A Lancashire wander

The weather forecast was pretty awful but I had the fidgets so I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and I decided to have a bit of an explore, joining the dots between routes I know and checking out some of the Pennine bus services. From a birdwatching perspective it was largely a matter of counting woodpigeons, gulls and corvids but the scenery looked good, even in the pouring rain, and we passed many a good-looking small village church along the way.

Clitheroe
Just so you know I wasn't sat at home making this up.

I got the train to Chorley and the bus from there to Blackburn. Here and there there'd be small flocks of rooks or starlings to make a change from the constant diet of woodpigeons, carrion crows, magpies and jackdaws. Chorley town centre, as ever, was busy with pigeons and black-headed gulls. Here and there there the bus would stop at a junction and there'd be a hawthorn bush busy with blackbirds. Lots of fields were peppered with molehills, the moles digging new runs to try to keep above the water table. Just before the M65 interchange one of the fields was carpeted with black-headed gulls. Along the way I added to my list of interesting-looking walks.

I got to Blackburn Station just in time to watch the Clitheroe train shut up shop and leave the station. I waited twenty minutes for the Colne train and stayed on to the end, watching the damp morning become a very wet lunchtime. Along the way I'd checked bus times and decided to head North to Barnoldswick then loop round to Clitheroe and get the train from there.

As the Colne train passed Rishton Reservoir I was surprised so see so few birds, just a few black-headed gulls, coots and cormorants. I can nearly always rely on seeing a big flock of pigeons in Accrington, nearly fifty of them today. The thin pickings along the way through Burnley, Nelson and Colne was probably down to the increasingly dreich weather though it didn't seem to be putting off the pair of mute swans steaming up the canal as we left Burnley Central. Otherwise there were a lot of glum woodpigeons, magpies and jackdaws sitting in trees waiting for showers to pass. 

The buses were passing by Colne Station again so there was no trouble getting the M5 to Barnoldswick. The reservoirs at Foulridge were even higher than on my last visit but I couldn't see much on them from the bus. A couple of herons were squabbling in a field as we passed New Hague, one of them flying in specifically to have a quarrel. There were a lot of collared doves on the television aerials of Earby and a big flock of black-headed gulls in a field outside Salterforth.

At Barnoldswick I literally stepped off the M5 and flagged down the 280 to Clitheroe following right behind. This is the Skipton to Preston bus. From here it heads North through Bracewell then West and swings down through Gisburn and Chatburn into Clitheroe. Even on a grim December afternoon the scenery's fine. Although I didn't see many rooks about there are some fair-sized rookeries around Gisburn. We passed a buzzard and a carrion crow sharing a small tree, the usual hostilities apparently suspended, rain stopped play.

I had ten minutes to wait for the Manchester train at Clitheroe. By my reckoning the light was going to fail by Darwen, in the event we'd got to Wayoh Reservoir when I gave up looking out of the window. Inevitably the bird life was nearly all woodpigeons, pigeons and corvids. A heron stalked a damp field near Lower Standen. A couple of buzzards shared a tree North of Wilpshire. A couple of Canada geese overtook the train as it slowed for the junction South of Blackburn and they headed off towards the city centre. Oddly, they were the first I'd seen all day. I got my full set of Lancashire corvids when the train flushed a jay sitting in a trackside hawthorn in Lower Darwen, by this time the light was so bad I was seeing this bird in shades of grey. A couple of dozen herring gulls were fussing about just North of the M65, I suspect they were heading to roost on Fishmoor Reservoir.

Humphrey Park trains

Despite the weather I'd had a good day out. There weren't a lot of birds about but I'd broadened my horizons and the scenery was worth looking at. Needless to say, it all fell apart when it got to getting home from Oxford Road. It wasn't a good evening for our local train service.