4th July 2018
Journey Length 12.1ml
Click Here For Route Via Ride with GPS
The heatwave continues, now into its 5th week, it has remained hot and sunny now for what seems like ages . Our regular readers will know Thursday night is adventure night but for this week only we’ve brought it forward a day to enable us to catch up on Thursday with our good friend farmer Giles. Since our last adventure on 6th June both Graham and myself have been away on our summer holidays, Graham and Val jetted off to Corfu and myself Peggy Lou and Lucie (pet Jack Russel) went off down to the Cheddar Gorge in Somerset in our caravan Mabel for a thoroughly relaxing time.
Tonight was going to be a hot one after receiving a “yes” reply from Graham to my text “are you up for a little one tonight” I came up with a plan. Meeting Graham at the Meccano bridge we set off along the canal towpath towards Bury, our destination was to be Elton reservoir firstly locating a smaller reservoir, Withins reservoir. Now I remembered from last time the path had been resurfaced with a hard sandy top layer, unfortunately due to the length of the very dry spell we had enjoyed the surface was very dusty which made our progress slightly uncomfortable.
As we progressed along the canal we noticed the drop in the water level of the canal , which was considerably lower than either of us could remember. We rode along quite merrily until I stopped to check on our map to see if we had missed the turn off we needed. As I explained this to Graham he correctly pointed out we weren’t even on the far side of Water St at Radcliffe yet so we couldn’t have possibly missed our turning. Ooops ,I’ll blame it on the heat.
We arrived at Water St and following Grahams advice ( he frequently rides this way to work) we rode down to the traffic lights to cross over, even extreme bikers have to be sensible sometimes. Once over the road I noticed a floral display using an old canal barge as a feature, so I stopped to take a photo whilst Graham ploughed on ahead. I caught up with him on the canal towpath where Graham pointed out a number of wild life he had spotted whilst waiting , “swans and ducks” he said. Then Graham shouted out “ and there’s a heron” I looked round but couldn’t spot it, until he pointed out it was actually a garden ornament on the opposite towpath, oh what a comedian.
Once we arrived at the turn off we required, we turned left up over the canal, myself asking Graham “ have we been up here before ?” , “ don’t think so pal” he replied. We continued along and it looked like we were coming to a dead end until we spotted a couple walking their dog, “ excuse me “ Graham said “ can we get out through this way” ?” A little confused they relied “yes I suppose so” looking at us a little strangely. We soon found out why. The path soon petered out into nothing more than a strip of dirt and trampled down grass, “ not a well used path mate “ Graham stated. Undeterred we pressed on regardless, at times having to dismount and push our bikes but the hard work was soon worth it as we came to Withins reservoir. As we stopped admiring the view, Graham softly said ” pal look over there” it was a young deer just stood there looking straight at us, a terrific sight, but just as I was going to take a picture it scurried off across the field. This wasn’t the end of our challenging adventure though, in fact things got even worse , the path ducked and dived everywhere and eventually completely disappeared through a field, at this point we considered making a U turn, but that wouldn’t be Extreme Biking would it?
This wasn’t the end of our challenging adventure though, in fact things got even worse , the path ducked and dived everywhere and eventually completely disappeared through a field, at this point we considered making a U turn, but that wouldn’t be Extreme Biking would it?.
Now we were pushing our bikes through cow pat after cow pat up through the field “ there must have been cows in here pal “ Graham stating the obvious yet again.
We came to a gate out of the field and wbet along a small road and soon emerged in the middle of a farmyard, with nowhere else to go but right through it so that’s what we did, to the bemusement of a couple of people in the yard. Luckily we came to a road and after consulting our map we turned right along the road towards Elton reservoir but not until we came upon an unusual sight in this weather ,a large puddle in the middle of the road, it was possibly a water pipe leaking but never the less a little strange . Next we took what we thought was a short cut but as usual for us we ended at a dead end so back tracking to the road was our only real option.
We soon reached Elton reservoir where we took a break. The heat was exhausting so we sat on a wall overlooking the water and chatted about our holidays, when we noticed the yachts on the water were actually getting ready for a race. The tannoy sounded ” the 5 minute warning will sound in approximately 20 seconds “, a puzzled look on both our faces. We continued to chat enjoying the warm evening sun as we watched the start of the race.
Not being able to watch all the race we set off around the reservoir and up to Bolton Rd where we turned left back towards Bolton. Now our intended route back was to take a look at a couple of places down Unsworth St, but due to our inactivity over the past couple of weeks and the heat we postponed this until another week, so we decided to head home, so that’s just what we did. Texting one another when we were home.
