The Flashes and Pits - Thursday 5th May

Last night we had a lovely red sky with the pithead of the Astley Green Pit Museum silhouetted on it.

This morning we awoke to beautiful blue sky and warm sunshine so I went a walk up the canal before we left and as I crossed over to the other side I peered through the hedge and spotted this old rail track which was presumably used for the movement of coal.

We motored gently on towards the town of Leigh and stopped to fill with water at this newly concreted landing area adjacent to Butt’s Bridge No64. It is easily missed as the water point is in a toilet block which used to look abandoned. 

We stopped at Leigh Bridge to do some shopping for provisions as there is a Tesco Extra, Aldi and a Lidl as well as lots of shops in the high street. After lunch we headed off to the moor up overlooking Pennington Flash Country Park. It is a lovely area with dinghy’s sailing on the lake and lots of different birds as well as many of walkers cyclists and the like brought out by the warm sunny weather.

I walked a little further up the canal to Plank Lane lift bridge which was just being commissioned when we were here 4 years ago. A large new housing estate is now being built near the bridge and I was told that it will eventually extend to the land overlooking the Flash. The houses all seem to have solar panels built into their roof. The Marina was in water 4 years ago but it still is not open. It should have opened last year but the notice now says 2016? It will be overlooked by 3 story apartments which have yet to be built. The site was originally the Bickershaw Colliery whose first pit was sunk in1877 and its network of caverns stretched for miles under ground to link several other collieries. It ceased working in 1992 and left over 200 hectares of waste and spoil but this has now been developed into nature reserves and a 650  house neighbourhood with several commercial buildings and the Marina will have 40 berths.