Trans Pennine Trail, Cheshire Ring Canal Walk, Murdishaw, Brookvale, Sutton Weaver – 18.04 Miles

This was the kind of caravan site where people really dig in and make the place their home. For some I still mean that in the sense of a temporary getaway that they’ve cultivated over the years, making something homely and folksy, something really expressive of who they get to be when they’re here. For some it seems clear that the stay is more of a permanent thing – they’re always that person. There’s definitely a sense of longstanding, ongoing inhabitation about some of the caravans I’m passing as I make my way to reception to pay for my stay. I wasn’t quite sure about the status of the tent next to mine. I never saw the occupant, but I think I heard them groan awake when I was trying to dissuade last night’s dog from whirlwinding around on my inflatable sleeping pad. Their tent, whilst still a tent, was an impressive, solid-looking black structure equipped with its own CCTV camera.

Heading back over the Warbuton Bridge I absorb the view once more. I can see a nice chunk of the line of the horizon I walked 10 years ago, and Manchester’s towers arre still well-enough defined that I feel I’m not fully out of the city’s orbit quite yet.

Warbuton Bridge Vistas

The first few miles of this leg were along a pleasant, tree-lined section of the Trans Pennine Trail through Statham, before I flipped over to a path which returned me to the side of the Bridgwater Canal. I’d be at the side of this canal for another 8 miles and so this should make it easy today to get locked in to a suitable mental state for thrashing through the distance. This was especially important for the pain-management side of things. My blistered foot felt its most painful for the first few yards after setting off from a standstill, and then when these had passed the pain seemed to get more muted. It was good to know this because after about mile 5 today I realised I was developing another heel blister on my second foot, and so it was going to be potentially twice the battle dealing with the discomfort. I did some blister maintenance at mile 5 and then got into ‘canal mode’ and just ploughed on through – trying to be stern to the pain like I was to that intruding dog last night.

Into the canal zone

The unbroken stretch of canal walking today meant I passed through the Southern fringes of Warrington without really encountering it. I had a great chat with a guy at the canalside sat next to his boat – he was chilling in the muggy warmth, shirt off and extensively tattooed. Like many conversations I’d have on this journey, it started with a comment on the size of my pack. This particular opening gambit was very warm and curious, unlike a more snarky version I’d had from an angler at the side of the Medlock in Daisy Nook on Tuesday. This chap here was genuinely interested in my adventure and I think I helped stoke up some extra determination for him to act on a plan he’d been forming for a while – a walk around the Welsh coast for his 40th. ‘Definitely do it!’ I said as I started to head off. I had a few of these genuinely heartening encounters on the trip – usually people who are curious about why somebody who seems packed for a month in the wild, is trudging around the fringes of Partington, Warrington, Runcorn or such. Like this chat with the guy with his boat, they mostly turned out to be great, morale-boosting exchanges. But that snarky Daisy Nook guy can fuck off.

On the fringes of the village of Moore I was excited to get some peeping views of Fiddlers Ferry power station. This thing has been a horizon collossus that’s present in my earliest memories of hillwalking, when I used to go on Sunday treks around Healey, Wardle, Norden and such with my dad. Its symmetrical braces of cooling towers, either side of its giant central chimney, comprised a markedly charismatic presence in the distance. It emanated a modernist splendour I was able to feel but not to fathom, and it continued to have a similar effect every time I spotted it on my walks as an adult. Really something to behold. A couple of years ago an entire half of its cooling towers were demolished, leaving a glaring absence visible to anyone who’d ever drunk in its imposing concrete curves from a distance. I think it’s a similar, more personal effect that I feel the loss of Alderman’s Hill from my kitchen window will have. It’s like a chord has been playing every day in the background, cherished but barely noticed, and then suddenly one day two notes are subtracted – it’s jarring, unsettling and lastingly so.

After the ten mile mark, I found a bench and had a lunch of nuts, a protein bar and some electrolyted water. There was a nice looking post office/shop just a few yards away and I could have got something more appetising from there, but the prospect felt like too much fuss to deal with in my weariness.

I cranked myself up for the next 8 miles and stepped out the first few excruciating post-rest yards, before the pain subsided once again into its more muted and manageable mode. There were a few more miles of canalside to walk, the views gettting more postindustrial as I approached the fringes of Runcorn. Then I branched off over a level crossing and into the suburbs of Murdishaw and Brookvale.

Say Hello Runcorn Wave Goodbye Canal

This more built-up part of the trek was given a nice boost by a chat with another super-pleasant and curious passerby. A woman walking her dog was keen to know what my journey was all about and we had a great few minutes chatting. I was particularly enjoying the fact that I’d now walked so far that the accent had changed – the Scouse influence was now absolutely undeniable.

Approaching Frodsham

After Murdishaw, things got very agricultural again as I passed through Sutton Weaver. I then crossed over the River Weaver and into the edges of Frodsham. At some point along this part (my memory’s already getting hazy less than a week later) I encountered the first maize field I’ve had to navigate on the trip. I’m not sure I even knew this stuff grew in the UK, such is the extent of my agricultural ignorance. I disappeared between dense rows of over-head-high plants as my map and the apparent path directed me, but after getting a a few minutes deep into it, there was no way of visually confirming it was leading anywhere I was supposed to be going, and it just became an anxious matter of faith. Thankfully the path remained visible enough, and eventually I could see trees ahead which indicated that the maize rows had to stop at that point. I emerged relieved… It was a bit like that film… you know the one – the Japanese one, where she runs through the tall crops… was it maize? Except in my case it was without the mad desire (was it mad?) and the supernatural goings on (I think it was supernatural?) But still, similar.

Then there was a descent into some ancient-feeling woods that were pungent with a deep, earthy fungal smell. A narrow, steep-banked path led out of the woods, which a couple were navigating awkwardly with a baby stroller, which the baby was now out of and being carried. They offered to step aside so I could pass them but I was already going at full speed given my weariness and sore feet and so held back for a bit, telling them I could use the rest – which they seemed sympathetic about. When I eventually did pass them they wished me luck, and I felt like I needed it as I trudged sorely through another couple of fields of taller-than-me crops.

Sensing the proximity of the caravan park I’d be staying at, I was enjoying navigating through what looked like they’d be the last agricultural challenge of the day – just one or two grassy fields. The last one rose not steeply, but had enough of an incline to pull me down to earth and to make me feel nothing other than the expenditure of effort. And when I got to its top I was aghast to realise that I’d misnavigated and that I’d just walked up to somebody’s back garden (some wealthy body’s – the house was faaaaaancy) and not the exit to the road at the top I was hoping for. I stared for a while into the garden in case I could discern a viable way through – there’s probably CCTV of me looking miserably through the garden towards the road, before trudging all the way back down the field again, and ascending once more on the correct side of a hedgerow.

I reached the caravan park shortly before its reception closed and pitched up next to another tent which dwarfed mine. People were playing padel in a court a few yards away, and continued to do so for quite a while after it got dark. I’d got some supplies from the reception’s shop and so was able to augment my ramen with some protein and get some pots of porridge and some beans and sausages for my next two days’ breakfasts.

But walking around the campsite to do necessary tasks – get to the toilet block, wash up, get my charger charged – was incredibly painful. It was like the relative muting of the pain earlier in the day was just a deferment, and it was all being paid back now with interest. At this point, I really didn’t see how I could do over twenty miles tomorrow.

But I’d held off using my hiking poles so far on the trip – the mostly flat terrain hadn’t seemed to necessitate them, and I wondered if bringing those into the picture might help ease the burden the feet had to bear. Also – and this might seem silly – I hadn’t taken any painkillers. I think my logic was that I shouldn’t take painkillers in case it encouraged me to keep walking past the point where I could do more serious harm to my feet. But that no longer felt as sensible to me as it had and I knew I had enough ibuprofen on me to keep me going through a full walking day. Worth a try, because if I call it off here, then all I’ll have done is walk to Frodsham.

Bridgewater Canal, River Mersey, Carrington Moss, Partington, Warbuton – 15.39 Miles

Blisters and stupidity nearly had me call the whole thing off this morning. My little toes had been complaining more than usual after yesterday’s hike and I’d developed a blister near my left heel, which was unusual for me too. For some reason I managed not to make the connection between this and the fact that I was wearing different footwear than I normally wear for hiking.

I’ve been planning this walk for years and a couple of years back I bought a pair of walking shoes that I thought would be much more suitable than my hiking boots for the kinds of walking I’d be doing on this trip: pavements, canal towpaths, country roads, etc. Turns out I hadn’t really researched their suitability as carefully as I should and sticking with my hiking boots after all would have likely saved me a lot of pain. But at this point, the idea that I’d be wearing these walking shoes on this walk had become an unquestioned dogma of my planning – and one which I didn’t even think to reconsider even after day 1 when my feet were clearly sounding the alarm.

When getting ready, I realised I’d also lost my action camera’s tripod stand/selfie stick yesterday, probably somewhere along the canalside in Ancoats. Having been preparing for some time to try and make a decent video document of this trip, this was a real kicker. I’d spent a fair bit of yesterday’s walk walking back up paths, eyes glued to the ground, for bits of camera equipment I’d managed to spill after filming myself trying to articulate something about the weather or the scenery. Lense cap, lenses, bits of microphone – all had spent time on the ground or on a wall with me walking away from them, before I realised something was missing and anxiously scurried back. I wasn’t used to having this stuff with me, with all these little bits of things to find safe and quickly accessible places for in my pack, and I think it just overloaded my capacity to keep track of things. But I thought I’d at least managed to get back to the flat with everything still present and intact yesterday evening, in spite of these lapses. So realising the tripod/selfie-stick hadn’t made it back after all that was sorely demoralising.

Having prevaricated between cancelling the whole thing, delaying the rest of the walk for a day and carrying on regardless, I realised I could fashion a makeshift stick from an old tablet stand and attach the camera to that when needed using a shoulder-strap camera clip I’d also acquired. So with my filming capacities still pretty much intact, I decided to stop faffing around and head out, but it was already 12:30 and I’d need to get a move on to make it to Rixton, on the fringes of Warrington, where I planned to camp tonight.

I’m used to walking through Manchester with a large, overstuffed rucksack with a tent strapped to it, getting to or from a train station before or after a countryside hike. It felt different though today, walking through people’s lunch hours along Oxford Road and Whitworth Street – it provided a stronger sense than usual that I was engaging in some form of truancy. Ducking down an alley onto the canalside, it began to feel like I’d escaped the glare of normalcy a bit.

Despite living so close to the marvellous grot of these city canalside ways, it’s rare that I find myself walking them. The various pressing missions of everyday life tend to keep me fixed to a fairly predictable set of runnels emanating from the flat to the university where I work, to the pub I tend to haunt, to the venues I tend to watch gigs at. There are whole swathes of the city and its suburbs that would be totally unknown to me, if I didn’t design extracurricular missions for myself like this, and if I didn’t seize upon the urge to wander off and explore, on the rare times the urge and the ability to act on it coincide. So it was good to be taking this route. The rain, the Castlefield confluence of waterways, red bricks and industrial arches – how very Manchester!

Rising up to street level, before sinking back down to the Bridgewater Canal, I spotted this row of maisonettes at the back of Saint George’s.The immense surge of development in Manchester that’s happened in the past decade or so, the apartment goldrush that has transformed so much of the city, seems to thrash at the edges of Saint George’s like rising floodwaters. This area has been hammered by construction noise for years as developers pile into all the usable land between Chester Road and the Canal. In places, Chester Road’s new flats tower over the Saint George’s maisonettes and terraces in such a way that the road feels like a border between a two different cities, with different purposes, logics and atmospheres. Similar things are happening to my own estate and I can tell you it brings a strange kind of pressure with it. It’s not just the rising rents and the changing neighbours, although all that contributes to it. It’s about your sense of what the inner-city wants and who it’s meant to be for now, and the feeling that that’s not really you any more.

I stuck with the Bridgewater Canal as I left the fringes of Manchester’s balooning city centre, passing Old Trafford, through Stretford and Sale, getting a feel for who’s about on these towpaths on a wet Tuesday afternoon – anglers, dog walkers, joggers, canalboaters and folk just having a stroll or cutting through on a mission. Near Stretford Marina, there was this amazing image of what happens when public infrastructure is left inadequate and over-subscribed through under-investment.

Branching off from the Bridgewater, I passed through the woodland and open green spaces of Stretford Meadows, and it felt like a landmark moment when I crossed the Pegasus Bridge over the M60 ring road – now outside of its loop I was properly wandering beyond my usual designated zone.

The bridge over the M60 and its green entrance and exit holes.

I stopped to refuel with a coffee and a pasty at the excellent Riverbank Coffee where, upon being asked by the servers about my pack and where I was off to, I got to show off about my unusual adventure.

From there, there was some walking alongside the sloping grassy banks of the Mersey, before crossing it and following a quiet tarmac road through woodland, which led me over the A6144, just North of Ashton Upon Mersey, and then into the great expanses of Carrington Moss.

Asphalt and foliage – it’s going to be a common sight

Carrington Moss’ wooded paths lead you through great areas of reclaimed peat bog, presenting startling flashes of spaciousness through the trees.They land you at the edges of now apparently wild empty acres of field, then at equivalent acres being obviously actively cultivated.There was some potato harvesting going on as I was passing through; I’ve never smelt them in the ‘wild’ before, it was distinctly them!

There’s also another signature feature of this area that has made it an essential main character on my route. There’s a farly huge business park along the Moss’ northern edge, formerly dominated by Shell Chemicals, and at the southern edge of this, cutting into the fields, is a still-functioning chemical plant with a towering, active flare stack. Known by some as the ‘Carrington Candle’, this tower throws out a flame that burns brightly enough that I can see it quite clearly from my living room window, just over the shoulder of the Hulme Arch. It almost makes a kind of offset diamond for the Hulme Arch’s ring, when the flame blows in the right direction..

The many moods of Carrington Moss’ Flare Stack, as spied from my living room window

Finally I got to meet this view hero up close and in person via a claustrophobic-feeling path between the bramble tangled fence of the flare stack’s field and a denser part of the Moss’ woodland.

Carrington Moss

It was so satisfying to be within a potato’s-throw of the tower, and to feel I was doing the job the walk was intended to do – tracing the line that connects the things I can see from the flat. The next such landmark to get to would be Helsby Hill, which all being well, I’d summit on day 4.

For now my main task was to get to the campsite at Rixton as fast as possible. It was already past 5pm; the late start had concertina’d away all the time I could spend faffing and luxuriating and, despite my very unhappy feet, I tried to get pacy.

There was a fairly dingy woodland path to walk, along the route of an old railway line, to get to Partington. When trying to film myself ’emerging’ from the woodland onto the side of a main road, I managed to drop my phone onto a muddy patch of path. I didn’t realise this for about another quarter of a mile, and was frantic with relief when I’d scurried back to it still waiting there. Then in Partington I tried and failed to get some protein and cash to augment tonight’s ramen and to pay for my pitch. I was too fixated on time and couldn’t let myself stray too far from my designated line searching for what I needed. After the first shop I tried was no use, I just gave up and got back on track.

A main road took me through and out of Partington, eventually becoming a path that runs alongside the Manchester Ship Canal, which I got intermittent views of through the trees.

The path to Partington and the post Partington path

Things started to feel pretty rural again as I got to Warbuton and I could gaze back at the Carrington Moss flare stack over miles of fields, and the towers of Manchester further to the north west, despite having shrunk considerably, still looked disappointingly ‘close’.

Ruralities

I crossed over the ship canal on Warburton Bridge and once over it was a short, tired trudge to the camps site. I got there just after 7. Having phoned ahead they were primed for my late arrival and despite not being able to take card payment with the office being closed, (as I’d feared after leaving Partington cashless) they generously let me defer payment till the morning.

Campsite delight

I got pitched up, found water and got my ramen on the go. Despite having got used to the palatial spaciousness of my Pioneer 2 Compact for my wildcamps this year, it was still great to be re-acquaining myself with my fairly tiny Zephyros 1. My dad gave me the money for this tent when I was planning my first Horizon Walk back in 2016 and it’s a perfect little fuss-free and light shelter.

After washing up and getting changed for sleeping, the air seemed to have warmed up a degree or two now the rain had finally laid off. I settled down with the tent door open to let some breeze in and just waited to drift off. I was startled out of this by the sound of an animal seemingly close and quickly getting closer, as soon as I conjured the word ‘fox’ in my mind, a huge, grey, muscular dog burst through the tent’s porch and into my inner chamber where it was sniffing around like a stocky tornado. I found myself trying to sternly push it back out in such a way as to not antagonise it, whilst saying, equally sternly “you can’t come in here mate!”. Thankfully it left without deciding to tear my face off, but it was a great argument for zipping up my door and taking the mugginess regardless.

Goodnight!