Water to Manchester

 On our walk today we came across four , what looked like locked trunks, in the woods, next to the River Sprint . Investigating name on the trunk "Blakeborough Hydaulic Engineers"  reveals the history of a company from Brighouse in Yorkshire that was formed in 1828 and made valves.   Realising there was some important waterworks beneath our feet we guessed we were standing on the Thirlmere Aqueduct.  Some of you will know that between 1890 and 1894 the Thirlmere valley, in what was Cumberland and after a lot of heated debate, was dammed to make a reservoir to provide water down a 100m mile aqueduct to Manchester. There are give away gates along the route of the aqueduct to provide access to the engineers so that they could walk across the fields. You can see one of the gates in the blip. And to prove that these gates are special take a look at this link. I think we found a "standard gate" . Looking the other way  from the trunk we saw some very large pipes crossing the Sprint. I now realise that those pipes were carrying the water to Manchester and I'm sorry I did not take a picture as proof. If you are interested enough to want to see where the aqueduct goes on a map,  you can look  here  and zoom out .