About this website
The Pennine Waterways web site began in 1998 and grew rapidly during 1999, from a group of pages about The Huddersfield Narrow Canal on the Ashton under Lyne web site. The content quickly grew to include the Rochdale, Ashton and Peak Forest Canals and was made into a separate site on its own server.
A major project undertaken was to report regularly with photographic updates on the progress of the Huddersfield Canal restoration. This proved very popular, attracting a large number of visitors. Similar coverage was later given to the restoration of the Rochdale Canal.
A feature of the site is the virtual cruise that can be taken along most of the canals covered. This is being improved as older photographs are replaced with better quality newer ones.
Keeping the Pennine Waterways site up to date with pictures of the restoration work on the Huddersfield Canal took up a lot of time during 2000 and 2001. The restoration of the Rochdale canal also kept me busy in 2001 and 2002. it was not until late in 2002 that I had the time to carry out a much-needed overhaul of the entire website.
A longer term aim has been to extend the site's coverage to include other waterways in the Pennine area. Already online are pages about the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal, Bridgewater Canal and about waterways in Manchester and Salford, including Salford Quays and Castlefield. The website also covers the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation, Aire and Calder Navigation, Calder and Hebble Navigation, Barnsley Canal, Dearne and Dove Canal and Bradford Canal. The latest section of the website covers the Macclesfield Canal.
An additional feature is a message board / discussion forum where visitors may express opinions and comments, ask questions or spark debates on subjects of interest to visitors to Pennine Waterways.
The site includes an "online shop" section in which I have chosen a wide selection of canal guides and books, Ordnance Survey maps and books about the local areas which can be purchased through amazon.co.uk.
There is a "desktop wallpaper" section from which you can take your pick from a selection of high quality canal pictures to use as the background for your computer desktop.
I am starting to add pages of archive photographs about each canal and I am grateful to those people who have supplied and let me use photographs here.
Towards the end of 2004 I began the task of upgrading the website to make it more "future-proof", more accessible, more compliant with a range of browsers and faster for each page to download. This is being done by re-writing the pages to make use of CSS layout and by improving font sizing.
I am pleased to receive comments and suggestions from visitors to the site and take notice of the comments made when carrying out alterations.
I am grateful to Frank Smith and Bob Gough of the Huddersfield Canal Society for their assistance with information and photographs. I am also grateful to John and Margaret Fletcher, David Schofield, Alan Taylor, Ken Wright, Martin Millsom, Gary Metcalfe, Ian McCarthy, Dave Hill, Richard Feeney, Nick Catford, Mike Dilger, JW Harrop, David Long, Neil Arlidge, Peter Stockdale, Sue Day and to Costain Ltd, Balfour Beatty, British Waterways and others for permission to use photographs.
Copyright
Unless otherwise stated, all photographs, maps and text are the copyright of Pennine Waterways. They may be downloaded or printed for personal use, such as to take with you when walking a canal towpath. They may not be reproduced or re-published, for example: in a book or on another web site, without permission. Where such permission may be given, acknowledgement must be made to "www.penninewaterways.co.uk".
Higher resolution versions of all photographs exist in .jpg format and may be available by request.
Every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, but no responsibility can be accepted for any inconvenience arising from errors. All links to external sites have been checked and should work, but may have been altered without my knowledge. If you find any broken links or other errors on this site, please contact me.
Linking to Pennine Waterways
The World Wide Web grows by sites linking to one another. The Canal Links Page has a selection of such links. I would be pleased to hear of suggestions for other suitable links.
If you would like to place a link to Pennine Waterways from your own site, there are details on the Linking to Pennine Waterways page.
For the convenience of visitors I have gathered together a collection of Search Engines and links to find other sites that may be of interest. Click here to go to the Searchbox site. The first page has a meta-search which looks through several engines at the same time. You might want to bookmark it so that you can use it for all your searching!
Pennine Waterways is part of the UK Waterways Web Ring, linking together websites about canals and waterways.
Pennine Waterways also belongs to other web rings which visitors may find interesting to explore. Check these out on the Web Ring page or Links page.
The original Ashton under Lyne web site has now moved to its own server. There are links to it from this site or it can be reached through the address www.ashton-under-lyne.com.
An offshoot from Pennine Waterways is SearchBox from which you can access over 80 different search engines and reference tools, including Encarta, search engines for children and a specially customised multi-engine search.
If you have any comments about these pages, please contact me.
