Photo-a-Day  (Thursday, 10th July, 2025)

Your easily pleased Colin. WWers use to say this was the most photographed bridge in all of Wigan and make comments like isn't it lovely.but for me it was spoiled the old look when they did the path over it by just chucking concrete down.
Now they have done the towpath on the New Springs side of the Iron bridge but the have used large rocks the were to big for the job and not even bothered to roll them in .
If one walks around the canal basin you will find yourself trying to walk on the most uneven path in Wigan.
But I don't like to be negative so I won't say any more except for good photo.

Surely a picture no one can find fault with. As you say Heavenly.

Thanks to nice places like this that you can go to and get out of this horrible place that we are living in today, lovely picture.

Wouldn't I love to walk along the canal & cross that delightful bridge.
I have a fascination for canals & narrow boats...so you might guess I am an avid watcher of Robbie & his canal boat adventures. Great photo Colin !

I thought the Whelley Loop Line was the most photographed and the most boring.
Perhaps they have purposely left the footpaths rough and rocky to dissuade those Just Eat drivers and hooligans on E-Bikes modified to exceed the 15 mph speed limit put on them.
Absolute Nuisances.
Glad to see on the News this week that Police in one town were crack down on them, stopping them in the street (some had been doing up to 45 mph) then taking them away to be scraped.

Absolutely beautiful Colin, tranquility at it's best.

The weeds have taken over the bridge after saying that, weeds take over everything. Seems a lovely place.

Helen of Troy I watch the Mindful Narrowboat and find that interesting.Even though canals are picturesque they are rat infested in places

That's a lovely scene and I can look at it a million times and not tire of it. I love your words 'a portal to a different world"
My hairdresser has just moved to a new place in Hindley and when Peter drops me off he turns the car round in a little street, and the " backs" there take me straight back to my childhood where the "backs" held just rough ground and privet bushes and pens where the men kept hens and pigeons. The backs near the salon have a little path that runs off and it is MY portal, but I know if I got out of the car to investigate it would be nothing like what is in my head. Sometimes it's best to leave things in your imagination. I bet all you lovely p-a- d people think I'm losing the plot but I don't care! Helen, we have only just started watching Canal Boat Diaries and love Robbie
....what a nice man he is.

It’s the bridge itself that is the .’star’ of the photo. If I lived as near as some people do I would pull a few weeds up every time I crossed that bridge. Weeds are just plants growing in the ‘wrong’ place. Or so it’s said….they don’t reign long in my ‘heaven’.

I wouldn’t say I was easily pleased Mick, far from it but I like to think that I might have an eye for an interesting photo, which hopefully may please or interest others.
Considering that I don’t have a expensive camera or computer my little iPhone serves me well.
Perhaps the concrete was laid to strengthen the bridge or to ease the passage of those on mobility Scooters.

One humans clump of weeds is an entire living, breathing ecosystem to the insect world.

Those two iron bars attached to the bridge stonework are there to guide the towropes up and over the bridge when horses pulled barges

That person who hides behind WN6 who criticize everything. The Whelley railway line was a very important part of Wigan's history until it's closure in 1973.
Today its a beautiful walk for all the family and safe. WN6, you need to walk it sometime and maybe change your opinion of it.

Arthur’s, it was an observation of it being the most photographed bridge on WW, certainly no a criticism.
I’m sure The Whelley Loop Line which has appeared many times more than this bridge on WW is a lovely walk in its entirety and credit to the Council for restoring it as a public path but most photos just show a path with trees on either side so as a photo it doesn’t really convey much to the casual observer.
For those that have walked it I’m sure it is great and brings back lots of good memories. Now I must join that happy band of enthusiasts.

Great photo Colin I’ve rode over that bridge many many times.

I watch all these canal boater videos, and I have also met many over the years as I pedal my way along the canal.
This afternoon I will be saddling up and pedalling through Haigh Plantations and then onto the Whelley loop to the towpath, and from there I can go up, down or straight on into Ince. I'll make my decision when I get there.
To get to the Plantations, I will head up to Standish via Mill Dam wood and then down towards Wigan on the new multi-use path and then up Hall Lane.

The Eco System of insects will always find somewhere else ‘Flower Pot’. Those weeds are strong enough to damage and erode the cement holding the stones together of the bridge. As I said weeds are just plants growing in the wrong place.. if weeds are left in a garden they strangle and overpower other plants.

Mick you could get some good photos in Mill Dam / Elnup Wood, its beautiful area of woodland which I used to walk regularly when we lived in Shevington. In fact from our house we had a private access direct into the woods.

Irene, it cannot be guaranteed but in the next day or two you might see into that ‘Portal’.
No doubt if it does appear I will get some criticism for hogging PAD this week.

I agree with Arthur, a beautiful walk the old Whelley loop line, absolutely lovely.

Wn6 DID say the old railway line is boring. Far from it, some beautiful photos on pad and is indeed a great walk.

Colin, I sent one of Mill Dam Woods on the 24 May; they were in the same batch as the one showing old Tom.
Today I got some good ones, a heard of White Horses in Standish, Whelley Loop line road tunnel, the view from Rabbit Rocks, the lagoon on top of Rabbit rocks, two Jehovah's Witness ladies painting the outside of there church in Lower Ince, a pile of colured rocks placed around a tree on Westwood lane, a pile of fly tipping on Westwood lane, the tunnel under the railway line that brings you out near to the brick store in Ince, a man at Wigan pier with a poster round his neck saying he doesn't like Lisa Nandy and is sticking up for the Palestinians, an abandoned rough sleeps camp next to the flats at near to the Wigan dry dock, a film crew with Wigan ex council leader Lord Peter Smith daughter filming about the canal and the river Douglas and last of all the farmer in his Shevington field,

Colin, I saw my "portal" today as I had got my hairdressing date mixed up....I thought my appointment was yesterday but it was today. The "portal" looked tempting as it was such a beautiful day like the School Summer Holidays of my childhood but I know it would be like Gary Sparrow from "Goodnight Sweetheart" going down Duckett's Passage and finding he wasn't back in the 1940s after all, (although my childhood was the fifties and sixties). I'll keep the memories of the back field in Ince in my head where it will remain timeless and unchanged.