The Yorkshire Post says: Canal pioneers. How best to cross the Pennines

LIKE the Bingley Five Rise Locks on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal is an equally impressive feat of engineering which helped to power the Industrial Revolution.

By The Newsroom

Published 22nd Aug 2018, 01:09 BST

Updated 22nd Aug 2018, 10:55 BST

The entrance to the Standedge Tunnel on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.

Climbing 134 metres from Huddersfield to its summit at Standedge where it passes through the longest and deepest tunnel on the inland waterway network, boats then begin a steep descent into Greater Manchester.

Just 20 miles long, it’s still little wonder that Benjamin Outram’s groundbreaking canal has been singled out for praise by the Institution of Civil Engineers for the determination of pioneers not to be beaten by the geography of the Pennines. First floated in 1793 and opened in 1811, one of the best views of the canal is ironically from the trans-Pennine railway where passengers on late-running and slow-moving trains must wonder whether they’d be better off making the journey by boat and why it’s not possible, in this day and age, to build a more reliable railway.