Andrew Galloway visits the Rochdale Riviera

ROCHDALE, the former Lancashire mill town – now a satellite borough of

Greater Manchester – is famous for at the most three things: being the birthplace of Gracie Fields; its magnificent Victorian Gothic town hall, which, according to Rochdale Council’s own town guide, is “widely recognised as being one of the finest municipal buildings in the country”; and Mike Harding’s 1975 hit Rochdale Cowboy, which reached the dizzy heights of number 22 in the UK Singles Chart. But the town has a further jewel in its crown: Hollingworth Lake.

Originally planned in 1794 as the feeding source of the proposed Rochdale