Yesterday, we stumbled on the answer to a question that we’ve often wondered about and yet never took the time to research: where does canal water come from?
Miss P wanted to visit a friend in Furness Vale. He is recovering from glandular fever and hadn’t been at college for some time. As it was such a lovely day, I tagged along as Mrs P drove and after dropping daughter off, we drove on to Whaley Bridge to walk the dog around Toddbrook Reservoir.
Which is where the question was answered. The reservoir was built in 1831, not to provide safe drinking water, but the common or garden variety to feed the Peak Forest Canal.
As aforementioned, it was a beautiful day: blue skies, warm sun and it felt like spring at last. And Toddbrook is a very pleasant place for a stroll. What the map above doesn’t show is that on the northern shore there is a strip of land you reach by bridge and a path with the reservoir on one side and a man-made water course on the other.
Follow the path to where the reservoir tapers to an end and you come to where a stream, presumably ‘Todd Brook’, has been dammed, the water diverted into the water course that takes it away to the canal. This flow can be shut off so that the water goes over the dam to feed the reservoir.
All in all, a very pleasant place to spend a couple of hours and to be repeated. And next time, I’ll remember to take the camera!