Wednesday 5 August 2009

Holiday Snaps

A week in Barrow-in-Furness. Which sounds like the punch line of a northern music hall joke, but in fact this industrial town has much of interest to the Unmitigated Tourist once you get over the fact that every view is blocked by a simply gargantuan submarine factory. It started off as a tiny village in Lancashire, grew into an mid-Victorian iron and steel port that in turn got into shipbuilding before going underwater as it were, leaving a town that even Cumbria (the county it's now in) appears to forget. To the north of the town are empty beautiful beaches with cloud-topped fells as a backdrop, to the south the joy of a salty ferry trip to Piel Castle, sharing its tiny island with a row of atmospheric coastguard cottages. To the north east and east is of course some of the most stunning scenery in the country. But it is possible to avoid the more obvious tourist traps of the Lake District, and my personal preferences are for quiet Eskdale, running up from the tiny lost port of Ravenglass to the Hardknott Roman Fort; the Cartmel Peninsular, and the country that opens up above the delightful little town of Broughton-in-Furness. It's all here. Rusting street signs, Unmitigated railway carriages and corrugated barns. Big sands, big seas, big skies. And not a stick of rock to be seen, unless it's a shard of home-grown slate.

19 comments:

Diplomate said...

Marvelous - when are you off again ?

Philip Wilkinson said...

Grand stuff. 'Works ENTRANCE'. Is that a verb? Your images certainly do the trick.

Ron Combo said...

Any nice landladies?

Jon Dudley said...

Apparently Mrs Works offers esoteric services.

Peter Ashley said...

Self catering Ron. Which meant sausages and Harvey's Bristol Cream. So no landladies sadly, and therefore no pink candlewick bedspreads and toilet roll covers.

Peter Ashley said...

Jon: I think there is indeed a fair bit of that going on in certain parts of Barrow. How do you know? I daren't ask for fear of getting a shipbuilding rivet winging it's way to the back of my head.

Thud said...

The view down the valley from Hardknott certainly gets the thought process going, as reflected in the many novels that touch upon it.

Vinogirl said...

Does the red and cream of the train's colour scheme denote any particular transport authority?

Peter Ashley said...

Ah, you open a can of worms here Vinogirl. The 'blood 'n' custard' carriages, as they were known, were used by the nationalised British Railways in the 1950s-early 60s. The colours work just about anywhere, and are almost a generic for the look of a traditional train. Now we are visually abused by simply appalling paint schemes that should never have left the paint shops. As franchises of the de-nationalised railways change every week, so does the abysmal nature of the 'graphics' And another thing... (continued page 453)

Vinogirl said...

It's all very interesting, I'm glad I opened up the can.

martin said...

Yellow Submarine.Rubbish.I don't know why they bothered.
Revolver-an otherwise decent album-is blighted by its hideous end track.But that's just my opinion..There are probably people out there who think its a work of genius.

Peter Ashley said...

I don't couint Yellow Submarine as a proper album for some reason, and Revolver is not only blighted by the end track but by Klaus Voorman's cover. A last minute desparate scribble apparently. Anyway, I'm glad to still have my original Magical Mystery Tour EPs.

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