I had been plotting to do this one for ages and with the blessing of a dry day I simply had to take the chance to do what turned out to be an epic walk.

I left work (eventually) at 12 and headed to the A570 / Saint Helen’s Road. From here the plan was to take the left turn onto Small Lane, to Bridge Street then over the Bridge and down to the Aughton Street. However, at the bridge on Aughton Street was some sort of roadworks / building project / IDK but I sure as hell wasn’t getting over that bridge so I had to take the left before it and onto Ravenscroft Avenue, veer right, then under a bridge before coming out on Dyers Lane and hitting Aughton Street further along than I had originally planned – but this only made the route more interesting, so a win!

Next was the arduous task of crossing the A59 – County Road and let me tell you this was not a quick dart across, nope, it was very busy, I think it took me around five minutes to get across. I had in mind to take one of the two alley-ways and only started to inwardly panic after five more minutes of walking but then the first one appeared on my left and rapidly transported me to Cottage Lane where I began the long walk alongside an increasingly narrowing lane. But first I had a little faunal treat in store:

An Ostrich came over to have a peek at who is passing their territory followed by either A: a juvenile ostrich or B: a Rhea. In the same field / enclosure, a few tens of metres away were a herd of deer! This was turning into the north-west’s version of Longleat, I wonder where the tigers and elephants were hanging out? Apparently this is now Gorse Hill Nature Reserve – who knew? The pleasant distraction over I carried on along Asmall Lane for what did feel like a long time until ultimately I came upon the turn-off where Asmall Lane heads south and then north-west towards the Saracen’s Head pub, whereas when I have done a similar walk I carried on the main road which becomes North Moor Lane. Both routes have a hump-back-bridge but without doubt the prettier one was on my route of today. The highway code advises us to walk in the direction of on-coming traffic when there are no footpaths  / paving. This is fine until one factors in that on bridges such as this the on-coming traffic cannot actually see you approaching them! This lunacy needs updating! I do wonder how many pedestrians each year are injured in situations like this and whether the government body responsible for the highway code knows about this anomaly?

 

I had wondered if I would be thirsty enough to be lured into the Saracen’s Head pub when I was near enough to it, my resolve was not really tested as it looked dead inside, passing was very easy, the hump-back bridge? Not so much as I had to speed up so that I didn’t hold up the tractor behind me, don’t you just love the countryside? I passed the Halsall Arms – which had looked a bit more tempting – until I realised it is now a Solicitors’ office! So, no pubs on route for me then!

I crossed the A1547 / New Street and there before me lay “The Runnels”. This is what I had been looking forward to doing the most. I’m aware that country lanes such as this often promise far more than what they deliver, the tarmac turns into stone chippings and before long all manner of grass and mud enter the foray. Lo and behold this is exactly what the Runnels had in store for me, what had started as bordering of regal / majestic (yes The Runnels is named after a great big house!) all too soon degraded into essentially a field whereby in order to progress I had to follow in the tracks of a JCB / tractor. The ground was extremely wet so there would be no walking straight through the field – I’d have probably triggered some sort of defence system anyway! Nope, so it was hop a bit, change from left-hand to right-hand track, dodge the standing water, stand carefully on that muddy section – oh look, the remnants of a former wall and before too long I was out onto the other side and approaching the race track which is New Cut Lane!
Some roads are peaceful, pastoral, a joy to walk on – New Cut Lane is bastard terrifying and should be scrapped!!!The pavement had terminated within fifty feet – perhaps even less, and then chose to randomly appear every once in a while for no apparent reason and hardly any length! And it features a steeper hump-back-bridge whilst the speed limit is set to 60 mph for most of its duration. In addition, the ground beneath is of the shifting variety which has granted the road above a lovely undulating feature! I had planned to stay on this road until reaching London Road but because each car tore past me at 60 and more, and there is no pavement, I turned off onto Renacres Lane – itself pavement-less, and was glad in the change of velocity and frequency of the traffic – I counted two cars passing me in between New Cut Lane and Heathy Lane. In summing up this section of the walk: New Cut Lane is bastard terrifying and should be scrapped!!!

Renacres Lane is far nicer than its predecessor, although again paving is in short supply until almost at the end of the street. Here I took a left and was immediately presented with probably the most handsome Acer Palmatum (?) tree I’ve ever seen. Heathy Lane does not have much, all the houses are on one side, nobody is really sure what the speed limit is and the opposite side of the road is essentially a large paddock which is home to three horses. I love it! On previous – shorter walks I have exited the road by the wet, rural, public footpath which is nice enough in its own right, but my feet had encountered just about enough mud and wetness for one day so I stayed on the roadside and over yet more undulating road all the way to the junction with the awful Birkdale Cop – less than three miles from home. And so began that awful traffic again. At this time (around quarter-to-three, on a Friday afternoon) I had expected the roads to be quieter. I was wrong, so very wrong. On one side of BC lies a lovely long stretch of Hawthorn hedging which will, if one is not careful enough, rip your coat to shreds – it’s best if you avoid this at all costs. However, this means that for its duration you will be walking on the left hand side of the road. A rude twat decided that me walking alongside him and his precious learner driver was cause enough to throw a verbal chiding at me for ‘walking on the wrong side of the road’. Oh yes, it would have been far more convenient for all concerned if I had just stuck to the right-hand-side, done battle with the Haws (the Hawthorn tree’s spiny, needle-sharp spurs from which new growth emerges) and just get bounced up and down the road. Okay so I would have been battered and bruised or even dead but at least I would not have inconvenienced Mr Southern-sounding-learner-driver-instructor! Words, sometimes, fail me!

Thankfully I survived Birkdale Cop in all its awfulness and put my best foot forward – sped up in order to get off this hideous road as quickly as possible. By 3.10 I had traversed the Cop and was finally onto safer environs – a pavement at last, on my home estate, I was delighted to no longer be fearing for my safety. The only downside being that I had especially set my phone’s playlist to start the beginning of Alan Walker’s sensational “Faded” ready for me to activate when I was within four minutes of home, well the bloody stupid Bluetooth earbuds refused to connect which left me carrying the phone playing the song through it’s own speaker and thus making me look like an attention-seeking nitwit! Daft phone!

Summary

This certainly was an exhilarating walk, probably the coldest one I’ve done all year and with regret it looks like the last work-2-home walk for 2023 as we are running out of available dates left to do this kind of activity. On the steps front this one nicely knocked off 10.14, “to-do” miles for which I am very grateful. The terrain is not for everyone, I may well only ever repeat “The Runnels” in drought conditions – it really was that muddy! New Cut Lane and Birkdale Cop remain the two worst walking experiences one can encounter in the Southport area – they don’t get the footfall to invoke the path builders from West Lancs county council so I guess will always be as bad as this until someone slaps a housing estate within reach, so watch this space.

Distance: 10.14 miles

Time: 3hours fourteen minutes.

Song of the walk: Faded by Alan Walker.