Life in Northern Towns

One of the notable omissions from the blog has been Burnley in Lancashire, especially as it’s only 30 miles from Manchester.  To be honest, I’d been putting this one off as I knew Burnley was a deprived northern town and it can be depressing to visit a place like that.  However, it was the first proper blue sky day of the year and I thought it was time to bite the bullet and visit Burnley.  Getting to Burnley from Manchester is easy enough – M60, M66, A56, M65, exit junction 10 and head into town on the A671.  It takes about 40 minutes and parking on a weekend is relatively straightforward.  We found a pay-and-display in one of the Council carparks. Burnley is very much a Victorian mill town with plenty of buildings from that era.  It’s really worth looking up above the fast food shop signs to see the architecture of the buildings.  They have some class and style, but are in need of some TLC.  It would be interesting to see pictures of t...

We haven’t really explored the suburbs of Liverpool for this blog and, to be honest, I really don’t know much about them.  On the advice of a friend, we decided to take a trip to Allerton , which is about 6 miles south east of Liverpool city centre. Getting to Allerton from Manchester is easy – hit the M62 and go to the end of the motorway, take a left onto the A5080, then the A5058, go through the roundabout and left on to Allerton Road. You could park on a side street, but we ended up parking at Tesco car park near the fire station.  We had been through Allerton on previous occasions as I tend to prefer going to Liverpool city centre this way.  I worry if I go the other way I’ll get lost and end up in the Mersey Tunnel going to Birkenhead. Just as an aside, is it me or are Liverpudlian drivers rather polite and considerate drivers?  Anyway back to Allerton…  As it was lunch time we thought we would get something to eat from a chippy. Bizarrely we coul...