Today's 5.0143 miles (8.0698 km) route to The Hayfield in Ormskirk...
...has been saved and is available at...
Our walk started at Maghull Railway Station, where Chris asked me, while we were waiting for the Train,
"What do you think the minimum charge is to make a phone call from a public phone box?"
I was way out - take a look at the picture below to see how close you are...
At the time I was looking at the paintings that fill a number of the windows...
I try to walk different routes, each time we go for a meander but, it gets increasingly difficult. Today I tried to get the worse bit out of the way first.
So quite a lot of road walking at the start...
...as we headed from Aughton Park Station towards Ruff Wood...
We had our fingers crossed that the rain would hold off, at least until we reached The Hayfield, where we planned to have lunch. We were encouraged by breaks in the cloud...
Apart from the usual farmland birds,
- rooks,
- wood pigeons,
- crows,
- jackdaws,
- magpies,
- sparrows,
- skylarks etc.
...we didn't spot anything unusual. It was nice however to see gorse in flower...
I'm not sure that I've noticed the "Welcome to Lathom" sign before either...
...another advantage of walking over driving.
The new Edge Hill University Sport's fields were looking well established, considering how relatively new they are...
In Ruff Wood, we looked out for the carvings we hadn't seen. We saw the Owl again and, very close but missed on our last visit, we spotted the squirrel...
We spotted quite a few real Grey Squirrels as well.
We also spotted the wood pecker but were not in a good position to capture as a photograph.
We were approached by two university students and took part in an interview about Ruff Wood, I hope it was useful to them.
From Ruff Wood we headed across the field and then along Lady's Walk...
...which was a tad muddy...
...and nice to get back on the paths again...
At the old Smithy, on Dark Lane we saw Winter Flowering Jasmine...
Just over the railway bridge we descended down onto the old railway track, to follow "The Smith Way"...
At the signposted intersection, we took the path to the right, towards Burscough Road...
...passing under the railway line...
From there it was back to road walking that took us to lunch...
You can see how The Hayfield rated at...
After lunch, we made our way to Ormskirk Bus Station and caught the bus home.
Another enjoyable walk in the Lancashire Countryside.
