Ormske one

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A decent route between Ormskirk and Skelmersdale using roads and footpaths. One section is a little different to how it's displayed, but I'll cover this is a bit.

From Ormskirk station (with bus station and shops also nearby, and a little café on the platform), we head through town using paved roads until we reach Ruff Lane. This heads out into the countryside once we're past the university and hospital. Turning onto an unpaved road once we're beyond Ruff Wood, it becomes paved around the corner as we're passing houses. Eventually, as we reach the church, an earth and stone footpath runs around the churchyard. It's quite narrow, between hedges, but opens out into a farmtrack. This takes us to Westhead.

Westhead is a small settlement on a well-paved road with a couple of pubs. Once we're through the village, we head back out into the country along a paved road, and then escape along along farmtrack. Past the houses, the track diverts and narrows into a grassy footpath. Past a ruined house, we're on an unpaved tarmac drive, passing paintball venues and fishing ponds.

Crossing a road, another quiet unpaved road with old farms and barns. At its end, a footpath, but this is where it's a bit different on the ground. On both the route map and OS maps, the footpath is supposed to go straight across, but the ground appears to be prepared for building works (there's lots of houses popping up around here!); there's a tarmac footpath running across the site, but on a different angle. At it's end, left onto a grass footpath, trees on your right, until we reach a fingerpost (it points to where we should have come from, so perhaps it'll open up again once the houses are built?).

The footpath away from the fingerpost can be muddy, and passes a substation and industrial units, until we reach a roundabout. Here we head straight ahead (no crossings or pavements, but lots of wide grass verges), and onto our first paved road of Skelmersdale.

It's best to use the tarmacced path through Kiln Park (again the route map and OS maps show footpaths where there aren't really any across just grass), and past the school and church, onto paved roads once more. A few more roads, and we join a tarmac footpath heading uphill and under the jetties of houses. There's stair access to the footbridge on the right (continue ahead until the end for access to the ramp of the same footbridge). Once over the footbridge, a tarmac footpath up to the houses, where we join another footpath that takes us past the amphitheatre and, once over a little bridge, up past the playgrounds and onto the paved plateau of the library and Concourse, with its shops and bus station, and this route's terminus.

A good route with a couple of currently inaccurate sections, although not enough to rewrite it.

Plenty interesting things to see like old railway track beds and nice countryside between Skelmersdale and Ormskirk. Can be a bit muddy in places.

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