Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
Easy reach for us by train or bus or car, it's a never ending source of change. When it's finished it'll be great! The station is a good place to arrive with the extensive tram network beautifully melded with the trains. Chetham's Library and School of Music, and the ancient site of Manchester Grammar School are just outside the station, along with The National Football Museum. Selfridge's and some excellent shopping comes next. Along Deansgate Barton Arcade is impressive. and the old and new wing of John Ryland's (see article in Country Life) are both amazing. We were hunting sofas and crossed the Irwell for our day's shopping. Interesting developments all round. On King Street we've been to Pep's restaurant Tast a couple of times and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. This time it was El Gato Negro, good food, good service...... I do love the imagination displayed everywhere in Manchester, here a bobbin chandelier in a shoe shop....
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A 20 minute drive for us, and we are at the pretty perfect village of Dunsop Bridge. Parking in the village carpark (necessary in Summer I expect), this is the view immediately over the road. Vey nice too. Even nicer, we saw a mother duck with 14 little ducklings (we were later to see a duck with but a single offspring for whom we then felt very sorry). What a simply gorgeous day for a walk - there have been many recently. We started down what looked like a private drive, almost making us feel we were trespassing, but not to worry we weren't. The house was called Redwoods, and the trees lining the drive were certainly impressive. Heading in the direction we wanted the scenery along the Hodder was delightful Unfortunately we reached an inlet which had had a wooden style come bridge which had collapsed into the river, and we couldn't proceed without getting our feet wet. A quick examination of the map took us back to Redlands and a walk in the opposite direction... A good choice, as within minutes we were away from everything and everybody with just the birds and sheep to keep us company. This was not a river crossing for us but an aqueduct... This particular bridge, our bridge, was not to my liking, so F. went across first, checked the amount of wobble (quite a lot), and I meekly followed. The walk was perfect - beautiful scenery, quiet, blue skies, tinkling river, trees ready to burst into leaf, gambling lambs. Could every day of retirement be like this?
We are very lucky in having a large number of nice walks straight from our door. The only problem with this particular walk is that it crosses a busy dual carriageway twice. But after walking through some pretty countryside with Pendle there as always...... ...when you get there Pendleton is a pretty stone village with a stream running down the middle of the main street, and an excellent pub (by all accounts). We did a few walks to Waddington in the snow - this time starting off on the bridge over the Ribble and through the grounds of Waddington Hall....
Meols Hall is only open a few days each year so we decided to take advantage of our HH membership and drive over to Southport (just over an hour away). We were so glad we did - it was an extremely enjoyable day. Rather strangely this is a 1960's house in essence - rebuilt by Roger Hesketh scion of the family who have lived here for hundreds of years. He himself acted as architect and surveyor, and using materials salvaged from two other Lancashire country houses that had been pulled down, Bold Hall and Lathom Hall, transformed what had become a run-down farmhouse into a Palladian mansion. The inside of the house was given a huge amount of thought and rooms were designed around the family pictures and furniture, and conversely the placement of everything influenced by the rooms themselves. Unlike most houses where you get some boring information about say a painting, the cribs were very detailed and very very interesting. The staff were friendly and informative too. The library was designed around this fantastic painting of a horse 'Portrait of a Favourite Hunter'. Very imposing indeed. Two matching Chinese lacquer cabinets are actually on Engish legs as you can see from the clawed feet, so the pieces are 'marriages' - the sort of detail that the cribs are full of. In fact this is an example of what was really good about this house.....all the time you are forced to look with fresh eyes, no bad thing. The back of the house reveals how Roger Hesketh used the Georgian bricks of the other houses to create a Georgian illusion. The pavilions on either side of the lawn were lovely, each with a painting or two, and the grate for a very small fire. What a charming place to sit and read on a winter's day. Churchtown where Meols is located is part of Southport but is like a small village full of interesting buildings, including The Hesketh Arms which is where I often ended up after a pub crawl with relatives in Southport, so remembered well. The Botanic Gardens are also located over the road, with some handsome aviaries.
Today, a brilliant winter's day, we took the opportunity to explore Waddington a bit more on our regular walk..... The almshouses (for which Frances is eligible) are set round a pretty green.... and there are pleasant buildings all round in the village... Anyhow we headed for the church which we knew would be open (unlike many).... The oldest part of the present church is the tower, which was completed around 1501. The nave and chancel were rebuilt in 1894, giving the building a distinctly Victorian air. The church is built of local sandstone under a stone slate roof. The layout is fairly simple, with an aisled nave, chancel, transepts, west tower, and a south porch. The nave has a clerestory to admit more light. The 15th-century west tower has three stages, with an embattled parapet and decorative gargoyles. Cut into the north-west buttress are the arms of the Tempest family and a worn crucifix. Inside, you can see the roofline of the original medieval church against the inner face of the tower wall. Over the west door are a row of nine medieval carved heads, which appear to have bee re-set here during the Victorian restoration. The large east window is Tudor, as are the south aisle windows. Perhaps the most interesting memorial is a 17th-century wall monument on the south wall of the chancel to Christopher Wilkinson. There are several very good memorial to the Parker family of Browsholme Hall. Another interesting historical monument - and much easier to miss - is a small brass memorial plaque to William Calverley (d 1690) who served as the vicar of Waddington for 50 years. The Latin inscription translates as: William Calverley was Priest of this Church for fifty years. He was held in the highest regard as a vigilant pastor and counsellor, an untiring and eloquent preacher and outstanding model of piety and goodness, who retained all his faculties to an advanced age. His death was a grief to his parishioners who live in hope of the Resurrection. He died in full vigour at the age of eighty-eight years, on July 12, in the year of our Redemption 1690. May his fame last after death. The font dates to the early 16th century and is carved from local sandstone. The font bowl is carved with shields bearing the instruments of the Passion. Well worth a visit.
Spring Wood is just outside Whalley and has a convenient car park. It is famous in these parts for its display of bluebells. It was owned by monks from Whalley Abbey and was described as being “one bow shot East of the Abbey” in 1553. We were too early for the bluebells, but had a pleasant stroll round the longest circuit....... This didn't take us long so we decided to walk up through Whalley golf club to Deer Park Wood. It being Covid lock-down, we didn't have to duck...... We were walking up Clerk hill which is a little bit steeper than it looks... with extensive views (on a clear day) as we neared the top. Entering Deer Park Wood itself we followed the path up to the quarry rather than entering the woodland itself to find the pre-historic fort (another day). We came out on the outskirts of Wiswell (very nice pub, but for eaters not drinkers), and there got chatting to two other old codgers who we then followed up a stream bed to the quarry. We probably wouldn't have gone this way but for them. From the quarry down was nice walking with some attractive farms and manor houses......
This is the second of our 'Go-to' walks, starting at the same point as the Clitheroe Sculpture Park walk. We head over quite pleasant fields (boggy sometimes), looking back at Pendle now and again..... Waddington has three excellent pubs, amazing for such a small village...the HIgher Buck ...Waddington Arms.... and the Lower Buck.....can't wait to try them.
Normally we walk to Bradford bridge through the sculpture park. This time we parked at Bradford bridge and walked in the opposite direction to where the Chatburn to Grindleton road crosses the Ribble. The walk was along one bank and back on the other bank....nice if you like rivers!
We'd only seen Eaves Hall in the distance from Clitheroe Sculpture Park, but we devised a likely looking walk incorporating it from nearby Waddington. It looks a splendid place - this is just the lodge - however it does seem to be for weddings only, so we won't be visiting...... It's funny but it always seems to be the start of a walk that poses the most difficulties in direction. In this case the public path marked on the map was nowhere to be seen - in fact seemed to be blocked off by a private house. So we entered uphill. Nice ancient woodland, covered at this time of year with ransoms with bluebells to come..... It looks as if this is a well-constructed walk....but far from it. There were very muddy sections, quagmires in fact, and certain places where the path ahead wasn't exactly clear. Plenty of steps and ups and downs... and at the bottom of the wood, below a caravan park a large derelict building with a very long run of men's urinals inside.....very unexpected! One of the largest stiles we have come across - didn't block the way as we walked to the side of it. A stile to nowhere! After exiting the wood which had been nearly a mile long we came across a group of renovated houses with quite smart reconstructed stone walls... and these sheep were the friendliest we have ever come across....they followed Frances as if she had bags of feed in each hand........ We were on familiar territory now, descending to the side of hospital wood to the almshouses and Waddington.
A nice day, and I'd read how nice Skipton Woods were, so off we went. We could have gone by bus but an hour in a mask didn't appeal, so car it was. And the walk from the car park was very interesting through the grounds of the medieval Holy Trinity, past the main gateway to Skipton Castle, and hence to High Corn Mill and the start of our walk proper. The canal was very appealing.... but we soon left the canal to follow the Eller Beck along its gorge with the castle towering above over the rather splendid board walkway.... We soon came upon the Huntress of Skipton a wonderful willow sculpture..... And later on could well have been in the New Forest again! At the far end of the trail was this rather unusual tunnel..... Throughout the walk we came across wood anemones and celadine aplenty. The trees themselves are mainly ash, grown high for timber, but there are plenty of other species too....and we heard many different birdsongs on this beautiful day... Exiting Skipton Castle grounds you are taken on a high old stone walkway into town which I particularly liked. and when we had a little wander what struck me this time was the number of alleyways and snickleways.....enough to rival York? Maybe.
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Keith & Frances SmithArchives
August 2023
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