Pennington Flash Bike Ride | Solar Eclipse Fail | Dover Lock Inn Drone Flight

A bike ride along the Leeds Liverpool Canal (Leigh Branch) to Pennington Flash to try observing the Partial Solar Eclipse on 29th March 2025…

Pennington Flash Country Park is a 200-hectare (490-acre) country park located between Lowton and Leigh in Greater Manchester, England.

History
A flash is a water-filled hollow formed by subsidence. Pennington Flash is a 70-hectare (170-acre) lake created at the beginning of the 20th century by coal mining subsidence, mainly from Bickershaw Colliery. Before the flash the area contained two farms, both of which were abandoned in the early 1900s due to flooding. During the 1960s and 1970s the idea to convert the flash for recreation was emerging and the country park was opened in 1981.

Nature
Pennington Flash Country Park is a nature reserve. Over 230 bird species have been recorded on site including black-faced bunting, nightingale, marsh harrier, spoonbill and Leach’s storm-petrel. Additionally, a wide variety of butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies can be spotted in the area.

Facilities
Facilities include a small information centre, Pennington Flash café, a nine-hole municipal golf course, a car park with electric vehicle charging points, a children’s play area, toilets, picnic and recreation areas, eight bird hides, fishing on certain shores, sailing, windsurfing and rowing through Leigh and Lowton Sailing Club. There is a network of tracks and footpaths suitable for walkers, cyclists, horse riders, joggers and wheelchair users. A Parkrun takes place every Saturday morning.

A course here would have been the venue for rowing and canoeing if the Manchester bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics had been successful.

**Dover Lock Inn, Abram, Wigan**

Sad to observe the condition of The Dover Lock Inn at Abram during a recent canal-side walk. The pub was known originally as The White Lion. An advertisement for the sale by auction of “the aforesaid Public House, recently erected, and known by the sign of the White Lion; together with the stable, gardens, and other appurtenances belonging thereto” appeared in the 7 August 1830 edition of the Manchester Guardian.

In his “Memorials of Abram” (1882), (see link below) John Leyland records that “The Old Dover Inn … stood opposite where the old stocks are placed in the centre of Dover hamlet. About 50 years since the license was removed to a new house erected on the canal bank, not many yards distant from the public road, in the expectation, it is presumed, that the new site would extend the business.” So it seems to have proved, for 35 people were on boats in the vicinity of the pub on the night of the 1841 census. The name had been changed to The Red Lion by 1858. A century later it was changed again to The Dover Lock Inn. In more recent times licensees struggled to turn a profit, possibly not helped by the decommissioning of the adjacent locks. In December 2021 the building was twice set on fire after standing empty for a number of years.