Sunday 27 to Thursday 31 October

(I have a track record on this blog of failing to write the final blog post of a trip. On this occasion I did write it ... then completely failed to publish it. Belatedly, here it is. I've edited it with a couple of updates relevant to the original text.) 

On Saturday evening I checked the weather forecast.  There was a small chance of some light rain during a one-hour period overnight, but otherwise, it was going to be dry. We don’t like to use Bertie’s exterior insulating cab-window cover (‘eyemask’) when rain is expected, not wanting to deal with/store it wet. We applied the cover … and it rained most of the night.

Sunday was a day of socialising, starting with a small detour to drop in on [Conrad http://conradwalks.blogspot.com]. Tea/coffee and pastries accompanied our happy couple of hours of chatting, before we had to drag ourselves away to relocate to St-Annes-on-the-Sea.

After an uneventful drive, Bertie was installed into the motorhome parking at St Annes, whereupon a decision had to be made: how long to stay? The maximum is 3 nights, and the daily price decreases as the days increase (£8.40 for one night; £15.xx for two nights; £22 for three nights). I fancied a trip up to Blackpool whilst we were there, so we went for the maximum stay.

As darkness fell, friends Al and Nicky arrived and a sociable evening ensued, relocating after a while into the Toby Carvery directly behind Bertie for a meal. Before 9pm we were the only people left sitting in the restaurant end of the establishment. At just gone 10pm we felt like we should probably leave, relocating the few steps back to Bertie.

Monday dawned another glorious day, albeit it was a bit cool as we headed out for a run. Mick’s outing wasn’t overly successful, abandoned after just over a mile as he concluded his thigh strain isn’t adequately recovered. Breakfast and a quick shower was followed by Al arriving to taxi us to his house for the day.

Snaps from Monday’s run

As he drove us back at gone 9pm, we watched the temperature display on his dashboard drop to 2 degrees before recovering to 3 degrees at St Anne’s. That was one of those days when we wished we had the remote-control-by-App option on Bertie’s heating! Putting the heating on was our first priority, followed by applying his eyemask (we take it off by day to let the heat in – the opposite regime to summer in Germany when we applied the eyemask by day, then removed it at night to let the heat out), by which time it was warming up indoors.  It must have been a late night as we challenged our tired minds to a crossword before bed.

Tuesday felt a bit of an odd day. Usually, if we’re going to do touristy things, we set about it in the morning. On this occasion, with the intention of seeing Blackpool’s illuminations, we didn’t want to travel into the resort until the afternoon, which left us knocking around until after lunch. I finished unravelling a pair of socks I’d already knitted twice this summer (hopefully on the third attempt I’ll manage to make them fit; I may achieve this by going back to my tried-and-trusted top-down pattern rather than repeating the toe-up pattern that has been proving tricky to get the sizing right), progressed a bit further on the jumper I’m knitting as well as researching the things we could do in Blackpool (some of which we will do in future, but I’ll prebook).

 

Yay! After knitting five socks (three of them ripped back), I have a pair that fit.

As predicted, I achieved this by reverting to the top-down pattern.

The yarn wouldn't have been able to withstand another ripping-back.

Blackpool does attract some ridicule as a resort, but I enjoyed our afternoon there. Our walks along the piers, through the fairground ride and attractions, transported me back to childhood holidays in other UK beach resorts. The illuminations, on the other hand, were a disappointment. I’ve only ever been to Blackpool once before, for one evening, sometime in the early 1980s and a shufty around t’internet confirms that my recollection of big pictures made of individual bulbs is not false and that I’m not alone in thinking that today’s illuminations are not a patch on what they were (although undoubtedly they’re a lot more energy efficient these days!).

 

A departure from our usual summit selfies

We’d caught the train from St Anne’s to Blackpool, as it’s cheaper than the bus. They only run once per hour, but we timed our arrival at the station nicely for the return journey. Unfortunately, Northern Rail had other ideas and cancelled both our train and the next one. We ended up walking a distance before catching a bus for a couple of miles (£5.80 for 2 miles of journey – ouch – a taxi may have been cheaper!). Having now established that parking in Blackpool is plentiful (at least mid-week in late October), in future we’d just drive there. (Post blog note: thanks to the second train being cancelled too, we were entitled to a refund of the full price of our return tickets, so we didn't end up out of pocket.)

And that brings us up to date. We left St Anne’s on Wednesday morning and drove down to Ma-in-Law’s in Halifax, before completing our trip yesterday (Thursday). Theory has it that the next trip isn’t going to be until January. 

 

I made the first square of this blanket in April 2017. It reached single-bed size in Jan 2018, when I decided I hadn't quite had enough of making squares, so I continued on to make it double-bed sized (it didn't just sit around - it was in use during the whole of the extension phase). It's a well travelled blanket, as I've worked on it in England, Scotland, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Spain, as well as in the Bay of Biscay, but as it got bigger it became less portable and progress slowed accordingly. I took it with me on this trip determined to finally get the last 34 squares joined and to put on the border. Here it is, all finished, back in its proper place at home, where it makes me smile every time I walk into the bedroom. As a fun fact: the making of this blanket has required the sewing in of 3,267 yarn ends!