Brock Mill Car Park: Saturday 12th. December 15

The Pictures:-

Click on pictures to view slideshow.

(Apologies for the blurred pictures - camera on wrong setting. No apologies for the weather though - the camera man, as always, blames the walk leader for that, unless of course he himself is leading the walk!)

The Walk:-

Walk leader - John Titterington.

The previous week had seen some heavy rainfall which had caused me to consider if it was a good idea to go ahead with the walk or not.

I decided to drive around the lanes to identify cut off points in case the weather got worse. I arrived at the meeting point a little before 9am and was pleased to see a group of 10 walkers all in good spirits and ready to go.

Off we went over the bridge uphill towards Lower Lickhurst Farm, then on to Middle Lickhurst Farm, followed by Sagars Farm. At this point unfortunately Doreen told me that she had fallen and needed to go back so we lost Doreen and Gareth at this point.

We carried on to Broad Head Farm and Lower Core Farm, by this time the weather was quite nasty with sleat and rain coming down heavily. We agreed that it would be wise to cut the walk short and so walked to Blind Hurst Farm on the side of Parlick. We turned left at Blindhurst and found a hut, which we took advantage of to have dinner around 11am. We then went down to Bleasdale School where Jackie and Sue from Garstang decided to turn right, while the rest of us went straight on avoiding the fields and sticking to tarmac paths. At this point we were down to six walkers and despite the weather all were in good spirits. We passed the Pack Horse Bridge walking towards Bleasdale Tower and to the left was a private Drive which lead us to the road back to Brock. We passed Tootle Hall where the road was quite flooded in places but easier to manage than going through fields.

We arrived back at Brock at 1pm having completed 8.5miles.

I would like to thank everyone for making the effort to come on the walk as it would have been so easy to have stayed at home given the difficult weather conditions.

 John Titterington

Footnote:-

Thanks John for leading the walk and for this report. To add a few words to it, I'd like to mention where Doreen fell was very wet and muddy and she had no alternative other than to return to her car. As we continued, we were walking into a strong headwind, that was driving icy cold sleet in our faces. Underfoot the fields were saturated and very heavy going. Under the circumstances John made the right decisions. The two who carried on knew the area well and were in no danger. The roads on the way home were awash with running water and deep puddles. Let's hope from now on the weather starts to improve

Stan.