25th May 2017
Journey Length 8.2 ml
Click Here For Route Via Ride with GPS
The ride for tonight was scheduled to be the last ride before Graham and myself went on our summer holidays, it was going to be a good ride covering quite a distance and hopefully finding the route to Salford that had evaded us on previous attempts. That though was all to change after the terrible events on Monday night at the MEN arena in Manchester. I very seldom comment on events like this on here but this was very close to home and with the fact that Peggy Lou and Val were due to watch Take That on the Thursday evening there ( see last post ). Our thoughts are with all the victims, family friends and all those caught up in the awful events.
Our ride was possibly going to be cancelled due to fact that the chain i had replaced hadn’t solved the issue and my bike was still unfit to ride, but Graham came good lending me “old faithful”, the bike he rode for our first ever Manchester to Blackpool bike rid many years ago.
I met Graham at his, to pick up the bike and explained that we would have to make it a shorter ride due to the fact my daughter a pediatric nurse and Manchester Children’s hospital had been been called in, due to the hectic development after the atrocity on Monday night and i had offered to pick her up, my little but insignificant bit to help.
Graham planned our route, head towards the “shit works ” in Ringley and take it from there. We decided once we were there to go through Clifton Marina and follow the path until a suitable time to turn back homeward. As we followed the path we headed up towards the Bolton to Manchester railway line, here we paused a while to see if we could watch a train go past, but after a couple of minutes we moved on , not seeing a train, but taking a couple of photos of the crossing that leads up to kearsley.
A small distance along the path I spotted a smaller path that I hadn’t seen on the many times we had been along here, so off to explore. It actually brought us out at the side of the river Irwell just past the motorway bridge. Here we turned left and almost immediately saw a couple of lads on bikes asking “scuse me mate do yo know were bridge is that ya jump off inta river ” , we duely pointed then in the right direction, 2 happy lads. Now our good deed done we continued only to stop in a short distance , to let another cyclist through a narrow part of the path. As I was leading I stopped and shouted ” go on mate you first” then immediately behind me I heard Graham “mate !!??”. It was actually a woman but with my extreme bikers sun glasses on I’d made a mistake, but all was soon rectified, she was unsure where’s she was and we told her she was on the right path to get to where she wanted and gave here some directions pointing out some landmarks on the way, a quick thank you and she was on her way.
Now we were on our way passing Pilkington tile factory on the right that looked like it had closed down, something that Graham remarked on as we passed by. Shortly we arrived at the viaduct over the river leading to Waterdale meadows and Philips park here we saw the structure we use as our header photo 13 arches railway viaduct, a truly splendid piece of Victorian building. It was now time for us to set off back, but rather than just retrace our steps we turned left and up the hill towards the motorway bridge which leads to the outward trail, the old railway line Tay ran over 13 arches. We followed this route until we dropped back down to the path leading to Red Rock lane. Unbelievably the path here was still very wet and there was a number of large puddles, even after all the dry weather we had had recently. Passing Giants seat garden centre we again passed the sewage works and up crossing the river over the bridge facing the Roma restaurant.
We decided to return a different route than wenst we came and rode over to Prestolee rejoining the path at the end of Seddon lane which led us upto the pack horse bridge over the river and up to the canal and then upwards to Meccano Bridge and then back to Graham’s to pick up my car. We will be away for our summer holidays now, but no doubt while we’re away we will be planning our next adventure.
