Orrell Water Park

Sketch map, Orrell Water Park

Orrell Water Park's one of the small, self-contained bits of wetland dotted around Wigan. It's good for a nice hour or two's pottering about and is best in Winter and Spring when the small birds can't disappear so easily into the undergrowth.

Orrell Water Park

Orrell Station has hourly train services on the Wigan to Kirkby line. Leaving the station you turn left and at the fork in the road carry on down Lodge Road and enter the park at the car park entrance. The 352 bus from Wigan to St. Helen's stops on Lodge Road. 

Goosander

The path runs round the upper and lower lakes in a figure eight. The lakes have the usual birds you'd expect in a park in Greater Manchester, in Winter you can expect goosanders, in Summer it's fairly quiet. Every so often something unusual turns up on passage.

Female ruddy shelduck
One of a pair that stayed a couple of weeks in March 2018

If you follow the path South you enter Greenslate Water Meadows where the stream draining the overflow from the lakes runs through a thin strip of wet woodland and then on into the local fields. 

Greenslate Water Meadows

Halfway along the path there's a feeding station with a screen hide which is worth checking out. In Winter there'll be siskins, the local willow tits are resident but not always easy to catch.

Siskin and chaffinch, Greenslate Water Meadows

Siskin, Greenslate Water Meadows

In more normal times you can stop by the little café in the park for an ice cream or a cup of tea.