Rochdale Canal

The Rochdale Canal is a navigable "broad" canal in northern England, part of the connected system of the canals of Great Britain. The "Rochdale" in its name refers to the town of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, through which the canal passes.

The Rochdale is a Broad canal because its bridges and locks are wide enough to allow vessels of 14 ft width. The canal runs for 32 miles (51 km) across the Pennines from the Bridgewater Canal at Castlefield Basin in Manchester to join the Calder And Hebble Navigation at Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire. As originally built, the canal had 92 locks. Whilst the traditional lock numbering has been retained on all restored locks, and on all the relocated locks, the canal now has only 91 locks. The former locks 3 and 4 have been replaced with a single deep lock (Tuel Lane Lock), which is numbered as 3/4.

Features
The Rochdale is significant for leisure boating in that it is one of the three canals which cross the Pennines and thus join north-western canals with the waterways of the North East, as well as opening the possibilities of touring various Pennine Rings (the Huddersfield Narrow Canal had reopened the year before, and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal had never closed).

A great attraction of the Rochdale Canal for the leisure boater lies in the fact that (unlike the Leeds and Liverpool and the Huddersfield Narrow) it climbs high over the Pennine moors rather than tunnelling through them, and the boater is surrounded by scenery which is correspondingly more spectacular (with the "penalty" of having to work more locks).

The Rochdale is at the heart of several important leisure boating route:

• In Manchester, the Rochdale Canal connects the Ashton Canal to the Bridgewater Canal, and is thus a short link in the Cheshire Ring, a one- (or better, two-) week canal ring which has been popular for 30 years.
• The Ashton Canal connects to the western end of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, making the Rochdale Canal part of the South Pennine Ring.
• The Bridgewater Canal connects to the western end of the Leeds And Liverpool Canal, making the Rochdale Canal part of the North Pennine Ring.
• The Ashton and the Bridgewater connect the Rochdale to all the canals on the west side of England, including the Lancaster Canal, Trent and Mersey Canal and Macclesfield Canal.