After all the heavy rain over the weekend it was nice to meet up at Worthington Lakes in dry weather and good to see Pauline out with us again. For the 18 people who arrived, the forecast for the day wasn’t too bad and we set off round the lake in pale autumnal sunshine. Making our way up through Arley Woods we passed the moated Wigan golf club building and continued along Arley Lane turning right through sodden fields across the way from Tucker’s Hill.

A short section of the Rotary Way came next before reaching the outskirts of Aspull on Scot Lane. We had an earlier than usual lunch round the playing fields of Aspull R.U. club before first walking under ‘Woodsie’ which is the local name for a former, very old, slag heap but which has been heavily wooded, and then having a steep climb up the steps to walk along the narrow path across the top. At one time you could see right across Wigan from the top but the trees and vegetation are now too thick to see much through.

Descending steeply we made our way to the Leeds Liverpool canal at Top Lock, the highest of the 22 locks of ‘Wigan Flight’.  After ½ mile we left the canal, continuing on paths leading into Haigh Hall and passing the new, exciting and really well equipped, adventure playground for children. Quite a few of our team would have liked to become children to have a go there!

The final part of our walk included another mile of canal, leaving it at Red Rock to descend to the fairly new apartments at Worthington before reaching the cars at 2.30pm.  We had been lucky with the weather because although it threatened to rain once we did have sunshine most of the day and it was very mild for December.

To see who came on the walk press on the photo below

To see the other photos please click Here