A Brief Encounter with Carnforth and a Train Trip to Grange-over-Sands

A Railway Station that Thinks it Won an Oscar and a Trip Across the Kent Estuary

Carnforth

Lancashire

Lancaster

‘There’s not much else to detain you in Carnforth,’ Brian said, ‘just a couple of charity shops, a branch of Greggs, a Chinese take-away and an estate agent or two.’ Brian was right, Carnforth has all these things and, useful as they may be, they are not the stuff of a blog post. Slightly more interesting are the old fashioned ironmonger’s and Carnforth Bookshop selling new, used and antiquarian books, but by and large Carnforth looks and feels like a town side-lined by the currents of history.

There is a Co-op which has taken up residence in what was, until the mid-sixties, the Roxy Cinema….

Carnforth Co-op

….and a war memorial with half a dozen floral tributes to Drummer Lee Rigby, murdered the previous week in London. I was surprised; he was not a local man, and their presence clearly says something about the current state of the national psyche, though I am not exactly sure what.

Carnforth War Memorial

Carnforth Railway Station

And then of course there is the railway station, the ‘else’ of the opening sentence. It was the railway - and the abundant local limestone - that made Carnforth, turning a village of a couple of hundred at the start of the 19th century into a steel making town with over 4000 inhabitants by its end. Then steel making stopped and so did Carnforth’s growth, though it remained an important railway depot for the first half of the 20th century.

Carnforth Railway Station

Carnforth Station and Brief Encounter

The railway also brought Carnforth its 15 minutes of fame, or more precisely, its 86 minutes of fame as that is the running time of Brief Encounter. If the locals are to be believed Carnforth Station was billed just above Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, though, unaccountably it was Celia Johnson who got the Oscar nomination not the station.

The station clock, which features prominently in the film is still there….

The clock, Carnforth Railway Station

… and part of one platform has been set out like the fictional Milford Junction of 1945.

Carnforth Station as it might have been in 1945

Inside, the refreshment room, which also played an important part, has been lovingly recreated…..

Refreshment room, Carnforth Station

…… and returned to use. Despite the 3d (that’s thruppence, children, there were 12d to a shilling and 20s to £1) on the till, the £8.95 on the blackboard shows they have not recreated 1945 prices. This till is just for show, but they all looked like that when I was a lad.



All tills used to look like this

Although the station was used extensively as a location, the refreshment room scenes were shot in a studio, so this is a recreation of a room that never was.

The rest of the interior is the ‘heritage centre’. Beside the shop, Brief Encounter runs on a loop, while other displays chart the history of Carnforth. There is as much railway memorabilia as anyone could wish for, a serious model railway shop for small boys of all ages and, of course, a nod to the superstar of the railway world, Thomas the Tank Engine (here upstaged by Percy the Green Engine).

Percy the Green Engine, Carnforth Railway Station

West Coast Main Line trains stopped calling at Carnforth in 1970 and the platform was removed so they could scream through at full speed. The station deteriorated into dereliction until its redevelopment as a heritage centre in 2000.

Carnforth Railway Station, the functional part

Taking the Train from Carnforth to Grange-over-Sands

Two working platforms remain for trains running between Manchester Airport and Barrow-in-Furness. When you are at a station you should take a train, so we made the fifteen minute journey to Grange-over-Sands on the opposite (Cumbrian) side of Morecambe Bay. The attraction, at least for me, was that the line crosses the bridge over the Kent estuary or the top end of Morecambe Bay, depending on how you want to look at it.



Across the Kent estuary...or the top end of Morecambe Bay

Grange-over-Sands

Cumbria

South Lakeland

Grange is about the same size as Carnforth, but there the similarities cease. The railway turned it, almost overnight, from a fishing village to a seaside resort but a small and select sort of resort. We walked along the promenade which is unusual as proms go as it overlooks not a beach, but a strip of salt marsh, grazed by a small herd of sheep.

Lynne and Hilary on the promenade, Grange-over-Sands

A hundred years ago the main stream of the River Kent ran beside the promenade but over the years it worked its way south, leaving behind sands and mudflats which have developed into the salt marsh we see today. Sustained easterly winds in early 2007 started the river moving back again and the marsh is now eroding; Morecambe Bay is forever changing.



The salt marsh - and the salt marsh lamb, Grange-over-Sands

Just because the river has been neglecting the promenade, it does not mean the residents have, and the gardens are carefully tended by a group of volunteers; we passed them as they took their coffee break. Mainly retired people – Grange is full of them us – with a sense of civic responsibility, they are doing an excellent job.

Having strolled out along the prom, we walked back through the streets, past large, solid stone houses built to last until eternity, if not a little longer. There are charity shops here, too, but you have to admire the wrought ironwork.



Charity shops and wrought iron, Grange-over-Sands

There are also a couple of top class delis. Where Carnforth looks sad and dated, Grange’s response to the 21st century is to be archly retro - and it seems to work. They have an artisan baker who makes real bread and a serious butcher who also produces pies - and do I approve of a proper pie. Brian assures me they are as good as they look, and Brian’s opinion in such matters can be taken as fact.

Archly Retro, Grange-over-Sands

At the end of the Main Street....

Main Street, Grange-over-Sands

...we crossed a small park populated by a variety of exotic ducks and geese (though fewer than of late, Hilary thought) and made our way back to the station, itself a listed building and recently restored and repainted.



Snow Geese and chick, Grange-over-Sands

The climate and the nature of Morecambe Bay mean that Grange was never going to be a candy-floss, kiss-me-quick-hat sort of seaside resort, but the surrounding countryside is beautiful and the Lakes are nearby so this is prime holiday cottage country. People retire to Grange, too. I would not consider it myself, despite its direct link to Manchester airport, as the climate is just too cool and too wet, however for those with webbed feet….



Grange-over-Sands station

Commemorating Comedians in Caerphilly, Morecambe and Ulverston

Three Towns Commemorate their Favourite Sons

Tommy Cooper, Caerphilly, South Wales

County Borough of Caerphilly

When we visited in April 2009, Caerphilly looked a dismal town; shops were boarded up, paint was peeling, windows needed cleaning – those that were not broken – and many of the people look pale and unwell. It gives me no pleasure to write this; I may be a long exiled Welshman, but both sides of my family come from South Wales, as do Lynne’s (her mother actually attended Caerphilly Grammar School), and it remains a part of my somewhat complex concept of ‘home’. There are still many pleasant and prosperous places in the region, but I fear that Caerphilly is typical of too many towns struggling to adjust to the post-industrial world.

The centre is dominated by one of Britain’s largest Norman castles. This should be a tourist attraction, and maybe it is, but on a dank April day the castle looked as dark and forbidding as Gilbert de Clare (see also Llantrisant and Castell Coch) could have hoped for when he began work in 1268.

Parc Dafydd Williams, Caerphilly

On the plus side, there is a pleasant garden which the town kindly chose to name after me (all right, it’s some other bloke with the same name, but it could have been). Nearby is a statue of Caerphilly’s favourite son.

Tommy Cooper was born in Caerphilly in 1921, though the family moved to Devon when he was three. His connection with the town is slim, but Caerphilly needs all the straws it can clutch. The statue, the work of James Done, was unveiled by Sir Anthony Hopkins in 2008.

Tommy Cooper and Caerphilly Castle

For those too young to remember, Tommy Cooper was a magician. Tall and ungainly with a fez stuck on his permanently dishevelled head, he looked nothing like the standard magician – and his tricks went wrong. From this simple premise he extracted humour which was sometimes simple, sometimes complex but always hilarious. An innately funny man, he could make an audience laugh by standing silent and motionless on stage, he was also a competent magician. Occasionally his tricks went right, just to keep everybody off balance.

He died on stage during a live televised show in 1984. At first, both the audience and stage crew thought the collapse was part of his act. Sadly it was not. A one-off and a true original, he died far too young.

Eric Morecambe, Morecambe, Lancashire

Lancashire

Morecambe

I have written about Morecambe Bay before (Morecambe Bay and Sunderland Point) but not about the town. A station and harbour were built beside the bay in 1846 and the town that grew up around them and absorbed the fishing village of Poulton-le-Sands eventually adopted the name of the bay. For a time Morecambe thrived, the railway bringing tens of thousands of holiday-makers each year, mainly from Yorkshire and southern Scotland.

In 2013, however, marketing Morecambe as a seaside resort seems a job for a hopeless optimist. With a beach of imported sand, and sea that only visits for a couple of hours a day, the cool, damp climate is the least of its disadvantages. Yet people still come here. The hinterland of north Lancashire and southern Cumbria is countryside of rare beauty, but surely it is only those who know no better - or can afford no better - that take a seaside holiday in Morecambe. Maybe Morecambe has its charms, if so I have missed them – I would be happy if anyone enlightened me.

The sea front at Morecambe

While the town took its name from the bay, Eric Morecambe took his name from the town where he was born in 1926. John Eric Bartholomew, as he was then, met Ernest Wiseman in 1940 and the double act of Bartholomew and Wiseman was born. Separated for a while by national service, they reunited, changed their names to Morecambe and Wise and the rest is history.

The Morecambe and Wise show was a Saturday prime time fixture for well over a decade and the Christmas special was compulsory viewing. With a script that was not actually replete with jokes, Eric’s clowning and ad-libbing regularly reduced my mother to a quivering heap. The quality of guests was legendary, serious actors, like Judi Dench and Glenda Jackson, serious musicians, like André Previn, and serious politicians, like Harold Wilson, queued up to be the butt of their jokes.

Eric died in 1984, the month after Tommy Cooper. Like Cooper he died of a heart attack, but unlike Cooper he managed to finish his show before collapsing backstage.

A statue of Eric Morecambe by sculptor Graham Ibbeson has pride of place on the town’s sea front. Before the Olympics the Queen did not do guests spots on other people’s shows, but she did came to Morecambe to unveil Eric’s statue in 1999.

Eric Morecambe on the Morecambe Sea Front

Eric and Ernie brought the double act to such a pitch of perfection they effectively killed it. Humour does not always cross the generations, but my mother was one of his greatest fans and my daughter can sometimes be heard quoting him, though she was only three when he died.

Stan Laurel, Ulverston, Cumbria

Cumbria

Traditionally a detached part of Lancashire, but since 1972 officially Cumbria, the Furness peninsula is a strange sort of place. Travelling south, the Lake District hills flatten out into land scarred by ancient glacial activity, riven by broad sandy estuaries and fringed by desolate salt marshes. The unlovely industrial town of Barrow lies at the tip of the peninsula while at the base is the small, neat market town of Ulverston.

County Square is hardly the focal point of the cluster of handsome old buildings that make up central Ulverston, but it does seem to be considered the town centre.

County Square, Ulverston

Stan Laurel was born Stanley Arthur Jefferson in Ulverston in 1886. He came from a theatrical family, went into the business straight from school and joined Fred Karno’s troupe in 1910. In 1912 he toured America with the troupe (which also included Charlie Chaplin) and decided to stay. He was already a well-established actor and film director when he started working with Oliver Hardy in the late 1920s.

The statue of Stan and Ollie that stands outside Coronation Hall is, like that of Eric Morecambe, by Graham Ibbeson. It was unveiled by Ken Dodd in 2009.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy outside Coronation Hall, Ulverston

Ulverston also has a Laurel and Hardy museum, but it was closed for ‘major refurbishment’ when we visited – what did we expect on a cold wet January morning? Laurel and Hardy were no doubt funny in their day, but I doubt modern audiences find much to laugh at. That said, they were innovators in their field, they were the first major double act in film history, and they were successful in both silent and talking pictures, so they must have had something.

My mother met them when they were touring Britain in the late 1940s. They came to the Ideal Home exhibition and visited the stand where she was demonstrating cookery techniques. Her verdict: ‘a pair of silly old fools.’

Walking the Limestone Link: Kirkby Lonsdale to Arnside

Cumbria

The Limestone Link is a waymarked footpath crossing 20km of south Cumbrian limestone. Its 500m of climbing are enough to raise the heartbeat and respiration rate but overall it is a relatively easy yet interesting day’s walk. The waymarking, though, was not as good as we had been led to believe and some shrewd guesswork was called for - along with a little wandering around searching for stiles.

Lynne and Hilary dropped Brian and I off at Devil’s Bridge in Kirkby Lonsdale around 9.30. The morning was full of promise, though exactly what it promised was obscure, but probably included rain.



Devil's Bridge, Kirkby Lonsdale

The bridge, a handsome structure dating from the 1430s, is one of five ‘Devil’s Bridges’ in Britain - and there over a hundred more ‘Ponts du Diable’ and ‘Teufelsbrucken’ scattered around Europe. They usually have an associated myth; in the Kirkby Lonsdale version, the devil offered to build the bridge in return for the soul of the first to cross it. When it was finished, an old woman threw a piece of bread across and her dog chased after it, so cheating the devil.

To minimise any residual risk to our immortal souls, we walked away from the river, up a steadily rising field boundary to High Biggins, which is neither particularly high not particularly big. A stroll along the lane took us past Biggins Hall, which sounds grand but is no more than a pleasant family home.

Once clear of the village we left the road, navigating across the fields from stile to stile. As usual, this method worked well until we reached an area where modern farming methods have required a wholesale removal of field boundaries. We thought we knew where we were, and could see a worn path leading up the hill opposite in the direction we wanted to go, but if the pile of stones to our left was, or once had been, Longfield Barn then the turning was not quite in the right place.

A fingerpost suggested the trod up the hill was indeed a footpath, so we made our ascent. There was no stile at the top, but as the wall had become vestigial this hardly mattered. We continued over the grassy tussocks of the broad flat summit until we met a more substantial wall – one that was above head height.

The map suggested a crossing point near the top of the right hand scarp, but we could not find it. We wandered along the wall. It was untidily built and in several places protruding stones might have been intended as a stile, but were not matched by stones on the other side. Looking over at one such place we found ourselves beside Longfield Tarn, which should have been well to the left of the crossing point. A little further on we found three projecting stones, matched by three more on the far side. The stile was several hundred metres from where we had expected, but it did the job.

Down to Hutton Roof

Once over, our descent to Hutton Roof was simple. We entered the village by a lane, crossed the road and started the climb up Hutton Roof Crags, the first substantial area of limestone of the walk.

A rocky path led up through a wood, giving us several choices of route. This is open access land and there was no waymarking, so we guessed. The map shows the Limestone Link following the northern edge of the crags, so that was where we headed, soon exchanging the rocky climb for a gentle stroll up a grassy path.



The grassy path up Hutton Crags
with Wernside and Pen-y-Ghent in the background

 The path stayed just below the crags and at its highest point we paused for coffee. The view was impressive; back to the east the outlines of Whernside, and Pen-y-Ghent marked out the Yorkshire Dales, to the north we could see the massive bare humps of the Howgill Fells, while nearer at hand we looked down on the limestone littered Newbiggin Crags and Holmepark Fell, the next stage of our walk.



Newbiggin Crags and Holmepark Fell

We descended towards Holmepark Fell, the sides of the path lined with harebells, which appreciate the cool climate and well-drained, nutrient poor soil.



Harebell

Walking round the edge of Hutton Roof Crags meant we had avoided limestone blocks and pavements, but our path across the south of Holmepark Fell took us over and through some substantial stony areas before descending towards the M6.



Limestone on Holmepark Fell

An irritating three-sides-of-a-square detour was necessary to reach the village of Holme via a motorway bridge. Here we again turned west, crossing fields of cereals - and the west coast railway line - before reaching Pye Bridge Lane, which we followed to the King’s Arms beside the A6.



Across fields of cereals

Near the pub, we passed the boyhood home of John Taylor. I had never heard of him, but there was an informative plaque by the farm gate. Born in 1808, Taylor was brought up in the Church of England, became a Methodist at sixteen and then, after emigrating to Canada in 1830, joined the Church of the Latter Day Saints – the Mormons. He made is way to the USA and finally to Utah where in 1880 he succeeded Brigham Young as President of the Mormons. It seemed a long journey from the green farmland of southern Cumbria to the desert of Utah. He died the husband of seven wives and father of thirty-four children, so perhaps it was an even longer and stranger spiritual journey.

Despite earlier misgivings, the day had become steadily warmer and brighter. We sat outside the pub in pleasant sunshine and enjoyed an excellent beef sandwich and a couple of pints of refreshment.

Fortified, we crossed the road and headed up Hale Fell. In the woods, a jumble of limestone and a multitude of paths, some marked on the map, some just existing on the ground, made navigation difficult. There were way markers, but not enough to be confident and I was relieved when we emerged onto a minor road just below Slack Head rather than at a campsite or marble quarry.



Limestone Pavements

A little further on we returned to the woods where a clear path with a gentle gradient took us up towards Whin Scar.

We had been following fingerposts enigmatically marked ‘to the Fairy Steps.’ After leaving the top of Whin Scar and crossing some huge blocks of limestone we discovered what they are. The path off the plateau leads through a crack between two limestone blocks. It is a small descent, some three or four metres, and is aided by natural steps that have formed in the crack. According to legend if you climb the steps without touching either side, then the fairies will bless you and grant a wish. I am not sure if the offer also applies to the descent, but as the crack is less than 30cm wide at shoulder height and Brian is what Bill McLaren would have called ‘a solid citizen’ he reached the bottom resolutely unblessed. I, on the other hand, tend more towards the spherical. Even after removing my pack, I was in full and firm contact with both sides all the way down.



Brian descends the Fairy Steps

A broad, straight path took us down through Underlaid Wood. After the brilliant sunshine of an hour before, it had now started to drizzle and the wet veins of limestone obtruding into the path became treacherously slippery.



A broad, straight path through Underlaid Woods

We reached the minor road at Hazelslack Tower Farm, where they were busy silaging. We paused in the farmyard as huge vehicles brought in the cut grass and shifted it into a barn, where a smaller tractor ensured it was evenly distributed.



...a smaller tractor ensured it was evenly distributed.
Hazelslack Tower Farm

Across the road, Hazleslack Tower itself is attached to a dilapidated farmhouse. It is a peel tower, one of hundreds built across the north of England in the fifteenth century for protection against marauding Scots. Designed to withstand a short siege, livestock were accommodated on the ground floor while the defenders lodged above them. Many, like Hazelslack, have fallen into disrepair, some have been incorporated in to grander houses, such as Sizergh Castle, while others were used as quarries by local builders and have disappeared.



Hazelslack Tower

We traversed a campsite, solved a navigational problem and descended onto Arnside Moss. The final kilometre was easy walking. The salt marsh was not as boggy as the name implies but was fully exposed to the drizzle that was quietly transforming itself into steady rain.

Crossing the railway to the edge of Arnside we made our rendezvous with Lynne and Hilary at 4.10. We had spent an hour in the pub and ten minutes drinking coffee, so the 20km had taken us some five and half hours walking. Good enough for a couple of old blokes.