Life in Northern Towns

After our visit to Cockermouth we headed west on the A66 to Workington.   More often than not I like going to places I know nothing about and the only thing I check is whether it has charity shops.   So after a quick Google I knew Workington was good to go on the charity shop front. Workington is an industrial, working class town perched on the Cumbrian coast.   It’s quite an isolated part of the world and is at least one hour away from either the nearest city or the M6. On driving into Workington the place appeared to be a little on the grim side with lots of industrial developments and some unloved buildings.   We parked up in the local pay and display car park near to the local shopping centre. The shopping centre was basically pedestrianised streets, served by regular high street chains.   Clearly regeneration money had been spent in recent years to make the shopping centre inviting with random street art and in Washington Square there appeared...

The one place I wanted to revisit from our last trip to Cumbria was Cockermouth .   Just outside the Lake District, Cockermouth is a rather classy town.   On our holiday we made two abortive attempts to get to Cockermouth, however we spent too much time in other towns to get there before the shops closed.   The third time we made it our first visit of the day to make sure we actually got there. Although getting to Cockermouth from Cartmel is a bit of a chore and with Neil’s travel sickness we had to take the longer, but slightly quicker route – M6 and A66.   Admittedly at this point in the holiday I was getting pretty bored of the M6, but it’s the best way to get from the southerly tip of Cumbria to the northerly parts. This time I remembered that Cockermouth did the whole parking permit thing for its residents and you have to drive through Cockermouth to find the little car park behind the shops.   It was only 11am and the car park was packed and we...

It was the tail end of the afternoon when we got to Penrith and the town was winding down.   Kids were coming home from school making a detour to the sweet shop to stock up on supplies. Parking in Penrith is a little tricky.   There is some on street parking, however they have a residents only disc system, so we ended up in a tiny pay-and-display car park behind some shops.   Although it’s probably best to park in Sainsbury’s for free as it’s close to the town centre. At the centre of the town there are some tiny pedestrianised streets around the Angel Lane area.   To be honest I doubt if you could get any cars down these tiny streets. In the main town square we found J & J Grahams Grocery Store.   It’s a pretty good shop selling all sorts of locally sourced food.   If you like cheese there is plenty to choose from, although Neil who isn’t a cheese fan struggled with the smell of it in here.   This is definitely a place to stock up o...