I headed west out of my home town, down the steps just past the bridge between The Old Packet House and the Burscough Wharf, surprised at how many canal barges lined this usually quiet stretch of canal.

Old and new merge here, the red brick estate with ‘For Sale’ signs that are all too commonly taking over green fields in this part of West Lancashire and the old industrial factory, a relic of a time when the canal system was used more for function than for pleasure.

This brief section of the canal isn’t the prettiest, with wire fencing and scrap metal yards on one side and a football field and housing estate on the other, but it does still yield some lovely reed bankings sheltering various birds, with young coots and moorhens flitting in and out and is still a stark reminder of the area’s past.

Coal from across the Pennines and textiles from deeper in Lancashire all came down this canal to be used in the boom of the Industrial Revolution or to be shipped around the world in the first example of true global commerce. It’s what made this area so key, all the way up to the mid 1990s, with Burscough itself chosen as a strategic position for an airbase during World War II. The remnants of that can still be seen, with concrete pillboxes dotted up and down this section of the canal, made in a hurry as a defence in case of a German invasion.

The canal very quickly turns into countryside and agriculture. Passing The Slipway pub and a row of quaint cottages, albeit adorned with the red flags celebrating Liverpool’s league win, highlighting how close to the Merseyside border we really are here, the land opens up to enable me to see for what feels like miles around. Summer crops are mid-growth and are almost blinding in their vivid green hue against a cloudy-but-still-blue sky.

Little clusters of hawthorns provide shelter for songbirds, which were really on form. European goldfinches, greenfinches, sedge warblers, reed warblers, yellowhammers, siskins, reed buntings, sparrows and dunnocks all make for a cacophony of trills. Better than anything I can play on Spotify.

A stunning little woodland sits just off to the right hand side as you approach Scarisbrick. I’ve always loved the idea of tending a woodland like that one day. I almost said “owning” there, but I find that idea troublesome these days when it comes to nature. Owning feels like a dirty concept when it comes to something that was here long before I was and will be long after, living and breathing more than I ever will in my lifetime, nurturing countless species, cradling its own little world.

A long, disused swing bridge that once connected farmers fields sits rusting, whilst a variety of plants and even a young sycamore weave their way through it, reclaiming what was once nature’s back into the environment.

And then boats again, and caravans too, as I enter Scarisbrick, with the marina off to my right full of brightly coloured barges.

But as quickly as civilisation appeared, it disappears again, as both sides of the canal fall away to, if possible, even flatter farmland than before. The crops seem to have flourished this year, but the telltale sign of the spring drought are evident – I’ve just crossed the second thick pipe pumping water from the canal directly into the fields.

I can see Gorsuch Lane off to my right, a sign I’m near the end, which of course will be a pint in the Saracen’s Head.

Distance: 6 miles

Rating: 3.75/5

Difficulty: Easy.

Pint: A decent Guinness

I love the ease of this walk, straight out of my front door and you couldn’t get flatter. The little pockets of nature are lovely, as is the solitude, but the almost industrial farming does leave a slightly sour taste in the mouth.