4th July 2019
Journey Length 18.0ml
Click Here For Route Via Ride with GPS
Meeting Graham at the old Jag garage and after giving him his present of his new sunglasses we set off. Our aim this evening was to accomplish our mission from last week, an exploration of Worsley hall that had been demolished shortly after WW1.
We retraced our route from last week and we soon arrived at the point of last week’s catastrophic puncture. Safely past this we continued through Worsley woods, passing an isolated cottage, which looked very nice, but we both commented that it was a bit too isolated and probably eerie in winter. Shortly after we arrived at a jetty into a small lake, a lovely spot, with an abundance of wildlife.
We took a path through the woods until we came upon a sign ” Worsley Delph”. We stopped and I asked Graham “do you know what a Delph is”, after a period of silence he replied “errm is like a, well a bit, of like, a valley kind of thing”. This is where “OK GOOGLE WHAT IS A ….?” comes into its own. So none the wiser we set off to find out what it was. Indeed it did drop down with a little brook running through, “see it is a valley type place” Graham stated, and I admit I had to agree with him. Coming out of the Delph Graham was struggling a little pushing his bike up the hills , this is only due to the fact he is soldiering on with a bad back.
We soon we arrived at Worsley Old Court House, here we should have turned right but due to vast amount of traffic we had to go left to cross over the road further along. We stopped on the bridge to view the Bridgewater canal, this is when Graham spotted the crane on the towpath below. It looked very similar to the steam crane on the Bury Bolton canal, so we had no choice but to investigate. This involved navigating some very steep steps down to the canal, as extreme bikers we took it in our stride . It actually turned out to be a hand operated one that appeared to still be in use by the certificates etc that were attached to it.
Now we were on the canal we decided to follow it for a while to see what we could discover, all the while heading away from our objective. We continued down the towpath for a while looking for a bridge across, without avail. Shortly we came upon a group of woman so I politely asked if there was a bridge further down, they informed us that there was a bridge in about 1.5ml at the pub, so we decided to carry on . As we cycled on I said to Graham that “ this is a nice cycle path” , “yeah” he said “better than them bad psychopaths ,he he he “. That wasn’t the last of his jokes. A little way down the towpath we came upon some sculptures – All pioneers of the Bridgewater Canal: Francis Egerton; James Brindley; John Gilbert , I commented that I liked John Gilbert, he’s funny, the realizing obviously I meant Rhod Gilbert. We continued along the canal and Graham spotted that all the grass at the side of the canal was cut and well kept. Now came his second blast of humour, “ bloody hell their gardener must have a hell of a long extension lead for his lawn mower”, oh how we chuckled at that one
Soon we were at the Mooring pub in Boothstown and the bridge, enabling us to get onto Leigh Rd. The road was extremely busy and we chose to cycle on the footpath, not our usual ploy but circumstances dictated it. Crossing over the road proved even more hazardous, the road here has changed considerably, with a new junction with traffic signals near where the garden centre used to be. Soon we were at our destination, Worsley Hall where i was hoping to show Graham the Anti Aircraft Operations Room in its grounds. We managed to successfully gain entry and followed a bit of a path towards where I believed the bunker was. I just managed to spot it through the undergrowth, it was almost obliterated by nature, but we managed to get down and have a look. Graham was suitably impressed , so I felt I had done my job.
A concrete bunker was constructed by the War Office in 1951 as an Anti Aircraft Operations Room (AAOR). In 1958 the Bunker became redundant and was used by the Royal Navy as a food store until the early 1960s. In 1961 the Bunker was purchased by Salford Corporation and used as a joint area control centre with Lancashire County Council. However, after the
disbanding of the Civil Defence Corps in 1968 the building was handed over to the Greater Manchester Fire Service and in the early 1990s it was sold to a local gun club and used as a shooting range until 1998. The building was empty at the time of the current survey and due to extensive vandalism both entrances have now been blocked.
(Courtesy of Salford University)
We now set off on our journey home, this would take us up alongside Worsley Park Golf Club, but as usual things didn’t go according to plan and we actually found ourselves cycling right through the middle of the Golf course, I think to the annoyance of some golfers. We eventually managed to find our way off the golf course before we managed to upset too many people and we headed up Newearth Rd aiming to find the Roe Green Loopline we had earlier come down. I was navigating in front and had to keep stopping to get my bearings, Graham was patient with me as I tried to navigate us home, I was continuing along the road when Graham shouted out behind me “ Eh!! is this what we’re looking for? ” as he pointed to a sign Level Route To Loopline. Thank god for a good wingman.
It was now all uphill from here, but it is only a steady incline and we made excellent progress and were soon back in Farnworth following our original route. We were now both beginning to feel the effects of our adventure and we’re glad to be insight of home. We parted company at Apollo motors , not forgetting to inform each other when we arrived home. I text Graham “ home mate good ride that” his reply “ me too, feeling it now”. Hopefully we will both have recovered for next week.
