A walk around Manchester Golf Course. Take 2.

 As i mentioned in the previous post, it wasn't until we got home from our walk did we realise that a trig point existed within the golf course.

We never came across it and so we had to go back and visit said OS marker.

We walked a little further this visit, 10km in total.

Here is the photo of us at the trig point and also we was surprised to encounter even more deer than last time. 6 in all.

2 of the 6 Roe Deer.

When we looked at an old victorian map of the area there used to be a branch canal leading from the Rochdale canal at Trub and terminated at the wharf in Heywood. It was filled in years ago when the M62 motorway was built but after a bit of a search on Google Earth the course of it can be worked out. We wondered if we could find any of it still on the ground.

We think we did. The photograph below is the only bit of "canal" that we think still exists. It is overgrown but it is the right width, in the right area and going in the right direction. There was also some stone blocks to be seen which would have been the embankment. 

The canal opened in 1834 and was worked until 1937 when most goods travelled by train. It. was subsequently filled in.

A walk around Manchester Golf Course.

 Because of lockdown rules closing golf courses, Manchester golf course management have opened up the course for the general public to walk around. A splendid idea.

I have never been on the course before and i never realised just how big it was or how wonderful it is to walk around it. It was well worth doing and we clocked up just over 7km.

We started off walking down the Rochdale canal before joining the slip road into the course. The Canada geese were very friendly.

The Course club house which now includes the Nineteenth Hole has lots of Ancient History and was originally called Hopwood Cottage and was part of the Hopwood Hall estates which date back to the 12 century, it had a boating lake with a boat house and a very unique ice house. These still exist today.

Hopwood Ice House. You can just make out the curved brickwork which was the domed roof.

Cottage Pond. Not sure where the boat house was.

Hopwood Cottage clubhouse, now extended.

Zoom shot, the original cottage. The club is the second oldest club in England although it hasn't always played here.

Becoming ominously dark. The hills were dissapearing.

Nice colour in the rough

Daffodils with a prikly existance.

I didn't realise the course was this old.

A nosey occupant of a neighbouring field.

I was just taking this picture when a Deer ran out from the trees and past us. It was gone in a flash so i didn't get a photo. We thought we might see another but we didn't. That was until maybe 20 minutes later and in a dense coppice i spot this beauty below.

Zoom shot of a Roe Deer.

We tried to get closer to it by walking in a large circle behind it but it heard us and we just caught a glimpse of it's white behind as it ran away.

Super Zoom shot of the monument on Tandle Hill.

There are quite big areas which are left as rough pasture which i think is a great for animal life. 

Trub Brook winds its way through the course.

A stump full of Brackets.

A new range is being constructed and all the white dots you can see are hundreds if not thousands of golf balls. As a kid we would have been in here picking them up and selling them. But it looks like they are just going to get buried by the Caterpillar D6 that Sheila is stood aside below. Cost new £400-£500K

We covered just over 7km on the course and it was an eye opener of what a lovely area it is to walk. It's a shame that it couldn't remain open to the public after the course re-opens.

On the way back we spotted this colourful rooster.