Pennington Flash

Just couldn't resist showing you this sign besides the canal.  Obviously keen for pedestrians to do a bit of swimming!

Pennington Flash is a pleasant area of open water, reed beds, scrub, maturing woodland and grassland close to Leigh and alongside the Leeds to Liverpool canal.  It's a great place to visit to see birdlife as there are many hides within the park that let you get quite close to a large variety of bird species.  The first shot in this post gives you a glimpse of the canal.  I must admit to being somewhat amused by the sign.

So what is a "flash"?  I'd never realised this, but apparently, flashes are lakes formed over time from mining subsidence.  I understand the area around Pennington was often liable to floods, but in 1905 the land began to sink, two farms were submerged and some of the railway lines were flooded.  Huge amounts of coal had been extracted by local collieries to cause the effect.  The flash is quite large, but not as large as it was originally.  Colliery and domestic waste has been used fill in certain parts of the flash to prevent flooding.  Now it's a lovely place to visit to relax, have a gentle stroll and enjoy the local birdlife.  I was quite taken with the trees coming into bud and new leaves appearing.  Many of the trees back in New Zealand are evergreen and we don't see the wide scale effect of large numbers of apparently dead trees sprouting new growth.  I'll close this post with a few shots of "spring" from Pennington Flash.

Spring!

Back in the UK now and the weather is glorious!  Amazing I know.  Not renown for good weather, Manchester is normally associated with dreary, wet and miserable conditions, but not just now.  The skies are clear and blue.  Yesterday I couldn't find a cloud in the sky.  It's also warm.  Record highs are being broken for this time of the year and we're enjoying temperatures in the low twenties.  Very pleasant indeed.  There's also lots of flowers and blooms springing in to life.  It's really a very pretty time of the year and the weather is just perfect.  The first two shots in this post are of some blooms in my parents' front gardens.  Very pretty.

New leaves ... spring very much on the way here in the UK.

All this lovely weather is causing some problems though.  They're now a little short of water!  The next two shots were taken at Anglezark, a local reservoir.  In this you can see just how low the water has gone and imagine how low it will go if this lovely weather continues.

Anglezarke reservoir.

Anglezarke reservoir.  Geese in the foreground, blue skies, and very low water levels.