The ski equipment and ski clothing retail outlet of Rivington Alpine, situated within Adlington South Business Village, Adlington, has long held a team collecting box since the days when they were situated in Horwich.

Visiting for the first time today to look at purchasing some new skis, our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, and his partner Ann Thompson, a former Bolton MRT member, both keen downhill skiers, were amused by the Rivington and Anglezarke Ski Resort Piste Map on full wall display at the entrance to the retail premises!

With a keen sense of humour, and with a nod towards global warming (or rather global cooling) the Piste Map is a fanciful look at what might be, if things became cold and Rivington and Angelzarke was developed to become a huge ski resort – with a link to the neighbouring ski resort of Darwen Tower!

Perhaps not that fanciful, for those geologists amongst our readership who will know that back in the last Ice Age, Wigan and the Lancashire plain lay under an incredible 1 kilometre thick ice sheet, with only the very top of Winter Hill lying above the ice sheet.

Garry despite his advanced age (before any team member states such) cannot remember these times, but he can remember the local winters of the late 1970s when a ski club from the Blackpool area? regularly set up a portable ski tow, on the lower slopes of Rivington Moor, between the South Lodge entrance to the Terraced Gardens and the Lower House area of Rivington.

Ah well those skiers (and yes even the Boarders !) in the Bolton MRT membership can only dream that such a fanciful idea could become a reality … this said Garry once skied on downhill skis from Winter Hill Summit to Rivington Pike, and thence via Georges Lane and Pike Cottage down the open fields to Lever Park entrance where the snow finally gave way slush!