Back to St. Anne's

Monday June 21. We headed out after breakfast and worked our way down towards Blackpool and St. Anne’s. Logan had another week of work planned at the BEA site in Warton, so we were going back to the Glendower. On the way, we tried to tour Sizeargh Castle, an Elizabethan building in which the Strickland family has lived for over 760 years. They must be very well preserved. We got there around 10:30 and it wasn’t yet open. We looked around a bit, took the road back to the Sizergh farm nearby. This is an organic dairy farm. There was a walk posted, but we didn’t feel like taking it. So we got back in the car and navigated the coastal route back to Blackpool.

Along the way, we stopped at a Public House for lunch. There were a few listed on the map, we pulled in to two along the way before we found one that was open. Here we had an excellent pub lunch. It seems that the local food is better if the place is not frequented by tourists.

Back on the road after lunch, and within 20 minutes, we hit Blackpool. O my god, what a place. It’s a resort area of sorts, we entered town from the north and drove down the coast road. For a couple miles, the ocean and a tram line is on the right, and to the left are hotels – 4 story building after brick building, most touching with restaurants and parking lots out front. Then, the overhead lights start and line the street. There are plastic light-up figures along the lightpoles flanking the street and most look like bad 1950’s cartoons (especially the flying saucers, complete with aliens inside.) On the road to the left is now arcades, tourist traps, and you just know bad restaurants. This goes on for a couple more miles, and then you exit out from under the lights and back into a couple miles of hotels. A couple more miles and we’re back in St. Anne’s, where I will stay one night before heading to Munich on Tuesday.

At the Glendower, where we stayed, there was a brochure for one of the big attractions in Blackpool. It looks like a Vegas-style showgirl production, plus a Cirque-du-Soliel performer (not the whole show, just the flying guy). The brochure stated that they had great restaurants within, and at one, you could “tempt your tastebuds at Burger King.” So, I’ve got their idea of ‘great’ pretty well calibrated. Bleah!

My opinion on Vegas is that it looks like someone gave the prom committee 2 Billion & said, “decorate it”. Blackpool is much the same, only it was $2 million and they gave it to the 5th graders.

We checked back into the Glendower at about 3:00. I wanted to walk on the dunes that were between the shore road and the beach, so we changed into walking gear. Luckily I put on the dirtiest jeans I had with me, because I got the bright idea, once on the dunes, to go walk the beach. The tide was way out & I wanted to walk to the surf line. It was an unusually non-windy day and the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds now & again. So we started walking. And walking. At least it was flat. We kept crossing small streams on the beach – either from when the tide had been in, of the groundwater running. They got deeper & wider as we got closer to the surf line, so at one point I decided to take off my shoes. Quickly found out that the ridged sand was quite hard to walk on, but had already noticed that the sand had lots of river silt in it and I was positively filthy. Not going to put my socks & shoes back on until we’re near the road again. So we plugged on to the surf line, and when we got there, I stepped in when Logan said “watch out, there’s a jellyfish.” And so there were. Quite a lot of them. So I got out pretty darn quick and we picked our painful way back. There were higher spots where the sand was relatively smooth, but then it would go into hard 3” high ridges again. We finally gave up after coming out the other side of a pool with lots of mud between our toes. Walked back through the pool, sat down and put on the socks over very dirty feet. What a relief it was to have my shoes on again! My feet felt like they had been pummeled. Now I know why the town up the road is called Blackpool.

(In real time, it’s been a week since I’ve walked on the beach. I am still shaking fine sand out of my shoes. )

Tuesday, Logan drove me to the Manchester Airport. The roads seemed much bigger than they did when I first got here! One of Logan’s co-workers said “You think those are small, you ought to see the roads in Cornwall!” So we’ll use public transport and/or walk when we go there.