The Rotary Way
The Rotary Way footpath was established in 2005 to celebrate the centenary of the foundation of the Rotary Club. The walk is just over 50 miles around the boundaries of Bolton and is broken down into eight more manageable stages, each starting and finishing on a bus route. Indeed, getting the bus would be sensible since the stages are all linear and hence do not finish at the start point!
Many walkers head for the hills in the north of the borough and ignore the lower-level but equally interesting possibilities offered by the eastern and western parts of Bolton. Now, follow the Rotary Way and see what you have missed: there is interest all the way round.
The walk aims to keep close to the Bolton boundary on paths which are defined legal rights of way and avoids roads wherever possible.
Some of the paths followed by the walk are rough and they may at times be muddy, flooded, frozen, dusty or obstructed. At two points on the same stage, the walk even goes along designated footpaths through several domestic gardens!
If you plan to do the whole route (and indeed even if you only wish to do some of it), you may find the Rotary Way booklet to be very useful, with detailed breakdowns of each stage (although be warned – some of the bus numbers and routes are a little out of date!) and sketch maps to help you on your way. If you wish to get your copy, get in touch with the Westhoughton branch of the Rotary Club using the ‘contact us’ form on their website and enquire.
Bothways
Sadly, the first ¾ of a mile is along a road without much in the way of a pavement and where cars can come flying along at any point, so do take care, particularly if with young children. However, despite the monotony of straight tarmac, the views on a sunny day over the hills are spectacular.
The name of this cache (with the first half pronounced ‘both’ to rhyme with ‘froth’) presented itself when a member of our team (I shall name no names) who was ‘guiding’ us along our way looked at the 480 bus stop, marked only on one side of the road, and pronounced that we must now be in ‘Bothways’. Needless to say, TfGM had evidently missed a space and the sign should have read ‘Both ways’. We laughed more than was probably sane at this point.