Nick Burton is your guide to this walk around Rishton

Your walk

START: Cut Lane, Rishton. Off the A678 Blackburn Road. Some roadside parking by the entrance to Cutwood Park. This walk can also be started from Rishton train station 10 minutes walk away.

DISTANCE: 4½ miles (allow 2 -3 hours) or 5½ miles if starting from the train station.

MAP: OS Explorer 287 West Pennine Moors

This walk between Blackburn and Rishton links two old transport routes. First, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal of the late 18th century, here quite close to its halfway point at nearby Church. The Rishton Reservoir was created to provide water for the canal.

Running parallel to this is the old route of the Great Harwood Loop, a branch line of the East Lancashire Railway that linked Blackburn with Burnley and had stations at Great Harwood, Simonstone, Padiham and Rose Grove.

Like the earlier canal, the 1870s railway was created for the demands of transporting coal to the industries of the East Lancashire towns.

When you stand on the old railway bridge at Cut Lane you can look in the Blackburn direction and see no trace of the old line but the route east to Great Harwood is now a useful footpath and cycleway.

1. If starting from the railway station walk down Station Road then turn left into Highfield Road passing the cricket club on the left to reach Blackburn Road. Turn left along the main road past the war memorial and cross over to turn right after a quarter of a mile down Cut Lane by woodland.

Walk down the lane past the houses on the right and enter the open fields to pass Cut Farm on the left. Continue straight ahead under the pylons and cross the bridge over the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The farm track continues straight ahead and soon bends left then sharp right to reach another stone bridge before the farm buildings at Lower Cunliffe are reached. The bridge crosses over the old Blackburn to Padiham railway line.

2. Do not cross the bridge but instead turn right to join a narrow path that leads to the old railway line. Continue straight ahead following the old line and after about two thirds of a mile mile you pass under a road bridge.

Keep going straight ahead along the old line, past a playing field on the right and when the path is joined by another path on the right just keep going straight ahead, still on the route of the railway.

The path drops downhill past a tree in the middle of the path and crosses over a bridge just before a cemetery is reached on the left.

3. Leave the old railway line here by turning right and going down an incline to join a track which emerges from beneath the railway bridge. Go straight ahead and the track, an old road, crosses Norden Brook then bears left uphill to enter the hamlet of Tottleworth. Continue straight ahead along the lane leading out of the hamlet and after half a mile it reaches the A road.

4. Turn right and follow the pavement along the road into Rishton. After about a third of a mile the road crosses a bridge over the canal.

Turn right and join the canal towpath here. Follow the towpath for about one-and-a-quarter miles. After passing under pylons leave the canal at the next bridge. Go under the bridge and leave it via steps on the right to rejoin Cut Lane.

Turn right and cross over the canal, retracing your steps past Cut Farm towards Rishton.