Tuesday 3rd December
Part of the fun of each walk is working out how to get to the starting point and how to get home afterwards. Adlington is a village on the A6 several miles away from Wigan. It has a station but no direct rail link. Therefore, to get there we had to change at Preston. It took us almost an hour to get to Adlington on two trains.
Our walk started at the White Bear Marina. We joined the canal at The Bridge pub at bridge 69, the White Bear bridge.
I hadn't a clue which way it was to Wigan! Left or right? We asked a bargee who pointed us in the right direction.
We almost had the 5 mile stretch of canal to ourselves. There were very few people walking and cycling today, perhaps it was the weather. It was hot. I was sweating which Thomas found amusing - don't know why?
I was surprised how quickly we reached Arley Hall. The whole area was thriving in plant life - I couldn't get a photo of the hall. It was barely visible. We also walked past the area where we explored last year looking for the old corn mill. We didn't recognise the place! The path wasn't there.
We continued past the golf course to Red Rock. The Crawford Arms pub was busy. After Red Rock there are some superb views towards Wigan. There was plenty of coal on the towpath here too. Huge lumps of it.
We had run out of water and it was a scorcher of a day. Luckily we have a friend who lives near Sennicar bridge so we called in and had a drink, ice cream and refilled our water bottles. Thanks Dave! He had 4 hens that were walking around the garden. Thomas started throwing daisies at them which they mistook for bread. Seeing his opportunity, he threw loads of daisies over me and the hens followed, nice one!
Our last leg of the walk took us past Haigh Hall and the golf course towards the top lock at New Springs, Wigan.
The walk took us around 3 hours, another one I recommend.
We came off the canal and walked down Cale Lane to catch a bus into town. £2.10! Robbing so and sos! I was beginning to ache and was still sweating because of the heat so I suppose it was worth it. ;o)
