Useless Information ....

.... but it might help someone in a pub-quiz?

Coming from Blackrod and traveling along Little Scotland, where it changes into Tucker's Hill Brow, into Haigh. If you look to each side of the road, on your right is the Ribble drainage basin and on your left is the Mersey drainage basin.
Two springs emerge from a fault there. One goes into the Ribble, via the Douglas. The other goes into the Mersey via Borsdane Brook, Hey Brook and the Glaze.

Not many know that!

And at the border between the Wigan and Bolton Metro's, a bloody big gas pipe was laid across the fields and under the road just inside the Wigan Metro border

I think, but I'm not certain, that the brooks I referred to above are used as the border between the two councils.

Well it looks like the drainage ditches at the side of the fields, doo drain and go in the direction yoo say, although the hill to the left is higher up than the road, and rain water in that field would flow towards the River Douglas, the drainage ditch at the side of the field/road, carries the water down to the border and away to the left, which will mean it will end up in the River Mersey

Tommy,
If that "bloody big gas pipeline" was laid in 2000 then I made a good few bob out of it. Thank your lucky stars it was laid or you may have had supply problems. If it is the one I think it goes from Mawdesley to Warrington.