Welcome to a new blog.
We walk a lot and we like to walk off road and on footpaths. Footpaths, bridleways, tracks, permissive pathways, just about anywhere that is NOT a road with motor vehicles. Near were we live here in Little Neston, on the Wirral Peninsular, we are very lucky to have a network of paths that criss-cross the area, and we will be exploring these on a regular basis and reporting back here, so if you live local, we may reveal some exciting paths that you may not even be aware of.
We won't just be writing about local paths though, we get out and about and we'll be writing about these paths too.
Little Neston to Thornton Hough - 11th April 2010
Today we set off on one of the first really sunny days of the year and started on the Wirral Way heading East up the cutting from Station Road. Turn left at the top of the cutting after passing under the Lees Lane road bridge and you pass through number of ponds, cross the car park and turn right onto Neston BR48 - this is a lovely lane with brooks on either side, it runs on a converging course to where Cuckoo Lane passes under the old railway line that is the Wirral Way. Turn left onto Neston BR49 (Cuckoo Lane), up the hill towards the A540.
Coming back to the old railway line - you knew I would - the old cutting is a slice through the local sandstone strata - you can see the layers and fault lines and no doubt other geological features. It produced wonderful icicles this winter and it is always damp. From railway point of view it seems very steep, I will look into this and report back.
Cross the A540 and continue along Hanns Hall Road and turn left onto Quarry Road until you reach the sharp left hand bend, ignoring for today the footpath on the left (Ellesmere Port FP16) . Here there is a choice of Bridleway (Bluebell Lane) or footpath Ellesmere Port FP43 which we take. This path follows the Cheshire boundary and we soon find ourselves walking through bluebell woods - everything is just in bud and there is a promise of many bluebells later in the year. From here Liverpool Cathedral just sits atop the land in the distance, across the fields of cows and crops. Here we saw three large birds of prey wheeling around on the thermals in the distance.
At a t-junction Neston FP59 goes left, but we turn right, into the Wirral Metropolitan area, then over a stile and right onto the wide farms track that leads along to Raby. At the metals gates there is a wooden fence to climb over (a sort of stile according to the slightly threatening looking farmer chap who watched us guessing). A couple of yards of very wet mud to cross lead to a second, then back onto the lane to the stile by Jasmine Cottage and the "Thatch" pub. The fence and mud arrangement could do with being easier to negotiate, but I suspect the chains on the gates may be a clue.
Turn left and right and there is a further footpath across the road that heads up a slightly muddy track to Yew Tree House on the B5136 Neston Road.
Our walk deviated before this point, but we'll leave it there for today. Butterflies much in evidence today and lots of birdsong - robins abound and blackbirds too, a really nice warm Spring day. We'll take some pictures for the next walks too.
These paths are mostly covered by Cheshire's great interaction mapping application here
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