The 590 bus from Rochdale to Halifax crosses the Pennines, linking Greater Manchester with West Yorkshire. It passes two marvels of the Industrial Revolution and some of the region's most dramatic scenery. A single ticket costs £2.50, more than the £2 Bee Network fare, because it is a privately-owned First Bus service.
From Rochdale to the Pennine Border
The journey starts at Rochdale bus station, heading east through Smallbridge and Littleborough. It crosses the border at Summit into Walsden, Todmorden and Hebden Bridge. The route begins unremarkably, but chicken shops and brick terraces soon give way to weavers' cottages and Rochdale's flagstone fences.
Blackstone Edge, the gritstone ridge marking the border, looms ahead. At Littleborough, the bus passes the former studio of the late Walter Kershaw, a painter dubbed the 'Original Banksy' for his street murals. His canvases are still visible through the bay window.
Industrial Heritage Along the Route
At the village of Summit, the bus passes the mouth of the Summit Tunnel, designed by George Stephenson. When it opened in 1841, it was the longest railway tunnel in the world, linking Manchester and Leeds. In 1984, a train carrying a million litres of petrol derailed inside, causing one of the biggest underground fires in transport history. Temperatures reached 1,500C, and firefighters took four days to extinguish the blaze.
The Rochdale Canal, which opened 37 years before the tunnel, follows the same path. Dug by hand at 600ft above sea level, it is one of the highest canals in England. Barges once carried cotton, wool, coal and timber between Lancashire and Yorkshire. Today, pleasure cruisers and kayakers use it, and a herd of alpacas grazes near Walsden.
Working Towns and Valley Life
The route passes working and derelict towns, with workshops, abandoned chimneys, old mills and pubs. The weather turns damp with low clouds over the hills, typical of a region known for bleak winters and flooding. Locals call this seasonal gloom 'Valley bottom fever'.
In Todmorden, the bus passes the Golden Lion, a coaching house-turned-rave venue that hosted Andrew Weatherall and Jarvis Cocker. The automated tannoy pronounces the town 'Tod-more-den', not the local 'Todm'den'. The journey ends at Hebden Bridge, the bohemian and LGBTQ+ capital of Yorkshire, once a textiles town and now a haven for anarchists, punks and hippies, and the setting for Happy Valley.
Hebden Bridge is a tourist hotspot and commuter town for workers from Manchester, Leeds and London. At the White Swan, setting for the karaoke scene in Sally Wainwright's Riot Women, the 590 seems one of the best things to cross the Pennines since Eric Cantona left Leeds for Manchester United.
