13th August 2026
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Amazingly the hot weather conditions continued and we were in yet another heatwave with temperatures set to peak at around 35 degrees C (95F) in the UK today. This wasn’t going to stop our adventure this evening but I did decide to make a few changes to my original plan due to the extreme heat and shorten the route quite considerably. Nevertheless I hoped that it would still be a good one. Before I set off my lovely wife Peggy Lou had filled my water bottle full of ice so I could hopefully have nice cold water on our adventure.
Just I was about to set off I got a phone call from Val , Graham had mislaid his phone and was in full panic mode looking for it and was concerned about me not being able to let him know that I’d set off. Luckily moments later I got a message from him Found It
The Meccano bridge was once again to be our rendezvous point for this evening . After I arrived we had a quick chat and had a quick look at the progress of the work on the canal project . The main change was the shuttering work around the bull nose of the bridge and more ground work at the breach. I explained to Graham about our adventure for this evening and that I’d shortened it due to the extreme weather and hoped it didn’t deter from our enjoyment.
We headed off down the tow path towards Radcliffe enjoying the lovely evening sunshine. The canal along here is still in water and we spotted a couple of swans enjoying a swim .
A little further along we came upon a large group of ducks sat on the towpath. As I stopped to take a photo Graham went into what I can only call Duck mode. Talking in first person as though he was a duck , it went something like this:
“ well are we getting in the water, it’ll cool us down “ ,
“ I’m cool enough just look at me .”
Then one of the ducks jumped into the canal :
“ come on in guys it’s lovely, come on don’t be shy, aww come on let’s have a swim”
“no we’re gonna stay on towpath its too hot can’t be bothered”
“aww come on I’m in now , ahh well please yourselves I’m off for a swim“
We set off along the canal path leaving Graham’s ducks to their own devices. No sooner had we left them we came upon a family of swans resting in the shade under one of the bridges.
It was along this stretch of canal Graham informed me that the vast swathe of farmland had been sold for the building of a huge housing development. We thought about it and how sad it would be to see the green space disappear but we soon realised that where we both live used to be farmland, so I suppose it’s just progress.
We arrived at the termination of the Canal near the centre of Bury here we paused for a while to catch your breath and also take hydration. I grabbed my water bottle in anticipation of the ice cold water Peggy Lou I prepared for me , but sadly it was already now just warm water due to the high temperatures. We chatted about our weekends and Graham told me that he had really enjoyed his visit to York , he said it was even better than Dublin. I explained to him that Dublin is the biggest city in the world. He looked tat me puzzled and said ” surely somewhere like New York is bigger than………”, and then the penny dropped. Yes I’d caught him with my Dublin joke, its the biggest city because Dublin is always doublin (DOUBLING).
The conversation then changed to Graham’s friend at the AA, Rodney, who unfortunately had had a accident involving a hybrid car whilst carrying out an inspection. He’d made a schoolboy error and the car had jolted forward smashing into a wall, fortunately no one was hurt only Rodney’s pride. He continued to inform me that Rodney is now infamous in AA circles and a memo has even been sent out advising staff to be wary of this issue even siting Rodney’s incident as an example. Just as we were about to set of Graham decided to explain to me about the meaning of infamous, “its from the word infamy , you know think they’ve got it in for me” as he chuckled away, obviously very pleased with himself.
We set off over the river Irwell via the old pack horse bridge. Due to the recent long spell of very dry weather the river was at its lowest level we’d ever seen. The foundations of the bridge were clearly visible because the water was so low. Graham asked ” are there any fish in the river ?” I replied ” yes of course there are” but he didn’t believe me, so I Googled it. The answer was yes there are lots of fish in the river Irwell but Graham’s reply was , ” well, I can’t see any in the water so Google must be wrong ” , how could I argue with that.
Our first point of interest this evening was the storage yard for the East Lancashire Heritage Railway line but unfortunately there wasn’t much to see as the rollingstock here hadn’t changed much since our visit a while back. We turned around and headed towards our next point which was something we seen many times, an area of water just off the Daisyfield Greenway at Bury but we’d no idea what it was. As we rode along we came to what we thought was a fork in the road, but it turned out to be just a spoon so we carried straight on.
Our route took us over the Wellington street viaduct it was here Gary spotted a caravan and motorhome down below, in what looked like some kind of camp made up of tarpaulins and wooden pallets. Upon pointing this out, we both looked down and it did indeed look like someone was living there. Graham questioned whether they could be a zombie camp . We didn’t wait to find out.
The path we first found that led down to the water was down some very steep steps so we tried to find another route but this was turned out to be exactly the same ,so as Extreme Bikers we plunged straight down and headed right once at the bottom. The little path skirted around a tall metal fence at the side of the water. It turned out actually to be a lovely Carp fishery that we didn’t even know existed.
We continued our way back around and backup onto the Daisyfield Greenway and back along the Bolton Bury cycle path. It was here we spotted a couple of unusual large stone structures with holes in them just sat there in the middle of the field they didn’t appear to be fence posts because the holes didn’t line up, so they’re a bit of an anomaly at the moment. A little further down the path we we came upon what Graham assumed were a couple of gay men walking their dogs. His only assumption for this was they were wearing vest tops and were holding hands. He then suggested ” we should put on vest tops when we’re on our next adventure ” , “I doubt that very much” I replied. I then quizzed him on whether they may have thought that we were just a couple of gay blokes riding bikes. He immediately responded ” of course not we’re Extreme Bikers.!” in his deepest macho voice.
We leisurely cycled along the Bradley Fold cycle way in until we came to its end at the Queen‘s pub in Bradley fold. The hot weather was tempting us for a refreshing beverage, but neither of us particularly like this pub ,then Graham had an idea, ”the Sparking Clog is only five minutes away.”, “ brilliant idea “ I replied , so off we set with taste of an ice cold beer in our mouths. Five minutes later we were at the pub. The outside seating area was understandably very busy but Graham managed to find a table, although be it full of empty glasses and bottles, this annoyed Graham with him commenting “ can’t understand why they’ve not collected the glasses , not good this pal looks like a right dump” I had to agree with him on that, it wasn’t a good look. Unfortunately it got worse there was only one person serving behind the bar and it took over 10 minutes to get our refreshing beverages. When I came out Graham was adding up the number of empty glasses and bottles on the tables , “ they’re making a fortune here pal averaging it out at £4 pint thats…….” I stopped him dead in his tracks, I showed him my receipt on my phone, 2 pints of Estrella £13.80, “ bloody hell that’s a ripoff, bleeding daylight robbery “ . Hence to say we didn’t have a second.
On brighter note I casually informed Graham of the result of our poll from last weeks adventure “In Memory Of Vinnie” about whether it was an alpaca or a llama. Well the result was exactly 50/50 so still we are no wiser. But then we were in fits of laughter, we both admitted that we’d voted numerous times and had probably been the only ones actually who’d voted . After calming down and recovering from the shock of the price of our refreshing beverages we continued our chat. Graham excitedly informed me that a long term freind of his, Ian Ashworth had recently gotten in touch and had told him how he is an avid reader of our blogs and looks forward with great excitement to them each week. In addition to this Paul Curren who is also another avid reader had met Val and enquired whether Graham was in fact her husband. When she replied “ oh yes for my sins “ he asked her to pass on his compliments on to us on our brilliant adventures that he loves to read about each week .
Feeling very proud and now with rather large heads we set off home , Graham headed to Little Lever as I set off in the opposite direction to Darcy Lever, we wondered who would be home first as they are similar distances to our homes, in fact our messages ” I’m home my bestie” came through within seconds of each other. So yet another 50-50. But I think I saw the best sunset.
