Life in Northern Towns

Last year we had a brilliant holiday in New York, so when organising this year’s holiday I knew it was never going to meet the same level of fabulousness.   So what do you do after visiting the best place ever?   In our case, we headed off to the Lake District for the week. For the past couple of years we’ve spent time in Grange-Over-Sands , which is a perfectly pleasant place.   However this time we decided to stay in Cartmel, which is apparently the most beautiful village in Cumbria. Our first port of call was Grange-Over-Sands.   Astonishingly for the end of September in Cumbria the weather was beautiful.   Looking back at our other trips this was the first time I’ve ever seen the place in nice weather and it really makes a difference. We did the charity shops and whilst they weren’t exciting I noticed one of the charity shops had closed since our last visit.   It’s always sad to see, but I remember from previous visits it was always a case o...

Technically it’s not the north, but Leek is only 13 miles from Macclesfield so we are back in Life in Midland Towns territory for this week’s blog post. We took the A523 from Macclesfield to Leek.   It was a nice journey through the Staffordshire country side with spotted sheep scattered across the undulating hills.   I can’t ever remember seeing spotted sheep before.   We passed some cyclists clogging up the country lanes.   They were channelling their inner Bradley Wiggins on their high spec bikes and bedecked yellow lycra tops – never a good look on a middle aged man. Leek is surprisingly industrial when you hit the outskirts of town with a chemical works and the disused mills.   In Cheshire or West Yorkshire those mills would have been converted into fancy flats, however in Leek the mills had broken windows and young saplings growing out of the roofs.   There was also a football club having a home game in a random football league I’ve neve...

We’ve been here a few times and probably due to laziness I haven’t written about the place.   So I’m rectifying the situation. Macclesfield is in that part of Cheshire that is a ball ache to get to – not close to any motorway and a myriad of ways to get there.   This time we went M60, A34, A555, A5149 and A523.   Sometimes I’ve come through Wilmslow and even travelled via Buxton on the A537.   The A537 is special, it’s nicknamed the Cat ‘n’ Fiddle and probably one of the most dangerous roads in the country.   Needless to say I loved driving down this road and it’s the kind of road that demands you to drink a gin and tonic at the end of it to celebrate completing it in one piece.   This is definitely a road for a person wanting to experience a Top Gear moment. Back to Macclesfield – I’ve always had a mixed experience of the town.   Often it has been the last town on a day trip when half the charity and interesting shops have closed.   Thi...

A Northerner in London Town makes a brief return to Life in Northern Towns.  We took a weekend trip to London recently to visit my cousins from Canada and my brother and his partner who normally lives in Dublin. It was my cousins’ first trip to London so obviously they wanted to do the tourist version of London.  When we first started to visit London we used to do all the tourist haunts.  However the more you visit London the more the city unfolds its secrets to you.  So it was a really nice change for us to see London again through the eyes of first time visitors. The one thing a first timer needs to do when visiting London is not to use the Tube where possible.  It should only be used when you need to travel more than two miles.  Also you will not jump out of your skin at Chancery Lane tube station like I did when a rat scampered across the platform.  My preferred way to view London is on foot, however after four hours of consta...