Barrowford to Hapton

We stayed for a couple of days on the visitor moorings & very pleasant it was. Yesterday we walked down into Colne as food stocks were getting low, found a small Co-op, a Tesco express & a fair sized market so we were able to eat last night.

A classic cobbled alley in Colne

Colne was the birth place of Wallace Hartley, who was a bandmaster on the Titanic, & reputedly continued to conduct his band whist the ship sank perishing along with 8 band members.

We set off for Barrowford locks at 9.30am this morning accompanied by a silsden hire boat 'Molly's Drum' who had shared the moorings with us last night. It was grey & damp with the odd spot of rain but it will take much more than that to fill up the Barrowford reservoir......

We stopped off at the handy Morrisons in Nelson, there is just room for a couple of boats on their small secure mooring & a gate ( handcuff key) takes you into the store car park. Major food shop & we are now fully stocked with all sorts of exciting edibles !

Burnley next, no pictures as who wants to see pictures of a dirty canal or graffiti on every available surface. As you may have guessed we were not impressed but thought things may improve along the embankment as, according to Nicholsons..

" The whole area of the embankment has been tidied up and the towpath opened up offering excellent access to a wealth of pedestrianised shopping together with good moorings"

I'm not sure when that was written, maybe we were too busy avoiding the detritus in the water to spot the 'good moorings' & I'm sure the shopping is excellent but there was nothing to make us feel safe leaving our boat there.

So we pressed on & once through the Gannow tunnel things started to improve....

& we finally moored up just outside Hapton at 6.30pm, the M65 is rumbling away in the background but the skies have now cleared & this view more than makes up for it.