End of the line

Statue of Ammon Wrigley - poet, beside Upper Mill visitor moorings

Ammon Wrigley was a local poet who died in 1946. His poetry was mostly written in the Lancashire dialect and one of his poems I particularly like, and which is quite appropriate to us, is called Friezland Ale. If you're interested you can read it here.

After a quick trip into Upper Mill to one of the 2 'proper' butchers, we set off up the last 2 locks taking us to Dobcross.  This is as far up the Huddersfield Narrow Canal as we can go without passing through Standedge Tunnel. If we'd wanted to book an escorted passage, and risk damaging our boat in the 3 mile long tunnel, we could go on but we wouldn't be able to go much further on the other side as our boat is too long at 65ft. for the locks on the Huddersfield Wide Canal.

It's been another beautiful warm sunny day and after hanging the washing out we took Chico out for a walk up into Dobcross village and then along the canal to Diggle and the Standedge Tunnel entrance. The scenery up here is spectacular and there were several pairs of Lapwings flying their courtship aerobatics above the canal.

lock flight up towards the tunnel

 The tunnel entrance has quite amazing gates while the tunnel itself just disappears under a car park.

Beside our current mooring there are bat boxes in the trees. It should be interesting at dusk tonight as there are plenty of flies over the water to attract the bats.

bat box

Good job I like bats!