemed to suss out how tiny I am compared to their great towering Rugby-player shapes, and turned and shouted and tried to bite me.

Yoiks! A dog had to turn tail and run back to her Daddy with her tail between her legs and dignity abandonned. Hooligans! Pick on someone your own size.

I wasn't so keen on the game after that, even with the smaller Canada geese.

Deefski

Grandma Pollard's Chippy

As rude as we were inclined to be about Heckle and Jeckle, the combined crews of our two boats made for some great "lock wrangling" team work. Leaving Todmorden's "blue wall" at about 9 we attacked lock after lock, the 4 wranglers swarming all over gates and paddles, running ahead to set the next lock before we'd left the previous one. We climbed rapidly through Gauxholme, under the impressive castellated railway viaduct and on up to Walsden where.......

...we decided to try out a chippy noted in the excellent "Canal Companion" books (JM Pearson and Son Ltd), Grandma Pollard's Chippy. Without doubt the BEST fish and chips any of us had ever tasted, and we dogs can vouch for that and the fried potato-slice "dabs" that came with them, because of the amount inadvertantly dropped or deliberately fed to us by the children when Mum and Dad weren't looking.

In fact, so much "stray" food did we get on that holiday that we seemed to be "off our food" to Mum and Dad, until the reason became clear!

All parties determined to stop back at GP's on the way back down, but we knew we'd have to watch our timings - GP shuts at 3pm some days and isn't open at all at weekends. We strongly reccommend Grandma Pollard's if you're in the Gauxholme or Todmorden area!

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=grandma+pollards+walsden&fb=1&split=1&gl=uk&view=text&latlng=11259490757895769097

That done, the tillermen were back at their helms, and the boats charging on once more towards the summit. We actually got to the first rstricted lock (No 33) by 1pm, and phoned the Waterways people to see if we could blag an early crossing. No, they said - they were sticking to their single booking per day (1 pair of boats either way), and to be fair, when we did go over, we could see why, but more of that later.

Deefski