Weather: Warm and sunny.
Distance:
20 km (12.4 miles) Total Distance: 3469 miles
I had
a meeting in Lancaster that finished before lunch so after a bite to eat of chilli, rice and chips was
able to get away. A colleague had made us all
laugh at dinner by asking the person clearing the plates for olive oil and
white wine vinegar – which is only funny when you realise that the canteen is
more along the lines of a transport café and has about a dozen customers each
day.
It was
about 45 minutes to Lytham and I parked in a park car park along the front
which was about two-minutes walk from my start point but free! The first bit was along the prom and then
along a river bank in front of the new Land Registry building – but not an
official path I don’t think as it ran out and I scrambled though an industrial
estate and onto a road. It was then down along
another riverbank and then through a marina and onto the main road to cross a
river and onto the marshes again.
I was
getting buzzed by fighter planes which I was later to learn was the new
Euro-fighter plane – which explains why it had no markings. Lets just say it was not being designed with
peace in mind! The paths were in a
reasonable state.
When I was rounding
the airfield I was overtaken by a jogger.
He looked funny in that he was dressed in normal clothes. His shirt was hanging out and was all frayed
along the bottom appearing to indicate that he did this a lot. A bit further on he had stopped and he
engaged me in conversation – a little weird but harmless enough I’d say. He had run three miles along this path every
day for the past 30 years. He told me
about the planes and how he lived at the end of the runway – that sort of
explained a lot!
Further
on at Naze Mount I had to go up the river about two miles to the main
road. As I rounded the point I lost the
path and ended up in marshy ground. I
kept falling into muddy gullies. At one
point I heard what sounded like a loose and very large angry dog nor far away
in the trees. Just then the Euro-fighter
started another series of manoeuvres deafening and I must admit frightening me
as I now didn’t know how far away the dog was!
I rejoined
the path and to calm down I took the jogger’s advice and
stopped in the Ship for a very peaceful pint of 6X and drank it in the garden
overlooking the estuary.
The next part
was though the back streets of the village and then onto the main road. There was little option but to follow the
main road towards Preston as it was the closest right of way to the sea. There was a pavement of sorts for about the
next three miles and being slightly numbed by the beer it was not a bad walk –
better than it looked on the map.
I
turned off towards the sea by going though a farm, marked as a path but not a
public right of way. I past a pond with
tiny ducklings and then up an embankment and a nice track. I was all relaxed until I saw a sign saying
it was a 4x4 track and from then on expected to get mown down by a truck at any
moment. I then frightened a lady dog
walking by calling down a bank to her and asking if that was a path to Preston
and then scrambling down it to join it – she must have thought her time was
up!
The path took me all the way into
Preston along the river bank alongside a dockland development. I couldn’t access the first bridge over the
Ribble from the footpath as it was fenced off so walked down to the second and
finished my walk there.
I
strolled up to the railway station and got a train back to Lytham and then
drove back to Coventry for supper at about 10.15.
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