Botany Bay, March 14th


Walk leader:- Sue Lomax

No on walk:- 29 plus 3 dogs

Distance:- 11 miles

Weather:- Cloudy at first then a bright sunny afternoon. Breezy.

 

Due to all the mud the group has encountered over the last few walks I made a few adjustments to today’s walk in a bid to limit the amount we had to wade through.  With this in mind we left Botany Bay and followed the tow path for a very short distance to the Lock and Quay pub.  It was then a walk along Knowley Brow and Heapey Road towards the fishing lodges.  Following the path along the lodges as far as Causeway Farm we then had another short spell on the tarmac as far as the old railway pub (now a private house). This pub was situated over the road from the old railway station at Heapey when the Chorley to Blackburn railway line was in operation.  The old railway station is now very nice house and dog kennels

We took the track along to Logwood Mill passing the recently restored buildings at Wheelton House Farm. We were lucky to have Rita on our walk and she showed us into the back garden of her house at Logwood Mill and we could see old mill wheel pit and mill race. A reminder of the time when the whole area was full of mills.

 A nice muddy stretch followed (well I didn’t want people to feel they were missing out) and we walked up to join the footpath which then drops down past Brinscall Hall farm.

It was then back to “terra firma” as we went past the lodge at Brinscall and then used the path which follows the line of the old railway from Brinscall to Withnell. From the footpath opposite Norcross Farm we set off to Withnell Moor where we stopped for lunch making good use of an old broken wall for seating.  Thankfully the weather was kind and it was at this point the sun began to make an appearance although it was still rather breezy.  A bonus was the good views.

Continuing across the moor we reached Well Lane. A pleasant walk down through Wheelton Plantation and we arrived at the Goit which we followed past White Coppice to the Watermans Cottage at the end of Anglezarke.  Another muddy field path took us up towards the Nab and from here it was straight down the other side via another squelchy field to Bagganly Lane and back to the cars arriving at 14.45.

Thank you to everyone who joined me.  I think we all enjoyed it and we managed to get away with reasonably clean boots!

 To see who was on the walk please press below

 To view the other photos please press Here then the first photo followed by clicking on the arrow on the right hand side