This slideshow requires JavaScript.

There were sixteen walkers on the July leg on 27th. Here’s David’s resume:

Leeds Liverpool Canal Clayton Le Moors to Burnley July 2017

Our 3.5 hour walk on the meandering canal was one of dramatic landscape and weather changes. As we left the outskirts of Clayton le Moors we were in farmland with long distance views of Pendle Hill to the north and moorlands to the south. Soon we came to a lovely wooded narrow valley as the canal turned sharply northward. Beside the usual canal barges the far canal bank was home to two bright orange enclosed lifeboats normally seen on ocean going craft and a narrowboat in a floating “dry dock”.

Once round the turn, it was open countryside again with the odd derelict industrial structure and views of the high moorlands of Great Hameldon and Hameldon Hill to the south with traffic on the M65 droning by. By this time our dry weather had turned to rain, gentle at first but turning heavier forcing us to shelter under convenient bridges. We skirted the former small stone cotton town of Hapton and trudged on to evocatively named Rose Grove after thankfully keeping dry and having lunch under a new smart bridge serving the M65. Our fortunes weatherwise steadily improved and by the time we reached the strangely carved entrance to Gannow Tunnel (where the towpath stopped) things were looking up. Leaving the canal and following a circuitous path over link roads and through housing it became positively summer as we reached the canal towpath again. We were now close to Burnley and the towpath was super as swept over the M65 on a aqueduct, twisting and turning as it passed through a victorian townscape of restored and semi derelict mills enhanced by tree planting and landscaping as we entered the “Weavers Triangle”. We came to our journey’s end at the “Inn on the Wharf“ bathed in almost Mediterranean sunshine. All nicely set in a restored Victorian stone warehouse and former toll house complete with a giant canopy overhanging the towpath and canal.