Depending on your perspective, canals either bring the countryside into the towns, or take the towns out into the countryside. Built as industrial transport links, they connected 18th- and 19th-century centres of manufacture and industry and provided access to their markets further afield.
Huddersfield is blessed with two canals, the Narrow and the Broad. Snaking westwards along the Pennine valleys, the Narrow canal heads for the hills into "Last of the Summer Wine" country. The Broad canal takes a northerly route, towards the River Calder. Both follow the route of the River Colne. The industrial past is evident everywhere, with mills large and small dotted along the banks.
Whilst the towpath side of the Broad canal is continuously busy with walkers and cyclists, the far bank, cushioned from human disturbance by 30 or more feet of open water, is a refuge for wildlife. Vegetation has clothed the bankside, and because boats are not moored there, stands of reed sweet-grass, mixed with sweet flag and some branched bur reed, have developed. Here we found the empty nymph cases of dragonfly and damselfly, still hooked by skeletal legs to the stems up which the nymphs had climbed after a year or two as underwater hunters to make their final transformation into beautiful and spectacular flying insects. A grass snake slithered hastily from view, sliding between the tall plants. Further along, the canal cuts by a steep, sloping woodland of oak and silver birch on the acidic millstone grits. The ground flora is poor; mainly bracken, bramble and wavy hair-grass, but a few bluebells add colour in spring.
Past the wood, more open banks are swathed with brambles, an impenetrable mass of hooks and prickles. By the water's edge, drifts of gypsywort add a lilac-coloured border to the tangle of bramble.
Sadly, invasive, non-native plants are taking over. Huge stands of Japanese knotweed, not Japanese but definitely a weed, are flanked by Himalayan balsam. They out-compete the native plants, yet offer little in the way of foodplant or habitat for other wildlife. The town, going out to the countryside.
