Orrell

Blackbird

I didn't feel like doing a right lot today and was in the mood for a dawdle round somewhere. I've not got round to having a look round Orrell Water Park and Greenslate Water Meadows this year, it was time for a visit.

I got off the train and walked round the corner to the water park. A few woodpigeons clattered about and great tits and robins called in the trees as I walked through to the lake. The paths were muddy but passable and although it was gloomy it was good Autumn walking.

Orrell Water Park 

There was a crowd of black-headed gulls, mallards and moorhens over by the car park and a handful of coots mooched about midwater away from the anglers. There were just a few coots and a couple of moorhens on the top pool.

Greenslate Water Meadows 

Greenslate Water Meadows was busy with a mixed flock of titmice and chaffinches. About a dozen blue tits bounced about in the company of a handful each of long-tailed tits and great tits, a dozen or so chaffinches, a coal tit and a treecreeper. I suspect there were more I was missing in the dogwoods and willows on the other side of the brook near the entrance. Robins bobbed about by the paths, wrens grumbled in the undergrowth and every bush with berries had two or three blackbirds making inroads on them. Overhead there was a steady passage of woodpigeons and the first of the jackdaws were flying off to roost.

Treecreeper

Greenslate Water Meadows 

Walking back past the top pool there was a flash of electric blue as a kingfisher flew from the bankside into the trees on the island.

It will surprise the reader not one bit to find the  next two trains from Orrell to Manchester were cancelled. Nor that when I got off the bus at Wigan Wallgate the station was packed because there were cancellations on the Southport line as well. Given the number of cancellations someone at Northern Rail decided it was a good idea to run the next Southport to Oxford Road train as a two-carriage service instead of the usual four. When I got to Oxford Road my train home was cancelled. It looks like we're in for a Winter wonderland of fun on the trains.

Orrell Station