Hike # 11 : Canal Walk

During the summer of 2018 I took 2 months off work. It was supposed to be only one but circumstances took me to two.

The worry of no income for this amount of time did concern me, but in the end it all came out good, as in early September I managed to clinch a role that will take some time to come to fruition.

July 2018 was incredible and we were blessed with day after day of sunshine and warm weather. @bingbabe had taken to running a 5 mile route on the Leeds/Liverpool canal and suggested we walk the route so she could show me where she goes in case she gets murdered by some random psychopath and doesn't come home.

‘There’s lots of wierdos on this route and they are always men’, she tells me. ‘Sometimes I have to turn around just to avoid potential trouble’, she continues to educate me.

Running on the canal tow-path alone is not a very safe occupation for someone who is 4’10 in height, around 6.5 stones in weight and obviously not English by birth, but I cannot deter her from repeat visits.

The canal is never particularly clean. There’s old tyres, big planks of wood sticking out at odd angles and obvious contamination in the water than you can quite clearly see with the oily scum floating on the surface.

Yet, you see plenty of wildlife in the form of ducks and swans, some very aggressive. We casually followed the canal path out of Rishton to the bridge that has been built over the M65 motorway.

It’s quite a feat of engineering to reconstruct this ancient canal to flow over a bridge where once it just meandered through the countryside.

The canal would have been built in the 1770’s, and the motorway in the 1970’s so just how did they manage to build a bridge and redirect all water to go over it?

Parts of the buildings on the banks have seen some graffiti scrawled on them but I didn't see too much of it. Our walk was free from yobs, chavs and thugs too, they don't tend to get up early in the morning.

The bridge has trains running across it but looks a little worn out. I think they are stronger than they look.

These small brick ‘caves’ are coke ovens and were used to convert coal to coke in the early 1900's. I found a little info about them here. They look like they have seen better days.

It’s documented on the wikipedia site that the canal did suffer some damage during this war. There is some proof here with ‘1941’ (below) being engrained into the wall.

During this time England was being starved of food due to the ships being constantly sunk care of the German U-Boats, yet they still had some capital to rebuild a collapsed wall.

I suppose the canal flooding over a main road would not have been a pretty sight and entering houses even worse. We are very lucky not to have lived through such troubled times.

This ‘hike’ has turned into a bit of a history lesson. Sometimes I go rambling on. I took us around two hours to go around this circular track, and a great walk it was.

I am now starting to scrape the barrel of last summers’ hiking content until we venture out again. I have one or two left in the bag which will be coming up soon.