Hollingworth Lake stroll

Hollingworth Lake dates from the early 1800s, when it was built to keep the waters of the nearby Rochdale canal topped up without the need for water from local streams and brooks. This was important to local mill owners, who relied on natural water sources to power their water wheels, which in turn drove the machinery.

The lake covers 118 acres, and the pleasant walk around the shore covers about 2.5 miles. Our walk covered most of the route round the lake, and then took us away towards the canal, where we continued up the towpath to Littleborough before returning along paths through the Ealees valley. This additional loop takes the walk distance to 4.75 miles, just far enough for an afternoon stroll.

Hold the diet... again!

The diet will have to be postponed again as Carole opens a selection of hand-made chocolates - a gift from our neighbours for looking after their cat whilst they were away in the caravan.

The chocs were made to order in a little shop in Leyburn near where they were staying, and we've already looked it up on Google maps so that we can visit ourselves in the summer!

Poet, philosopher & failure

It's a strange epitaph for a gravestone, but that's what the enscription says on this particular grave at the small cemetery at Heysham Head. I did find one reference to it using Google, but this was only a record of the gravestone rather than an explanation, so I've no idea what the story behind this is.

We didn't go to Heysham to look for gravestones in particular, it's just that this particular one caught my eye when we sat on a nearby bench to enjoy an ice cream partway through our walk. We'd walked to Heysham along the recently renovated seafront from Morecambe, perhaps a little over two miles away, and the ice cream was the reward for burning the calories.





Heysham is a small village, famous for its church of St Peter, parts of which are believed to date back to 1080. Next to it on the hillside are even older ruins, of St Patrick's chapel, dating back to the 8th century. On this site are a series of stone coffins, carved into the rock, and these date back to this period.

On a clear day there are tremendous views across to the Lake District from here, but today was much too hazy for this.

Our journey back was by the same route, and buoyed by our ice cream energy boost we even indulged in a spot of 'powerwalking' (of sorts!) back to the car.

Morecambe in Manchester

Dad has always been a big Morecambe and Wise fan, and every childhood Christmas included an evening gathered round the TV watching their legendary Christmas shows. One year there were over 28,000,000 people tuning in, half the population of the country, so they must have been doing something right.

Last year was the 25th anniversary of Eric Morecambe's untimely death aged just 58, and perhaps with this in mind a new play was produced charting the story of his life. This one-man show has been travelling around playing to small theatres up and down the country and the reviews have been excellent. I first became aware of it when a review appeared in the local paper, so when I heard it was due in Manchester in April, I booked some tickets straight away.



The star of the show is Bob Golding, who looks uncannily like the man himself, and his mannerisms and actions throughout really brought back the nostalgia. He charted Eric's life from an early age and throughout there were references to all the famous sketches, daft routines and one-liners that became his trademark, from the wiggle of his glasses, his silly walks, the paper bag trick and countless others.



The play was at the Library theatre in Manchester, a magnificent round classical-style building at the top of Oxford Road. Whilst we were watching the play, Carole took the opportunity to go shopping with Mum, so when we met up afterwards we all felt we'd had a great afternoon.

Orchid beauty

Carole's orchid is still full of flowers, several weeks after first blooming, and it's crying out for its picture to be taken again and again. For this shot I first photographed the full flower, but when I looked at it on the computer later I realised I'd not thought about the background properly, and that it was the vivid colours at the flower's centre which was much the better picture.


It shows that sometimes the best photo is within the photo, but the downside of extracting your picture this way is that you're throwing away so much of the original image - so I could never print this at a large size and hang it on the wall as there's just not enough pixels left to work with. The original picture was taken at 3888x2592 resolution, big enough for a reasonably sized canvas print for the wall. But after cropping it down, all I'm left with is a photo at 730x730, barely enough for a 6" x 6" print.

A much better idea is to zoom in with the camera, so that the part of the subject you're interested in fills the frame and makes use of the full resolution of the camera. By this time though the light had gone, so for this little project I'll have to try again another day!

From Cleveleys to Rossall

Today we strolled from Cleveleys to Rossall along the seafront path, which was very pleasant despite the thin cloud obscuring the sun. The buildings which can be seen ahead are Rossall school, a long established public school dating back to the 1840s. From the costal path the buildings are a little foreboding but the internet confirms what we suspected - that ours wasn't the best viewpoint for these old buildings.

We retraced our steps back into Cleveleys, where the seafront has been much improved, and by now the cloud had retreated and the sun was out. Cleveleys has none of the brashness of Blackpool, but the beaches and seafront were full of people just the same. It may be early spring but after such a long winter, everyone was keen to make the most of it!

Cheers big ears

During our walk the other day, Carole did some snapping too and captured these images of some strange ear-shaped mushrooms growing on an old damp log by the footpath. We were walking back to the car park at the end of our walk and these were beside the path just after we'd walked under the viaduct.


I can't be 100% sure but from looking at a number of mushroom sites (yes, there are plenty!), they appear to be "Pleurotus Ostreatus", more commonly known as Oyster mushrooms. If so then they would be edible, and not only this they are medicinal too as they naturally contain statins, which lower cholestoral. As with all mushrooms though, unless they can be positively identified it's best to leave well alone as the risks are too great.

Wayoh wanderings

Our weekend exploration of local reservoirs continued with another walk, this time around the moors above Bolton and the waters of Entwistle and Wayoh. As with Earnsdale, these reservoirs were built in Victorian times by the nearby mill towns to provide drinking water to their growing populations.





There's usually some kind of plaque or commemoration somewhere to find and Entwistle reservoir is no exception with this ornate marker dated 1884, though the reservoir itself is much older than this. Entwistle's dam was built in 1834 and is particularly impressive, spanning a deep valley. At its construction it was, according to Wikipedia, the highest in Britain rising an impressive 108 feet.

Our walk took us away from Entwistle, past the now empty Strawbury Duck (which was a popular weekend pub in the 90s), and over the railway. Entwistle station is a remote request-only stop these days, but the information about the station on the bridge shows it was once a much busier place.

On our route we were entertained by several robins, and this one was happy to pose and sing for us for several minutes. Normally by the time I get the long lens ready they've long since flown away, but this time he stayed put to let me get some reasonable shots. Being hand-held they're not perfect and I've had to take away some twigs from in front of him in Photoshop which isn't so easy to do.





The route we followed around Wayoh revealed some impressive views towards the Armsgrove viaduct, which spans an arm of Wayoh but actually predates it by nearly 30 years. As we made our way round, eventually the path takes us up close and then underneath the viaduct, before returning us back to the car park.

Wandering below the Tower

Yesterday's weather forecast kept us indoors as we'd planned a walk with mums and dads at Heysham, but decided against it when it became clear that rain was on the way by lunchtime. Rain wouldn't always keep us in but it's much nicer to walk in the dry so we reverted to plan B - meeting up a little later than planned in slightly smarter attire for a relaxing afternoon instead. In the event the rain came much later than expected so we could have gone out after all. C'est la vie.

Anyway, today looked like it would be a better day so Carole and I decided to get out for a while and get some fresh air. Our first plan was to visit nearby Witton Park, but for some reason we changed our minds for something a little further afield. A good call as it turned out because we'd completely forgotten about the Easter Fair and all the crowds... which wouldn't exactly have been condusive to a relaxing stroll.

Instead we parked up at the visitor centre at Tockholes, where a total (insert your own expletive) decided on the car park to undertake me by driving through the parking bays I was turning into! Being a helpful person I felt it was only fair to give him some useful feedback to point out the error of this manouvre but instead it almost turned into full-blown car-park rage and maybe worse as he tried to tell me it was me at fault!

So much for a relaxing walk... But soon after pulling our boots on we were out in the countryside only a mile or so from home on a lovely afternoon and such trivialities were soon forgotten.

Our three mile walk took us below Darwen Tower and around Earnsdale reservoir heading back to Tockholes. On the way we passed the old water house, whose date stone of 1897 is much later than the reservoir itself, which dates from the 1850s.

Thankfully back at the car there were no flat tyres or scratches down the side so we could go home laughing about the afternoon's events.

Refreshed kitchen Morphs into life

We've freshened the kitchen up over the past few weeks with a new coat of paint on the walls and ceiling, a new kitchen blind and some more storage space with a butchers' block.


Our recipe books have always sat on a shelf leaning against the wall, which isn't ideal, so we've been on the look out for some suitable bookends for the finishing touch - something a bit different. Then Carole spotted this pair of characters on the internet which fit the bill and it took us back to our 80's childhood.

Morph was an animated character on 80's TV programme Take Hart, who lived in a wooden box and would talk to host Tony Hart with a mixture of strange noises and gestures. Morph was a creation of Ardman Animations (who later created Wallace & Gromit) and his facial expressions often told much of the story. Life didn't always run smoothly for Morph, as is the case here as he's struggling to keep the books upright.





In later series, Morph was joined by his lighter-coloured cousin Chas, who was a cheekier character who would always take the easy option, so it's not surprising that he's leaning on the books and fairly relaxed about it.

It looks like between them they've just about got things under control and they certainly bring a smile to us everytime we go in the kitchen.