24th May 2018
Journey Length 17.9ml
Click Here For Route Via Ride with GPS
We had recently ventured towards Clifton and on the way back found part of the old towpath of the canal that ran behind the Horse Shoe pub in Ringley. We wanted to further explore this area. Whilst looking at this area on Google maps I took a look further afield and I and noticed an area called Silverdale Park near Pendlebury. This was somewhere I hadn’t noticed before, this I thought, would be a nice area to explore.
Meeting Graham at he base of Nob End locks I told him of my plans for tonight. Now the route would cover a distance of nearly 17 miles even without any deviations, which doesn’t seem far but considering it was nearly all of off road track, it caused a little problem with time and distance. Never the less we set off at quite a leisurely pace not knowing what to expect when we got there.
We had a precise route planned but soon after exploring the path behind the Horse Shoe pub from last week (that didn’t really materialize into anything) we soon found ourselves near Giant Seats garden centre where Graham spotted a small path to our right, so we deviated from our route and followed the path just missing a bloke jogging, due to us as taking note of the DANGER DEEP WATER sign. The path led us along the river. We were riding through swarms of midges by the pound, there were thousands of the bleeding things every 10m or so. This brought us out at the Clifton aqueduct near Philips Park. As we rode around we accidentally missed a couple of turnings but soon we emerged at the bridge over the river. Straight on was to be our direction for tonight, up the hill towards Lumms Ln, but firstly we had to go through the “Tunnel of Darkness”, a place we had seen on a previous adventure, where Graham remarked “ that looks spooky mate” I nodded in agreement. On this occasion though we HAD to go through it. We stopped and assessed our situation, plucked up courage and went for it.
Once through the tunnel we rode up towards Lumms Ln and were soon at an entrance to Silverdale park. It was only a narrow path that ran alongside Viridor recycling centre. As we started to ride up the path I stopped, there were 2 shopping trolleys just dumped at one side, I remarked “It’s a dump round here pal” first joke of the night, Graham just shrugged his shoulders.
The path led us to an open area, but it didn’t look like there were any paths leading away, so we turned right and soon picked up a dirt path which then joined to a tarmacadam path. Not knowing where we were we turned right just to suck it and see. Now earlier on in the day I had looked on Google maps and I had noticed what looked like some kind of circular feature towards the middle of the park with the intention of looking for it.
Google maps didn’t give a true representation of the park, it was on a hill. Our path went up a steep hill to a bend round it and then up, another bend and up again, on and on, we thought it would never end, but eventually at the top all our effort was rewarded, the view over Manchester was fantastic. After our ordeal we sat on a bench looking at the view, Graham was trying to locate our route into the park, he noticed we had passed a pylon “that’s where we came in next to that pylon” a moments pause “or it could be that one, or anyone of those other 5 pylons urrm”. Ahh well thankfully he’s not in charge of navigation.
Well rested we set off to try and locate the circular feature I had seen earlier on Google maps, this was to no avail there were paths going off in every direction, wrong turn dead end no sign of it so we decided to retrace our path and head down the hill. Nearly at the base of he hill we stopped, I checked the map, we had now gone in the totally wrong direction actually heading homeward. Not fancying the climb back up,we would leave it to another day, so we headed home. After a while I noticed that my extreme biking glasses had fallen of the handle bars, damn not again (The Lost Glasses 6th July 2017). Graham insisted we go back to look for them, just as we were giving up miraculously I found them on the floor in the Tunnel of Darkness.
Now back over the river we entered Drinkwater park but once again we were unsure which path led where, we turned to the left passing the lovely small lake, very picturesque indeed. The paths went off in tangents here and so did we. We were soon in virgin territory, turning around to Graham “ have you ever had that feeling you don’t know where you are ?” yes “ he replied “ right now in fact” both of us now chuckling away.
We saw a sign for National Cycle Network 6 so we followed it but soon we were unsure of our bearings, then it was pylon to the rescue. We had come to the pylon being repaired that we passed the previous week, now we were on the right path which was still full of midges , I think they were waiting for us. It brought us out back at Giants Seats where we had started, here we paused and simultaneously came out with “well that path seemed a lot bloody longer on the way back”.
We were back at Nob End in no time where Graham spotted something, “its that damn viscous dog from last week, at least its on a lead this time” .The dog with its owner passed by with no incident at all , the woman just saying “hello”, recognizing us from the previous week. Along the canal I managed to capture the sunset photo we unfortunately missed last week due to technical issues. More technical problems followed. Peggy Lou was out in Manchester at the Bryan Adams concert, so I was fending for myself, I was trying to order an online takeaway with little success. Many minutes past by with Graham becoming more impatient but with food successfully ordered we parted company until next time “don’t forget to text” I hear as I ride off, top bloke my mate Graham !
That though wasn’t the end, when I got home I checked our route on my phone and frustratingly saw that at one point we were only a matter of metres away from the circular anomaly we had been looking for, flipping heck, damn and blast. I immediately sent the photo to Graham “Bloody hell fire” was the message returned.
