Around Preston

This is just southwest of where I was last week, and in fact the walk uses the same bridge, but we will get to that later. I started from the site of Heapey Bleach Works. I had assumed a bleach works was where bleach was manufactured, but it turns out to be where cloth is bleached. It opened in 1885 (or 1895?), and was at one time the biggest in Europe, employing 300 people, an getting through 4 million gallons of water a day (according to here ). Much of it was destroyed in a fire in 1944, but it struggled on for a while, possibly closing in 1953. Today, the site is a rather nice housing estate, and no hint of the works itself remains. However, it was served by a railway and reservoirs; the reservoirs are still there and evidence of the railway too. This is the bridge abutment where the railway crossed the road before entering the factory site. No sign of it on the other side of the road. From here, the railway passed between two reservoirs, before joining the line from Chorley to Che

These two roads run not-quite parallel out of Preston, heading east, to Longridge and Blackburn respectively. I am going to head west down Ribbleton Lane, then back east along New Hall Lane. Ribbleton Lane The road starts at the junction with Blackpool Road - it is Ribbleton Avenue east of that. The first pub was on the right, the Old England. As I write, this is visible in Google Street View, depending on the angle you look from. it was recently demolished, so more recent angles do not show it. A bit further along on the left, the next set of lights in fact, was The Skeffington Arms, on Skeffington Road; now converted to accommodation. When I lived in the area I paid rent to an estate agent on the other side of the road - which has also gone - and sometimes came here for a drink afterwards. This was the mid-nineties, and it was pretty run down then. The Derby Inn was on the junction with Wilbraham Street. I do not recall this being open when I lived around here. Now a barbers, but you

Brinscall is a couple of miles southeast of Abbey , where I was last week, and is on the route the Goit takes. This walk more-or-less follows the route described here . The embankment in the photo below is the culverted Goit, taken from Railway Road. Both Brinscall and Abbey were on the same railway line as Cherry Tree and Feniscowles where I was some weeks ago. There was a station at the north end of Abbey - called Withnell, which is a village between Abbey and Brinscall. The station building is still there, but I did not get to that end of the village. The railway ran parallel to the Goit and Railway Road. There was a further station at Brinscall, just before the railway crossed the main road. The station has been levelled, the bridge and its approaches have gone, and the railway is now a walk, so nothing worth photographing. And that is not the walk I was doing. At first glance, this village looks delightfully rural, but a look at maps from a century ago suggest the area was awash