I haven’t been on one of my bike wanders for a very long time. So last Friday I set out with the intention of getting lost. I got on to Lapwing Lane and headed east until I ended up somewhere I’d never been before. Then I carried on into the unknown. The first little bit of the unknown was between Burnage and Heaton Chapel, then it was vaguely familiar all the way to Reddish.
I entered terra nova properly in Reddish Vale, before crossing the M60 by footbridge.
After a detour through an industrial estate I found myself at Arden Hall, which I have passed previously
Heading the wrong way I found an advertising hoarding which was the equivalent of the hall. The bus shelter also contained this noticeboard for Romiley Forum-
Back on track I headed down a dead end lane- because I always take those as challenges- and found the perfect tinker’s doer-upper. I think it’s an old works building of some form. If you look in the middle window on the first floor you can see a shelving arrangement which looks like it was for some form of filing.
The dead end lane turned into a path which eventually took me to Bredbury. From there I followed the canal for several miles, getting in some birdwatching and a bit of off roading in Gower Hey Wood.
Eventually I found a major road and turned west, heading back to the pub just in time to meet everyone and rehydrate with blackcurrant and soda. Four hours of riding and I ended up two miles from home in the beer garden of Hardy’s Well. It was worth it. I filled in a few gaps in the parts of Greater Manchester I’ve visited and discovered that I can’t always rely on my phone’s mapping programs to tell me where I am. Both the Ovi Maps software my Nokia X6 shipped with and the Google Maps which I installed flaked out when I got outside the M60. Which is odd because I’m certain I’ve had Google Maps tell me quite accurately where I was in Cumbria, which has to be less well equipped with transmitters than the eastern fringes of Stockport.
Here are the rest of the photos from the “Getting lost east of Manchester” photoset.
