10th August 2023
A usual contact with Graham to arrange our adventure this week proved a little different. We’d been contacted by a follower of ours , Walter, who asked if we would be interested in going over Chorley way on one of our adventures. He’d recently bought a bike and was looking to explore. Obviously we jumped at the chance, it was a new area to explore and would be helping someone out as well. He kindly arranged to pick us both up which helped greatly. Graham duly arrived at mine unfortunately complete with a puncture. A hasty repair was carried out and we loaded the bikes into Walter’s van.
Walter was eager to join us but being a rather shy chap asked if we wouldn’t mind not taking his picture, not a problem at all. I’d previously planned an area up near Astley park for our adventure but sadly the traffic wasn’t kind to us and with Graham’s puncture it meant we’d ran out of time, so we decided to go along the Leeds & Liverpool canal instead, this was a totally blind adventure no plan no nothing so hopefully Walter would enjoy it.
We unloaded the bikes and Graham was ecstatic ” Its still up !!” he exclaimed, relating to the puncture he had hastily repaired. We picked the canal up from the point near the Lock & Quay pub and headed south along the towpath towards Adlington. On the opposite bank a short way down were some relativity new houses which directly looked onto the canal, a nice place to live no doubt. No sooner had we passed these we had an issue, Walters bike had a problem, the seat needed adjustment so we stopped and Graham quickly had it sorted and we were on our way again.
It was a hot sunny summer evening . We rode down the canal with myself on point with Walter behind , followed by Graham. We took a steady pace and I was enjoying the ride, until an flying insect of some description flew straight into my mouth, it hit the back of my mouth like a missile , as I tried to spit it out a pain developed on the roof of my mouth, ”Bloody hell, something just flew in my mouth “ I shouted “bloody hurts an all” . A quick swig of water I hoped would get rid of whatever it was but sadly the pain remained for the rest of the evening, but being an extreme biker I just carried on and we were soon on our way again.
The canal is navigable with lots of boats of all descriptions moored along its banks of which many are live on boats. The towpath is gravel and is easy to ride along and we made good progress, although not really knowing where we were headed. A short way along the path we spotted a memorial at the side of the path near a bridge it obviously was well maintained. The name on the plaque was Kieran Dearden, but there was no other information just a nice inscription. Another 1/2 mile or so onwards I spotted the remains of an excavator on the opposite bank. Whilst taking a photo Walter spotted an old Shell fuel next to it hidden in the bushes. Graham explained to us that things like that are now quite valuable , as he quoted that he’d seem them on Bangers & Cash the TV programme. A quick look around eBay (not me) proved he was right they range from £200 up to £1600 each, well done Graham
Walter enjoyed the adventure but was surprised at how many times we actually stop and looked at things and took photos. It was at one of these instances Graham had spotted a sign for the Adlington Circular Walk. At first glance it showed a route around Adlington from where we were. Graham suggested we took the route . I examined it a little closer and advised him that it might take us through places where we wouldn’t get our bikes through, but he was adamant he wanted to try, maybe he wanted to impress Walter a little and make it more extreme. We only followed the route for a few hundred yards until Graham admitted defeat, we were on a road which headed back the way we had come. He wasn’t best pleased as he grumbled to himself as we rejoined the canal towpath.
We now came to an area on the canal banked by some lovely properties with various boats moored alongside, some were lovely looking craft others though looked like they were ready for the scrapyard. One in particular caught Graham’s eye and he said it looked like something out of the Second World War. It did indeed look like it too. As we contemplated what it could be, a train of ducks swam passed like they were playing follow my leader. We also went steadily on our way like follow my leader as we continued our adventure . As we rode along I could hear Graham telling Walter some of the things we got up to on our adventures, which included some that hadnt been mentioned in our Blogs. One particular incident was were Graham accused me of Brake Checking him once ( the act of braking hard in front of someone for no reason) , which I denied, I decided I would keep this in mind.
At one of our stop off’s I had a quick look at where we were and noticed a track we could take off the canal. Once I’d located a route to the path we headed on down but not before a spring loaded gate slammed shut as Graham tried to follow me through, which amused Walter greatly. The path turned out to be part of Route 55 cycle way ( The Cycle Route runs from Iron bridge to Preston via Cheshire and Greater Manchester). We only followed a short section of the route, part way down I glanced at what looked like a gate to a path on our right. I told Walter to have a look, he said it didn’t look like much of a path , but I said we would explore it anyway, This was now real Extreme Biking. I let Walter lead the way but unfortunately I had to tell him to slow down a couple of times, I think he got a little excited up front. Soon we rejoined the cycle way, it was not much more than a very muddy path and I heard Walter say “ Think I picked the wrong colour “ as I turned round to see his light blue shorts weren’t light blue any more as he followed me through the mud.
Shortly afterwards we emerged into a car park at Red Rock Ln. Out of the car park we turned left back up towards the canal and passed a sorry sight, yet another closed down pub, the former Bridge 63. Here we could have rejoined the canal but I had decided we’d cross the road over the bridge and head down towards Wigan Golf club. As we waited to cross the road I joked with Graham I asked why he thought the pub was called Bridge 63, he just sighed as he pointed to the bridge over the canal No63. Walter was now getting the full Graham & Ebay experience.
We continued to chat as we rode through Wigan Golf Club as I edged Graham nearer and nearer to the bushes as I tried to force him to crash into them, before he realised what I was doing , once he realised he shouted “ idiot what are you doing! “ “ oh nothing “ I replied in an innocent sounding voice. Walter turned to us both “you two really are like a couple of kids on a special day out” he said shaking his head . We now passed a huge tree that was growing right on the edge of a cliff, Graham and myself were amazed but Walter again seemed a little bemused by our interest.
Back on the canal now we headed back to our starting point around 7 miles away . Now Graham and myself have had a few adventures were cows have featured and this was another one. There were some cows in the canal obviously enjoying the water on such a hot day. I told Walter that these were in fact Water Cows , which he didn’t believe. I even asked him to ask some people who passed by, but sadly for us he declined. I often pointed out different things to Walter as we rode along and then like an echo I heard Graham repeat it, obviously with his poor hearing he wasn’t able to hear me , it caused quite a bit of amusement for Walter and myself. Sometimes we just heard him mumbling away to himself as we rode along.
The array of craft on the canal was astounding, it ranged from Wide-beam live on boats to little motorboats . The conversation came around to ,if we owned one what would we have. There were pros and cons with them all but Graham out did us . He said that he wouldn’t have a boat with the bar stools on the back, he’d definitely fall in after a few beers. I pointed out these were for use when driving the boat not for sitting around getting drunk.
As we waited for some people to pass underneath a bridge in front of us Graham said “ I bet they leak a lot tho , them boats “. Now I follow a couple of people on YouTube who live on narrow boats so I pointed out to him that they were actually solid steel hulls with a 10mm or so base plate and roughly 6mm sides and are full of bricks in the bottom for ballast. Himself and Walter looked at me in puzzlement, “ You just got that out of thin air haven’t you pal” Graham and Walter said sarcastically, obviously not believing me so here it is proof I wasn’t talking out of my bottom:-
We were almost back at the Lock & Quay now, on a stretch of gravel tow path, I turned to Walter behind me and said, “Pull along side of me and on the count of 3 we’ll brake check Graham“. This we did , Graham shouted at us ” Wooowh you idiots , bet you think that’s funny”, he called out, well actually yes we did. Now back at the Lock & Quay and at the end of our adventure Walter thanked us for a great evenings adventure. We looked over the bridge to what was ” Botany Bay “ in the distance and suggested maybe we could return again and explore that end of the canal. It would certainly be an option for the future.
