The Salt Line.

While Mrs TD and her sister went to a quilt show, I went back to The Salt Line where we took Alfie the other day in the pouring rain. This time the sun was shining.

It is a joint use path that follows the route of the old railway line which serviced the salt works that existed here. The industry started 220 million years ago when a coastal inlet allowed the sea to flood the area create a system of salt marshes and lay down the salt deposit in what is now known as the Cheshire Basin.

At nearby Northwich, in the first century AD, the Romans appeared and started working the salt, and numerous artefacts (a fort, kilns and lead salt pans) have been found. Later, in 1670, a local family, digging an exploratory mine for coal, found salt and started mining it. In the nineteenth century, mining became uneconomical so they started using water as a solvent for extraction but, predictably, this caused the land to subside.

The blip was near the Borrow Pit Meadows park, at Alsager; the pit was used for landfill, and then landscaped to incorporate a sizable lake full of large goldfish. Documentation is scanty, but one could guess that the pit was a collapsed salt mine. Apart from the methane vents with notices warning of explosive atmosphere, it's a very pleasant area which has plenty of wildlife including a meadow full of cowslips.