It is only about fifteen minutes from Burscough into Ormskirk by any number of busses so do not need to clock watch and time the walk to the bus stop too accurately.
This is such a wonderful house, the entrance cannot be much more than a front door leading to corridor to get to the house proper. It's not even as wide as a car at the nearest end.

Took the train to Southport (Formby) for a days swimming but it turned out to be a prolonged paddle along the beach looking for all the little jelly fish that had washed up and were drying out in the sunshine.

Train to Southport then Mersey rail to Formby where we can walk to the nature reserve bordering Sefton Sands that is home to Red Squirrels. Try as we may we did not see any red squirrels. We did walk along the sands for about 4 miles ending up at Ainsdale Beach from where we walked to the Mersey rail station at Ainsdale for our return journey. As usual I took a picnic with use which we consumed somewhere in the dunes between Formby and Ainsdale..

My No2 enjoyed the Sefton Sands walk and Red Squirrel spotting so much that we did it again, but this time in reverse order, Ainsdale first and then along the beach to Formby. Still no red Squirrel sightings but we did find out the best time to see them. Unfortunately Red Squirrel sighting times do not coincide with public transport times.
We did however have time to cruise the three miles to Heaton Bridge so as not to overstay on the Burscough moorings.

Having visited Lydiate we both decided that Burscough is a much better place to base ourselves as the transport links are so much better, so we only stayed the one night.

We do need to take our time getting back to Burscough so as not to antagonise CRT and their continuous cruising rules.

To call it a Grand Canyon is a bit of a misnomer as it is just a long straight stretch of canal in a cutting, but it does give it a bit of mystery.
I have so many stools now it is hard to find places for them all. I suppose I could put them on the towpath with a for sale sticker on them but I would have to keep an eye on them and bring them in every time I wanted to go shopping (which is most days) and every night. Nah, I won't do that. I will probably end up giving them away.

Called in to Scarisbrick Marina.

Dennis.

Iowner.

Some people are either ignorant or just plain selfish. The grass verges along the tow path are carefully maintained by Canal and River Trust so as to provide a corridor for wildlife but when an obstacle, like the whole path being concreted over gets in the way they have to run the gauntlet of all sorts of predators, not the least of which is probably the cat owned by the thoughtless person who did this.

Trip to Parbold uneventful.