24th August 2017

Journey Length  8.6ml

Click Here For Route Via Ride with GPS

After getting home from a hard days work I had little time to plan our evenings adventure but as usual we were going somewhere even if we didn’t know where. I had text Graham earlier and arranged to meet at a midway point to plan our adventure. Our meeting point was to be the weir in Moses gate country park but as I had got delayed we met up at the ponds, obviously Graham had read my mind on which way I would come.

Now with no fixed idea of where we wanted to go we thought we would go and have a look at the chaos caused by the massive leak from a break in a mains water pipe at the bridge over the railway at Moses gate. We rode up through the subway under St. Peter’s way and up Hall Lane to see what we could see, but what we could see was nothing, so turn around we did and rode down Devon street to cross the railway via the very narrow old footbridge and heading through the housing estate to the site of the old Farnworth grammar school, which was  Graham’s old school but is now sadly just housing .Now we went right and headed towards Moses Gate to get a better view of the damage caused by the burst water main and what a mess it is. After a quick scout round for a better view we stopped at the railway station to discuss where next. Whilst there I noticed a mobile phone mast, looking up in commented to Graham “Bleeding can’t get a signal round here pal “; that unfortunately for Graham set the tone for the evening.

“When was the last time you went to Doe Hey ?” I asked, “bleedin ages ago mate ” Graham replied, so that was it of to Doe Hey (pronounced “doh hay”).  Now the play on words began ” we going the right Doe Hey” , ” you sure you know the Doe Hey” ,”never been this Doe Hey before ” etc etc oh how we laughed. Cycling down the main road isn’t really our cup of tea as you know, so as we passed the entrance to St Michael’s church I swung a quick left leaving the road after passing it many times in the car it was the first actual time I’d been there. Following the path we came upon a lovely little church surrounded by trees with a small graveyard, as Graham was quite a bit further up the path I shouted to him “pal stop there, do you know you’re in the dead centre now” with a little chuckle to myself. We decided to have a look around the gravestones as I led us along the path it ended , as I turned around I said to Graham “no point in coming up here mate it’s a dead end ha ha  ” , Graham just groaned.

Graham is not one for getting on his soap box but as he was reading some of the gravestones he remarked that this thing of us all living longer now is a load of crap, people were living into their 90s year’s ago, so  it’s all  just a con, blah blah blah. Rant over we headed to the top of the cemetery to see if there was a way out, which there was , Graham no doutfully thankful there was so he wouldn’t have to hear my “Dead end” joke again, so up some steps we went that led onto Green Lane.
Once on Green lane we headed up towards Boscobel road which leads down to Doe Hey here the road passes between the upper and lower reservoirs, stopping off to see if we could get in and investigate we asked a bloke walking around but we were told in no uncertain terms, “no its private property OK!!!!“, so thinking we better not try and get in we continued reminiscing about our past and reliving our childhood experiences. We came to Cawdor Ave where Graham had purchased his first house, so off we went to take a look what it was like now.

After quite a few decades since he was last there, the area had certainly deteriorated and was nothing like what either us remembered. Seeing Cawdor St mill (Bolton textile mill no. 2 ) in the distance we decided to go and have a look at the remaining mills around here, we passed Cawdor mill at the junction with Thynne St and up passed Egerton mill and onto Cobden mill, where as a kid my mum and dad used to go there shopping after if was converted to a soft furnishings store. The reservoir at the side is now a fishing lodge like many others in Farnworth.
Once again we thought about where we should go , we decided to head towards Farnworth park, a place as a kid I spent many a happy day playing in the summer months, oh what a disappointment there is hardly anything left of the park and as we rode past the base of the steps that led up to the now defunct play ground we we heckled by a group of girls “ let us av a go on your bikes, we wont pinch em onest “, needless to say we rode on. Now memories came flooding back of riding my bike along the paths around the park as a child many moons ago, so I couldn’t resist and we rode up and down the paths like kids reliving great childhood memories. We then stopped off to pay our respects at the war memorial which I must say is well maintained.
From here Graham suggested we went down to the vats to have a look round, so that’s what we did, stopping off at Farnworth rail station for a quick look , but nothing to see there.
Now as we rode down cemetery road Graham had a change of mind an that we would go down one of the paths that leads to Kearsley, when we got to the turning the comedy scene began, it went a bit like this:

Graham ” Going down there pal ?
Me “Looks a bit over grown ?”
Graham “Only at beginning”
Me “Probably end up pushing bike’s more”
Graham ” It might be OK”
Me “Canal coming was bad that’ll be worse”
Graham “Just say if you don’t want to go down there”
Me “Don’t want to go down there”

So off we went over the bridge on to the vats, a quick ride round the track made by the off road motorcycles over the years until we came across a path over grown with bushes that followed the path of the river, so as we had not done much extreme biking tonight off we went. Soon it became obvious that biking down here would be a challenge with all the thorn bushes on either side. As I rode down catching the thorn bushes all I could hear behind me was” ouch, ahh urgh, ouch ouch ahh ” as the bushes I was hitting were fighting back against Graham.

Leaving the vats we went onto the aqueduct over the river, contemplating how long it would be before it would have to be closed because it would be unsafe. this would be a real shame as it is one of the few aqueducts that are still in water.
As we rode up the hill we managed to get a photo for posterity of the aqueduct , once at the Meccano bridge we chatted about how we were looking forward to the upcoming wedding on Sunday of Peggy Lou’s son Philip to his beautiful wife to be Vicky. It was soon time to part company until next time and as I rode my lonely way home I was lifted by the sight of a single swan on the canal looking very majestic. Once home I did the obligatory text to Graham with the added mileage of our little jaunt “home now pal nearly 9 mile ” and got the reply “not bad”, so that was it for another adventure.