We Found It!

During our time travelling the canal’s of Britain we have spent a fair amount of time following old canal or railway courses and today was no different.

We were on the hunt for the remains of the Rain Hall Rock Canal which ran off the Leeds and Liverpool Canal between bridges 152 and 153. According to the Pearson’s and Nicholson guides nothing much of this canal still exists but we’ll give it a go.We could see what might have been a cutting from the boat just above bridge 152 which is where our hunt began. This turned out not to be, only a natural water course.

All that remains of the first bridge or tunnel leading from the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to the Rain Hall quarry.

We followed the Public Footpath signs across several farmers paddocks with cows happily munching away producing tomorrows milk. At the crest of a hill we decided that we had gone inland far enough and we had to try and work our way back closer to the canal. We followed a well made road which turned out to be a private road with no footpath access, tut tut, never mind. This bought us to a country lane cross road where there was a deep cutting off to one side. I investigated this and found that we may have found the quarry and the canal as there was quite a lot of water at the bottom of the cutting.

The Rain Hall Rock Canal ran along this line of tree's. The quarry was in the tree's on the horizon.

Instead of following the lane we followed a well worn track along the crest of the embankment. We lost sight of the water due to the depth of the gully and the denseness of tree’s but eventually BINGO, an old tunnel mouth and a water course which we are certain is the canal we were looking for.

Rain Hall Rock Canal with part of the tunnel mouth in the bottom left corner.

When we finally got back to civilisation we found that we could have found it a lot quicker and easier had we started our hunt at bridge 153 but it’s all part of the fun and we did get some exercise.

All that remains of a tunnel on the Rain Hall Rock Canal off the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Barnoldswick.