Why so far you may ask? Well we, that means Chris, decided we could use the Lancashire A-Z Street Atlas to make our own Pub Stroll; after all we had been extending the walks Secret Santa had given me so why not!
It also meant that we wouldn't have to go so far in the car (a green argument if nothing else). It was also more likely that Chris would drive and I could have more than one pint!
Chris chose the Ring O'Bells in Lathom as our starting point and sure enough she volunteered to drive (No argument there). After plotting our walk on the map (I was sure it was longer than 6 miles and it was!) we set off via Burscough's Recycling Centre (we are being green today). Parking in the Ring O'Bells car park Chris set off towards Liverpool and I set of towards Leeds; no comment on who was correct.
The day was 'fresh' to say the least, with quite a hard frost; this made walking easier as the towpath was harder than it would have been. The spring sun shone down and it wasn't long before I had to find Chris's sunglasses as the glare from the canal (Leeds and Liverpool) was very bright. The walk was on excellent footpaths, along towpaths, across farm land and through woods. The only road walking was relatively short and on a bright, dry, sunny day all was well with the world.
Highlights included two sculptures beside the towpath at Moss Bridge Lane; Three fish...
and an "Activity Table"...
This was constructed out of old lock gates.
Apparently a relatively recent image improvement project for the Leeds and Liverpool canal (late 1990's) saw three new public artworks appearing alongside it at Lathom and Parbold. These two - a stone carvings of three fish and an activity table made from discarded lock gates - plus 'The Angel' sculpture (which I assume is in Parbold; not seen it yet), were designed to "capture the spirit of the famous canal, while adding character to the local countryside".
I think that these two achieved just that.
By the way, I've added them both to the Channel 4 "Putting Big Art on the Map" Website; found at http://bigartmob.com/. I think this project is an excellent idea and encourage all of you to make at least three contributions in 2008. My contributions can be found at http://bigartmob.com/blog/acljohn/.
Note: when you add the artwork you can click-n-drag the 'location-pin' on the google map to the actual position of the 'Public Art'!
Chris enjoyed cracking the ice on puddles and apart from horses, lapwings (Green Plovers), a multitude of song birds, a few dogs and a donkey, the walk was quiet and a nice change from the last two weeks where we had the constant noise of motorway traffic.
We stopped at the entrance to Lathom Park (after about 5 miles) and sat briefly on a bench to take on fluids (water) and for Chris to have two biscuits; extra strong mints were consumed on route. None of the horses were close enough to share a mint and the equine at Warm Row Farm, just after we crossed Blythe Lane, put back his/her ears ("it" was behind a brick wall so I couldn't tell) and showed us his/her teeth so I decided against closer contact.
Returning to the Ring O'Bells...
...we finished our stroll with sandwiches and in my case two pints of Greene King IPA. Mmmmmm!
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