Along the River Mersey Again

Making full use of our "Travel Pass", we walked down to Maghull Station and caught two Merseyrail Trains to Cressington Station, changing at Central Station in Liverpool.
I've saved our 4.9485 miles (7.9639 km) route, from Cressington, and it can be viewed at...

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=6793529
We had the choice of walking towards a very low sun, or, walking into a strong, cold wind. We chose the latter.
As we walked from the station, down towards the River Mersey, we spotted a number of spring flowers...

First Daffodil we've seen on our 2016 walks

 Part way along the river, a small inlet caused us to re-route, leaving Grassendale Park...

 ...and taking a footpath along the boundary fence of Liverpool Cricket Club.
Turning left, along Riversdale Road, we reached the Sitting Bull Sculpture...

 Now we did turn into the wind and headed towards Liverpool.

Sun was out for most of the walk but dipped behind clouds every now and then.

 We continued along the the river, past where we turn off when we do the 'Three Parks Walk"...

 ...enjoying the views...

 ...and the various items from the River's past...

 It always surprises me how wide the River Mersey is, compared with other UK Ports...

 ...and today our walk was as the tide was coming in. 

The plus was the range of birds, feeding on the shore...

 More anchors...

 and, up on a balcony, a "Pirate Skeleton"!

 We paused, every now and then, to enjoy the views and to look back, up stream, to wards Runcorn...

 More Bollards and anchors... 

 ...before we eventually reached our lunch stop; the "deli fonseca"; a food hall, butcher and eatery. We'd seen it many times but this was to be our first visit.
As we'd hoped the drinks and food were excellent...

 We'll have to revisit another time to enjoy the main meals, rather than a snack...

 It was then time to catch the trains and a bus back home.
You can watch a slide show of the photographs I took at...

https://sharalike.com/s/k9Rs 

or play the embedded version below...

Kingsley - Bradley Orchard - River Weaver - Kingsley

Leaving Kingsley village, we soon emerged into a countryside of fields and narrow, wooded valleys. The steep-sided valleys are known as 'cloughs' in this area of Cheshire. The fruits and seeds add colour to the walk and providing rich pickings for the birds (We were lucky to see a lesser spotted wood pecker). Eventually our route passed along the top of a gentle slope running down to the river. From this terrace edge there were views downstream towards the Mersey and upstream towards the Pennines. There were occasional glimpses of the factories towards Runcorn. Leaving the terrace for the riverside, we crossed water meadows.

Beside the river there were swans,

geese, ducks, moorhens and coots. The riverside path ran though relatively undisturbed woods that provide good cover for small animals; eventually the route left the river valley with new views opening up towards the Sandstone Ridge to the west.
The area was extremely peaceful and the guide, from Walking World excellent (What a contrast from the previous week.
 You can view our 6.1324 mile walk at http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2335303.

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The Bridgewater and Norton Priory

The URL for todays route is: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2261444 - 5.6 miles in total.
Same guide Riverside Rambles along the Mersey by Ron Freethy; difference is, this time I used http://wheresthepath.googlepages.com/exploreabiggermap.htm, a must for walkers, to map out the walk before we left home.
Whatever you do, if you buy this book, don't depend on either the text or the map; from what I've experienced so far either one or the other is correct but not at the same time!
This time the map is wrong on the return leg; you need to leave the towpath at Norton Town Bridge not Norton Bridge! Be warned.
Armed with map and guide we set off from the opposite side of the canal to a boatyard; it wasn't Preston Brook Marina, as stated in the guide, but was the correct place to start on the map and in the text. Just totally the wrong name!
We made our way towards Norton Priory along the Runcorn arm of the Bridgewater canal.
The fruit laden hedgerows (apples of various types but mainly crab apples, hawthorn berries, elderberries, etc.) and wildflowers were in abundance including the Purple Loosestrife shown below.

Little did we know, as squirrels, moorhens, ducks, jays, magpies etc. crossed our path, of what lay in store for us as we neared Norton Priory.

I thought I'd gone back to my childhood; here we had a wildflower meadow reintroducing 'cornfield flowers' such as corncockle, corn marigold, corn chamomile and poppy. When I was a boy.... Mmmm memories. What a pity the flowers were past their best, although the bees didn't think so!
The Priory wasn't open, we were a tad to-early, but the cafe was; tea and cherry scone for Chris and coffee and choc-chip muffin for me.
The Residents were a little shy...

The last time we visited was with Ben and Neil when they were both at Summerhill; many changes and perhaps a place to visit when it is too wet to walk.
We retraced our steps leaving the canal at the correct place and heading across fields, under two railway bridges and up onto the Manchester arm of the Bridgewater canal.
There was evidence of early growth of fungi probably due to the very wet summer or should that be 'global warming'?

Farmers are still trying to gather the harvest and two 'Holland' Combine harvesters were hard at it.
Another enjoyable walk and a note to revisit Norton Priory in the not too distant future.

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