New Moss Wood

Sketch map: New Moss Wood

New Moss Wood is a patch of dampish woodland at the edge of the Salford mosses, separated from Cadishead by the Manchester to Liverpool via Warrington line. It's good on its own for an hour or so's dawdle round or it can be added to a longer walk.

The 67 and 100 buses run down Liverpool Road and stop by Moss Road. Coming in by train, rather than walking all the way down Liverpool Road to Moss Road it's quicker to turn down Dean Road, cut through the entry at the bottom onto Allotment Road then walk through the allotments to Moss Road where it meets the railway bridge. The path through the allotments zigzags a bit and the first time you try it you might wonder if it's the right path and whether you're going the right way, don't worry, it is and you are.

(When you emerge onto Moss Road you'll see that the path continues across the road. This is the old access road for the junction where the Liverpool line met the line between Wigan and Altrincham. I've only walked part of it, into Cadishead, I've not carried on over the bridge and on to Cadishead Way. The stretch I've walked is typical Greater Manchester post-industrial hedgerows and light woodland with the usual assortment of titmice, finches, warblers and thrushes and one the worse for that.)

New Moss Wood

New Moss Wood is a Woodland Trust site that used to be market gardens. It's fairly densely planted birches, alders and oaks with a grid of rides going through them, some a lot muddier than others. In addition there are a few small pools dug to attract dragonflies and the like and some overgrown land drains providing some more boggy habitat. To the West and North, and across the road, farmland adds another habitat to the mix.

New Moss Wood 

There are two entrances, the first one from the railway bridge runs through a scrubby clearing, further along is a small car park with an entrance directly into the wood.

Jay

The birdlife is mostly typical wet woodland stuff. I've not visited it nearly often enough, my list to date is fifty-two species. Wrens and robins abound, as do titmice, thrushes and finches though they can be elusive in the latter half of the year. The usual warblers are chiffchaffs, blackcaps and whitethroats but garden warblers and willow warblers can often be found. You'll have been unlucky if you haven't seen or heard at least one buzzard. On a good day you'll have sparrowhawk and kestrel on your tally, too.

It's a site that feels like it should have willow tits somewhere about but I don't know that they've got here yet. (Willow tits seem to be finding sanctuary in the post-industrial woodlands but they're not given to dispersing quickly and so don't tend to be early colonisers of new habitats. There seems to be a tension between the availability of the new damp woodlands and the species' overall decline. It's to be hoped that the mosaic of patches of woodland between the Mersey and the Douglas provides enough stepping stones for them to increase their range and perhaps recover numbers. Anyway, I'll keep looking and listening.)

Moss Road, looking North

Having farmland round the edges of the wood adds to the mix: you should see pheasants, you might bump into grey partridges. Gulls, lapwings, skylarks, swallows and wagtails fly over and/or can be seen in the fields.

There are plenty of seats to share with dragonflies in the Summer.

Common darters

If you're wanting a more extended walk once you've explored New Moss Wood there are a few options as you walk further up Moss Road.

• A footpath to the right goes over the fields to Astley Road. From there you can walk North into Chat Moss.

• You can carry on to the end of Moss Road then follow the path into the middle section of Little Woolden Moss.

• Just before you meet the motorway you can turn left on Woolden Road and over the river onto Glazebrook Lane then walk North up to the access road to Little Woolden Hall (the first turn on the right after the motorway) and thence onto Little Woolden Moss.