Monday 14 September 2026 - GM Ringway Trail Stage 13 - Bury to Bromley Cross

This was a repeat visit for me, Sue and Paul, bur it was Jeanette's last stage to give her a full house of all 20 stages of the GM Ringway Trail. My diary entry for the previous visit on 30 September 2025 is here.

We caught an early tram to Bury, so as to start walking soon after 9 am. A familiar stroll took us past the statue of Robert Peel and on towards the footpath beside the River Irwell.

After a short stretch beside the river we turned onto Woodhill Road and passed a well maintained house that appears to date from 1710.

Burrs Country Park, with its numerous industrial sculptures, drew us to the river again, and to the Lamppost Café. Much more friendly than on our previous visit.

Though Rufus struggled to release any of his elevenses.

A tall chimney dominates a variety of exhibits.

Our progress beside the Irwell was studied by a heron, high in a tree across the river.

A picture of the weir that Paul once paddled over is de rigueur at this point.

Our target for lunch, the Peel Tower, came into view in the distance.

The river is left for a while for us to take good paths around the privacy conscious Bank Top Farm, to re-cross the East Lancashire Railway near Summerseat.

Nice woodland paths took us ever closer to the Peel Tower.

No chance of refreshments at this site of a restaurant.

From here the lane passes some nice little houses.

The others took the same short cut to the tower as last time, but I continued on the more gentle gradient of the GM Ringway route that eventally doubled back towards the tower. With the tower behind me, it was a good panoramic view to nearby villages and the Pennines.

Meanwhile, Jeanette recorded Sue and Paul's slog to the high point of the day.

Lunch was taken in the crater resulting from a WW2 attack on a battalion of cardboard tanks. (Maybe.)

The clear air gave us good views across Greater Manchester to the Welsh hills beyond. Sadly, my picture is under exposed and Jeanette's is over exposed.

We were soon descending steeply through Redishire Wood, where Sue found a Cep that we enjoyed later with the last portions of a beef stew that we didn't quite manage to get through last week in Scotland. However, a fine addition to the meal we enjoyed on our 24th wedding anniversary.

Delicious Cep

On we marched, towards Affetside, past some very pretty rare breed sheep.

Lovely views back to Peel Tower.

It's a steep pull past a Land Rover awaiting restoration, to the cross at Affetside, where our flasks were drained and Rufus gave a vivid demonstration of his feelings.

Good paths then reached the Kingfisher Trail and Jumbles Reservoir.

Soon we were on the platform at Bromley Cross station, where some children vied for the privilege of taking our group picture.

Jeanette was joyous on her 'Compleation' of the GM Ringway Trail. "What's next?"

Here's our route - 19 km with 470 metres ascent, taking less than 6 hours.

Sunday 13 September 2026 - Spunch Altrincham

Fechin joined me and Sue for a couple of hours' Spunching on a fine Sunday morning. The Spunch points were mainly close together, so we got our best ever scores. A little local knowledge helped, though I missed an obvious short cut at the end and was penalised for going 19 seconds over the two hour limit.

These two photos were taken on the long straight track that some allege to be the course of a Roman road. It may be more recent, but it's a delight to walk down.

The route that we planned crossed the canal at Altrincham Bridge and took in lots of points between the canal and the railway, before re-crossing the canal at Seamons Bridge. The towpath was then followed all the way back to the environs of Timperley Brook and West Timperley Nature Reserve. In places the canal is full of weed; very few boats come this way these days due to the canal being closed at Dunham thanks to the breach that occurred a couple of years ago. A little further on, a heron chose to ignore the fact that we were only a couple of metres away on the towpath.

Sue went ahead and collected a couple of extra points that Fechin and I didn't have time to visit, and Fechin got a time penalty after failing to keep up and getting slightly misplaced.

Kickback Coffee provided welcome refreshments, and then we returned a few metres to the host venue, Twisted Running, where Sue spashed out on a t-shirt and shorts.

Here's my Garmin 245's take on the route we took - it recorded 11.7 km, whereas Spunch's 'MapRun' app recorded 12.7 km. Click on the next two images for better detail. The second image is an extract from the '120' results for the 53 finishers

Well, that was fun. Our next Spunch will be at Northenden on the evening of 24 September. See here for a link to future events.

Saturday 12 September 2026 - Ganavan Sands parkrun

Fort William parkrun was cancelled due to a mountain bike race - the second time this year that we've missed it for that reason. Anyway, we left Linnhe Holidays after a pleasurable week in the mobile home, at 7:45, and enjoyed the scenic drive to Oban, where Ganavan Sands parkrun has the disadvantage of being rather hilly (60 metres ascent) but the advantage for some of being next to a good beach.

We lingered near the start, expecting a few midges, but the breeze was sufficient to deter them.

The story of the Appin murder was provided on an information board. Click on the image to see the detail.

It's a lovely beach.

9:30, and the time to run or walk up a steep hill had arrived. Sue ran, I walked.

Long before I reached the turnaround point, the lead runners were returning along the good tarmaced path.

Sue would normally come back along the route to walk in with me, but today was a no-brainer for her - a dip in the ocean would always take precedence over a run back up the hill.

We'd come armed with coffee and cake as we didn't want to hang around in a coffee shop when we really needed to be getting on with the 330 mile drive home.

The last of Ali's excellent carrot cake went down very well. Thanks Ali.

We left just as a rescue boat hit the waves to look for any parkrunners who had overshot the finish.

Full results are here.

Sue finished in 28:00, much slower than usual - position 31 out of 79 finishers - many first timers at this event - people like us who were on holiday.

Meanwhile I took a leisurely 39:52 in position 72. Not much slower than on Penrith's flat course last week.