The Longdendale Trail

The Longdendale Trail by Padfield 

Our part of the world was missing all the weather warnings so inevitably there were massed cancellations of trains. I decided against a walk on the Sefton Coast because the train to Liverpool was cancelled so I headed into Manchester to get me a new monthly travel card and an old man's explorer ticket to wherever. Except it was the Liverpool train that chugged past our house and the Manchester one that was cancelled.

I got the bus into Manchester and got my monthly travel card. I decided to get the train to Hadfield and have a walk along the Longdendale Trail to see how it looks in Autumn. (The train to Hadfield isn't often cancelled as it spends all day shuttling to and fro between Piccadilly and Hadfield, and the Longdendale Trail is dead flat easy walking, which is exactly what I wanted today).

It became a dark and gloomy sort of a morning and it started spitting with rain as we passed over the viaduct high over the Dinting Reservoirs. It was okay for walking in, though, as I set off from Hadfield Station.

There were lots of furtive small bird noises in the hedgerows along the old railway line, nearly all drowned out by the songs of wrens and robins and the clamour of jackdaws on the rooftops beyond.

The blackbird in the hawthorns by the path was within camera distance, I was determined to have a bird photo in this post. The blackbird was determined I wasn't. I did anyway.

It started raining properly so I told myself I'd just go as far as Bottoms Reservoir and back unless the weather took a turn for the significantly better. A mixed finch flock including chaffinches, goldfinches and at least one bullfinch coincided with a mixed tit flock including long-tailed, blue and great tits in a stand of hawthorns on the embankment beyond the Padfield Road bridge. The fuss and chatter disturbed the blackbirds feeding in those hawthorns and they flew over to the hedgerow on the other side of the line.

Padfield Main Road bridge over the Longdendale Trail 

I just got to Bottoms Reservoir when the heavens opened and I called it quits. On the way back the two mixed flocks hadn't gone their separate ways, all of them huddling deep in the hawthorns making rude bird noises at the weather.

I got the train at Hadfield and headed home. Even the trackside magpies were keeping under cover so I decided to take the hint and follow their example.