Last walk home from work of 2019

Well I wouldn’t say that I had put in a flurry of walks in 2019 but with the realisation that February and the amble were approaching rather quickly, the impetus was on me to do something.

November had seen me walking home from work twice in two weeks and it has become a tradition of mine to walk home on my last working day of the year, hence the title of this post! I’d been planning a route which would take me from Scarisbrick up to Churchtown, whilst avoiding romping through fields and thus keeping my feet dry. A number of routes eventually emerged that all shared one factor, they were a bit on the huge side, averaging around thirteen miles each! In time I opted to traverse Scarisbrick and take in the tiny village of Bescar, a first for me.

So I left work at around twelve p.m. and parambulated Ruff Lane, Mill Street crossed Wigan Road and Abbotsford, as is a staple for me recently. Then, once near Ormskirk town centre I headed down Railway Approach and onto Station Road, another staple, before crossing the notoriously unpredictable A59 at County Road via Yew Tree Road and ultimately onto Grimshaw Lane.

An unknown flock of birds orbits a field at Woodmoss Lane

By this time the clouds had morphed into a threatening shade of grey and although I did have an umbrella with me, I feared an imminent soaking! It was a hard decision to continue as opposed to go and catch a bus, but later one which I would be very pleased to have made. I passed the Kicking Donkey (an amazingly great name for a pub), and at this point decided that I would turn onto Moorfield Lane and head through Scarisbrick as opposed to staying with the longer route and yomping through Heaton’s Bridge. The price for this would be to effectively double back on myself in order to pick up Smithy Lane before joining Dam Wood Lane and on to take the illusive Bescar Lane. Even I am astounded at just how many “Lanes” are present in this area!

Photo of Bescar Lane Methodist church
Bescar, home of Bescar Lane Methodist church

From here it would be new walking territory for me up until Wood Moss Lane, which I had transited on a sunnier “Moss” walk in late spring. Bescar fits in with the key requirements of the rest of this enormous area colloquially known as “The Moss”, in that essentially, there’s nothing there. When contrasted with the rich and almost overstuffed views presented to hikers of the Lake District, this area, it would seem, has slender pickings with regards to the scenery!

It has to be noted that for the majority of this section I was walking upon single track roads, but as the sky was packed with a myriad of varying clouds this kept away the potential for fog, which offered a modest measure of security. Only a fool, even a well illuminated fool, would try this route any later in the day than three o’clock in Winter, though the prospect of a mist-shrouded crossing of this route does appeal to me.

I took the first turn-off on the left as this would then convey me back down towards much busier environs, an A-road no less at Kew / Meols Cop, the dividing line must be fairly obvious to those in the know but sadly, I am not in this elite group. the road did seem to have more corners than I remembered from September, but I thought this was just my memory playing tricks on me, the Christmas lights coming on almost in waves was a pleasent distraction. After the best side of half an hour I saw a sign which read “Snape Green”. The realisation hit me like a sledgehammer, I had turned-off too early and had not been on Pool Hey Lane at all. In essence I had strayed back a mile or two towards Ormskirk once more! Hence dear readers, I had again fallen victimn to the phenom which sooner or later afflicts all walkers, left-turnitis, the unconscious act of turning left before we need to do so.

Photo of Stickman and son
Love these two characters whom we’ve driven past for most of the year.

Ordinarily, this would fill me with a certain shame and aggravation, today I simply shrugged my shoulders safe in the consulation that I had originally wanted to do a much bigger walk anyway! I turned right on to Southport Road and crossed it. I was a little sad to see the gorgeous Dawn Redwood tree devoid of all its needles but this was alleviated by the spectacle of the enormous Weeping Willow, again leafless but with a lovely display of this years wood growth. The traffic noise was near deafening so accustomed had I grown to an almost absence of sound during my miles through Bescar and the Moss. I had feared that dusk would soon be upon me, but this was not the case as the light continued to hold on like it was a spring, not winter, evening. This severely reduced the impact of the Christmas lights turning on, next year I’ll endeavour to set off a little bit later!  Before long I was passing ‘The Stickies’. The owner of one of the houses on Southport Road is either really lonely or had a wonderful sense of humour as these two characters to the left of this text demonstrate. I had wanted to photograpth ‘The Stickies’ on a number of occasions when I walked past but for some reason always seemed to miss them. So somehow it seemed fated that I had this opportunity virtually shoved down my throat today!

It was a hard decision not to call in at McDonalds at Kew as I neared the junk-foodery! I figured I would be stuffing my face enough over the next ten days as it was and I wanted to get home to see Chris and Pepper. At Kew roundabout I opted to cross over the busy road and make my way home via a route which I knew to be much quieter, Foul Lane and Wennington Road.

Foul Lane is a one-off, a mystery, a maverick and enigma all rolled into one. This is a road which should be put to far better use than it currently is. For now it skirts around the side of B&Q, traverses a roundabout then transforms into a ghost/waste land. I don’t know what was once here, but it’s gone now! Of course there is still a rather delapidated “Park ‘n’ ride” and to be fair; it did look in use…I don’t know what those drivers would have done if this car park had been out of service – those three drivers, who could quite easily have parked at the front of the estate on the now much bigger and emptier car park. The reason for my apparent disdain is that Foul Lane terminates / is blocked off for no good reason whilst the bottlenecks at Meols Cop next to the commercial estate are the stuff of legends, bad legends! It’s madness! An entire new stream of traffic could be taken off the Norwood Road Stretch and diverted here and over towards Cobden Road and….there must be a reason for this state of affairs and if I knew it, I’d probably disagree. The pay-off for me is that whilst all of the central-west traffic attempts to squeeze its way along the Norwoods, my route was so quiet and calming. Admittedly, for the more rural-focussed among us there is not much to see, I crossed over Cobden Road and onto Wennington Road and into my kind of area, hundreds and hundreds of front gardens, and most of them postage-stamp sized!

I filtered my way from one block to another, all the time the sky was just not playing ball, darkness was not descending, it was getting close to four p.m. on the third shortest day of the year damnit, where was the dark? I’d been planning this walk to tie-in with my ill-fated “Winter Wonder Walks” but for that to happen, well the Christmas lights in people’s houses needed to be visible and they just were not. It was fast approaching four o’clock and my feet were getting quite hot by now so I decided not to delay my return by waiting for darkness to fall, especially as that would’ve looked all kinds of creepy!

I made my way to the Spar petrol station in order to top up on beer – alcohol free beer as dry January is just around the corner! I made it home for 15:55, three hours and fifty-five minutes after leaving work (or thereabouts). It was only later, at the beginning of January that I checked the distance walked of my route (my fitbit can be a bit optimistic) and was overjoyed to have my suspicions confirmed, 12.2 miles according to Google Maps > Measure Distance, what a result. This was the second furthest that I had walked all year (sharing the honours with the rather boring and extremely hot walk over Birkdale Cop, many months earlier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The total distance was an impressive 12.24 miles!