The instructions from the medical man....no cycling at the moment!
Oh dear....it's a bit like cutting off his arm, for the potter.....he is used to cycling everywhere.
In younger days I can remember him coming back from the local wood yard with half a shed on the back of the bike and the usual grin on his face which always meant that he knew I would shake my head in exasperation....but with nothing that I could do about it!
So walking out has now sort of taken over, which means it's much easier for us to do it together.
Yesterday we walked from Sankey Bridges....
... along the
Sankey Canal to where it meets the Mersey.
While we have lived in this area for more than 40 years...we had never taken the path before!
Partly because, when we first arrived here the site, which had been part of a farm, was just being turned over to a rubbish tip.....so pungent smell and seagulls in their thousands!
Now it's greened and treed...if that is a word... you know a bit like treen....and if not then I've just made it up!!!
Sankey Brook runs a few yards from our front door and was used in the earliest attempts to make a usable water way down to the River Mersey, and thence on out to the port of Liverpool.
It was Sankey Canal that was then dug out as the first proper one, and used to send coal down to the Mersey and bring chemicals back up for the glass works at St. Helens....
...and the mooring post for the barges are still there as a reminder of the history gone before.
The canal has now become a heritage site, and the route for the cycle and footpath of the Trans Pennine Trail...
..where there are always lots of serious walkers and cyclists .........
....and there in the backround.... the power station at Fiddlers Ferry.
... this is "The Meeting of the Waters", as we say in Ireland.....
....Sankey Canal and the River Mersey.
Of course there is now that grand Manchester Ship Canal running through the town as well as the Mersey River. but that's another story!
The railways came later and the tracks still run parallel to the canal ...coming from the direction of Liverpool...
...and travelling on east towards Manchester.
Anyway this is not a history lesson....honestly!!....just a post to put up photos of our local environment and for me to be shamed into realising that as I drove past it all every week, and never gave it a backward glance.......what other goodies have I missed in my hurray to grow old!!!! .
