Rossendale Way

What sort of track is it? Fancy having a ride up to Lee quarry and looks like i can ride there pretty much off road from my house, incorporating Rossendale Way.

Where is your house?

The Rossendale Way is a 47 mile circular walk so officially a lot of it is footpath and not bridleway (if not all of it????).

You might want to see if the Pennine Bridleway is near your house too as that would be totally legal.

i’m in Bolton.

It’s a tough one to try and think of an off road route to Lee Quarry from Bolton. There are quite a few rough/farm tracks from Rammy up to Rooley Moor Road via Edenfield but nothing really direct to Lee Quarry.

If you by-pass Rammy to the north and go via Edgworth, you get stuck having to ride (legally) on road pretty much from Haslingden to Bacup. There is an off road route from the back of the ski slope in Rawtenstall to Waterfoot, but it’s about 10 miles compared to 3 on the road.

I’ve also remembered that there is a bridleway from Edgworth to Rammy round Holcombe Hill. It goes round the back of the TA Training camp where they used to hold the original Krypton Factor assault course.

There are a couple of leaflets available free from Lancashire County Council that list a few routes round Rawtenstall and some in the forest of Bowland.

Depending where in Bolton you are the easiest might be canal into Bury via Radcliffe and then up onto Rooley, down the PB towards Cowpe and along the southern side of the Irwell valley to the quarry. Plenty of offroad with some short road sections.
If you’re in north Bolton you’re looking at a route incorporating Holcombe Hill.
Not easy to piece something together.

I can go either way, live north Bolton and work in bury so pretty familiar with most routes around, it was just getting from rammy to lee quarry that i wasn’t sure about.

There’s some of the national cycle way that runs from Rammy towards haslingden on a disused railway line (can’t remember what number it is). You could then head towards Edenfield and over the tops past the new wind farm or via Sandbeds Lane (on google maps) and then pick up Rooley Moor Road.

Or

Head through Summerseat up to the A56 then use some of the roads that are named on google maps, like Bury Old Road, Bamford Road etc, (they might be named roads but I wouldn’t want to drive my car down most of them) to get across to Rochdale/Edenfield Road. You could then drop down into Norden (I used to live there) and use some of the tracks/farm roads to get to Rooley Moor Road that way. The only problem with this routes is the climb out of Rochdale on Rooley Moor Road. It’s a B*tch!

You might not want to do any circuits of Lee Quarry by the time you get there!!!

From your reply Wors, I guess you’re just looking for a route to Lee Quarry from Bury?
Well, this shows a loop you could take. There are a lot of variations between Irwell Vale and Rooley, this is just one example.
Lee circular

Stranger

Nice route planning. Do you have more details, like how many miles that loop is?

Is it from a GPS?

Cheers Stranger, thats near enough what i had in mind fromm the rammy side of things but coming over through edgworth from bolton.

The route is a combination of bits and pieces (I’ve not ridden it all together) and comes in at about 30 miles with 1500m of climbing.
Mind you, the length does depend on how many loops of the quarry you do! 🙂
I might be inclined to go down Gin Croft Lane if it’s not icy – that would cut out a climb and some pushing near the top of the Coal Road.
Wors, I’d go for the anti-clockwise loop, come over on the canal via Radcliffe and finish via Moorbottom Lane to Crowthorne.
That would be a good ride!