Harm's Way

I found myself with a few hours to kill before going up to Bradford to visit Bypass, so thought Rochdale would make a good stop off en route.

This culvert takes a brook just over 300m and varies between brick horseshoe, CMP, stone arch and eventually splits to a stoop before the infall.


A couple of transition chambers were essentially big degrading concrete slabs over each extension to the original upstream stone culvert, dated at 1903.






The CMP had broken up at points creating a fast flowing stretch with chunks of jagged debris underfoot. Despite being well aware of the hazards I still managed to catch the boot of my wader on a piece, which sliced straight through writing off the waders but more importantly missing my foot.



Cold and wet I left, the outfall was quite unique having a set of overflow stairs leading down from another watercourse over the mouth. I left rather more hastily than I might have done otherwise and headed home for spare waders. Although I was annoyed about wasting money it was good to have a reminder to always be alert to dangers, even in a small culvert.