A break in the miserable wet weather was forecast for Tuesday and a very healthy turnout assembled at the Lime Kiln Cafe including Eric with his brand new E-Bike - presumably the E is for Eric's Bike!
I was aiming to get to the Velodrome in Manchester but didn't quite make it!
The intention was to take our usual route out of the valley up to Lydgate through Old Grasscroft then save time by whizzing down the main road to Grotton to pick up the old railway line to Oldham. But Quick Edge Road beckoned, a rough old track thought to be a salt route and possibly Roman, and I could not resist its charms.
At what was the highest point on our ride the snow began to fall so we fell too, hurtling down to Mossley then on to Grotton and back with the original plan. Good old Mr Beeching has left us a wonderful linear route nicknamed the yellow brick road, which used to be the former Oldham to Delph railway, to take us to the very outskirts of Oldham before heading off towards Ashton. The track pops you out at the very quaint Dingle Terrace, once workers' cottages for the Park Bridge Iron Works, now a Country Park but in its day one of the biggest iron works in the North responsible for the rivets in the Eiffel Tower no less:
Find out more about Park Bridge here:
In its day a branch of the Ashton Canal served Park Bridge and we were able to follow its remains to Crime Lake and then to Daisy Nook Garden Centre for lunch. A range of special offers proved irresistible to most especially as it included a choice from a range of good old fashioned cream cakes with a brew for £2! An incongruous Coronation Street Museum as part of the Garden Centre drew the curious and Eric revealed slightly worrying hidden depths of knowledge about Lancashire's favourite soap!
After demolishing several specials involving much oozing of cream we got back on our bikes for the inevitable post prandial hill, thankfully short but decidedly steep, to pick up the disused canal again towards Ashton. A cursory look at the Tameside Cycle Map, courtesy of TfGM
Download or order yours here for any or all of Greater Manchester's' Boroughs:
told me to turn left after the railway crossing - an actual railway for a change - thank you Mr Beeching for preserving our line into Manchester from Saddleworth - why I went straight on I do not know but Brian realised it was a mistake not a cunning plan and soon put us right. I always like to explore a new bit of off-road cycleway and I had not been on this link to Ashton before, nor am I likely to go on it again! A gate every hundred yards and, for a cycleway, excessively inaccessible to cycles, that is until we worked out how to negotiate them! Brian navigated us safely back to the Ashton canal at Audenshaw and so, with a few deviations onto the former railway line which parallels the canal towpath we made our steady way back to Uppermill.
Thanks everyone for great company. (See what you missed Trish and Ros!)
Rob
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