Clarke Chronicler's Resurrection

 This  was  my  choice, a  visit to Beacon Fell  Country Park to film a video which you can see here.

 Simon really  just wanted to go for something to eat in Manchester but he accepted visiting  the Triceratops exhibition at  Manchester Museum as part of the trip. After a couple of errands we went to  the  Delhi  House  Cafe. The video we filmed there will appear here in due course, After a full meal there we  waked to the Museum to walk it off. The  exhibition was a big disappointment.  Basically what they had was a  reconstructed  Triceratops skull ( around 50% of which was genuine fossil ) which was worth seeing and they'd cobbled together an exhibition which was mainly display panels  and a few stuffed animals (probably relocated from other parts of the Museum) with  superficial resemblance to the dinosaur. There were  one  or  two activities for the kids but that was it  We  then went for a drink in the Museum cafe . Then we headed for the train home.

 This  wasn't the most enjoyable trip of the year but we did make a bit of progress. We drove to Todmorden and caught the train to Brighouse. Simon was hungry so  we  went into a  pub , The Calder , for something to eat. I had a bacon and sausage sandwich. Simon had a bowl of chips. We  then found our  way to Brighouse Basin The canal  then joins the river Calder  for  a  stretch. Then our problems began. The  towpath had come to a dead end at  this  point. I prepared to look at my phone  but  Simon asked a lady who was just emerging from her canalside home and  she  said  we  could  regain the path from a side strret  a  few  hundered yards  ahead, This seemed sound advice as we got  onto  a  path  along  the  riverbank with industrial units to our  left. Misgivings  grew  as  we  hit  a  rough patc...

 Julie had booked a weekend away at Green View Lodges, Welton  so I presented Simon with some  options  and he selected filming some nearby trigs. The footage will  appear here  in  due  course. We  went  into  Wigton  for  lunch at  La  Barista  restaurant. In the afternoon, we covered another  trig  and  also a  pele tower near Mealsgate.  The footage will  appear here in due course. We  returned to a  footpath near our first trig because I realised I'd left my walking pole there. I did manage to retrieve it. We went into Dalston to do some shopping before returning to the lodge.

 We  were a bit  constrained by other commitments on this weekend so Simon picked a visit to nearby Helmshore  Textile Museum. I had been before but I think they'd spruced up the displays on the ground floor since then. We started looking  round those before joining a tour.  This showed a pre-industrial household engaged in textiles. This is  Richard Arkwright, inventor of the spinning jenny.  This is what one looked like. This is Samuel Crompton, inventor of the spinning mule. Here's a Luddite at work and a soldier out to stop him. We joined the tour of the spinning  chamber (preserved since last use in the1970s )  led by an ehtnusiastic guide who briefly arranged to turn the spinning mules on for us. After that we had a look in the manager's office.   We  then crossed over to the second mill building. That had an old fire engine. We  then went to the very reasonably priced tea room for a drink and cake, Then we drove hom...

 For  our  next weekend away, we chose the Campanile Hotel, Runcorn.  Warnings of a storm over the weekend overshadowed it. The  journey there was uneventful and we found the hotel without too much trouble. Simon had some chips and I had some ice cream in the restaurant before we turned in for the night.  In the morning the weather was pretty wild and we ran across to the main building for breakfast. After that we raced across to the station for a train to Chester. Ours was one of the few  trains still running. We  huddled in the waiting room until the last minute. By the time got to Chester, the weather had calmed down considerably and there were no delays to our train to Rhyl. We caught the bus to Rhuddlan but when we got to the castle it had been closed due to the weather conditions. this seemed like a disaster but I had noted the bus was going on to Denbigh. I found a number for the castle there and got confirmation it was still open so we mov...