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Exploring by bike around Chat Moss. Railway friends will know of this as the area of peat bog that was famously crossed by George Stephenson's Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830. Since then much of the 10 square miles of Moss has been drained and is now agricultural land; there is a criss-cross network of roads and drains. Many of these carried narrow gauge railways in the 19th and into the 20th Century for the dumping of Manchester and Salford's "night soil", and later for peat collection. There are a couple of smaller areas that are maintained as "true" moss habitats and are Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Here are a few photos; captions against each. If you look at the photos of Little Woolden Moss nature reserve, you can realise what George Stephenson and his surveyors had to contend with nearly 200 years ago. For a map of the area see Open Street Map.