Self service breakfast at Travelodge made for an efficient early start - walking by 7:30 - I was marching
down one of Manchester's main thoroughfares with hundreds rushing to work well beyond the speed limit and interspersed with blue flashing ambulances and unmarked police cars..
Careful scrutiny of the OS map got me to the canal properly. Was it last year, Bowland climber snd I finished off our undone part of the Cheshire Ring Canal walk, and I seem to remember us having some difficulty around here.
During my four kms or so on the canal I must have met head on well over a hundred cyclists presumably commuting into Manchestre for work. Normally leisure cyclists give one a hello but that was less than one in twenty today - shows the difference in the mental state between work and leisure I reckon - perhaps a subject for an aspirant PhD?
Lanes enclosed by high hedges prevented any views, i was following perhaps the Pennine Trail which I certainly did further. At the underpass for the M60 ( SJ 784 936) I encountered the highlight of the day.. The underpass is around fifty yards long. It consisted, one hundred percent, wall to wall of slimy, black, five inch deep, liquid mud. It took me quarter of an hour, suction trapped step by suction trapped step step.That is one of the most disgusting experiences ever. Later on at an equestrian centre two very young horsey girls let me use their hose pipe. I stripped off shoes and socks and did my best to clean up. My originally brown trainers remained black, stained by that evil gunk. Later at my Air B and B I prevailed on my host Julie to wash the socks for me.
A bit further on, with Himalayan Balsam on both sides I encountered a sickening smell and I was on the verge of wretching, and gasping for clean air. That prevailed for a few hundred yards. Looking at the map I saw there was an adjacent sewage works.
I had made good time (for me) on easy walking and arrived at my excellent Air B and B at 4:30 after a long trod down the disused railway forming part of the Pennine Trail.
I am now eating at The Little Manor - a bit up market and my first blow-out of the trip. I may say more tomorrow, but time has run out.
From my Travelodge window
Mick always sees it as a challenge to get people who don't want to utter a greeting, to speak - although usually people on foot as cyclists are there and gone too quickly.
ReplyDeleteOn a similar tack, having long observed that people will spread out to fill the entire width of a path/track and that it always seems to be us that has to step off to let them by, whilst they squeeze in not a single inch, I'm currently conducting the occasional experiment in walking straight at people. Makes me feel incredibly rude every time, even if I am just reflecting the behaviour of those incoming.
I do exactly the same Gayle. I’ve started doing it on pavements as well.
DeleteI’m not sure who’s responsibility the underpass is but if you find out at some point I would send them an email with photo. Again, not a good plod through Manchester for you. I guess most people on there way to work are still half a sleep and on auto pilot.
ReplyDeleteWith the good weather, the sewage works would be humming. When I worked in Stretford and the wind was in our direction, it was awful. I know exactly how bad it would have been yesterday.
Hopefully your route improves as you head out of towns.
Gayle - chuckling as I do Costa coffee in the middle of a multitude of roundabouts, but another few hundred yards and I’ll Be back on footpaths. Your observations synch with my own.
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Alan R - maybe when I get back home I will follow that up. Too busy on the walk! Trying to do things on the iPhon/Pad is hard work compared with my bi Mac desktop at home.
Oh dear Conrad. What a shame we only got back yesterday. I have a regular bike ride along the Trans Pennine Trail that goes exactly where you should have been, and it’s a shame we weren’t around. The nice dry TPT route actually goes over a footbridge on bike route number 62, though from close inspection of the map I can see where you went wrong. You are the first person I know who has attempted that underpass, though JJ and I did once wrestle with another one further round the M60.
ReplyDeleteAm enjoying catching up. May be in touch.