Whereas Helen and I had done haircuts on Monday, Wednesday morning was my mum’s turn. I dropped her off and had a little wander around Poulton, the old Morecambe before it was even Morecambe.
The old Holy Trinity church is in the middle, with its old graveyard and neighbouring cemetery. Less than a hundred yards behind Holy Trinity is the Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary’s, which dated from the nineteenth century is an old church building for a Roman Catholic Church in this country. From there I could see another old brick tower and so went to investigate. Only to find it was just a brick tower in the middle of a municipal car park. Supposedly it was used by firemen to practise in. I’m not sure how much time they would have had to practise though, as this is Morecambe, fire central UK.
I walked back towards the sea front and past Morecambe Town Hall, with its well laid out sunken gardens and grand looking frontage. As I walked past it on the way up to an old stone archway back into the cemetery, I could see the side and back of the Town Hall. They must have spent all the money on the frontage, as the rest of the building is very functional.
The cemetery isn’t large but does have various interesting elements. There are two wooden carvings at the far end, very much in an oriental style. There is a variety of grand headstones and monuments throughout. Though it does look as if they had a job lot of tall columns with a half covered urn on top. A style I hadn’t really seen anywhere else before, but there were half a dozen of them in this small cemetery.
After the haircut was done we picked Helen up and headed into Lancaster. M&S and Primark for pick-ups and exchanges, before heading up to Williamson Park and the Ashton Memorial. The memorial itself wasn’t open, but the café was, and we had lunch with a great view of Morecambe bay in the distance.
When you get told that there is an antiques centre that is huge, you assume it’s mainly hyperbole. But the GB Antiques centre isn’t exaggerating about being the largest one in the country. There is no such thing as a quick look around there. Over two hours flew by and the staff were shepherding us to the doors at closing time, without us having managed to walk around the whole thing before they started to turn lights off. We did manage to pick up a few nice items, and it is worth bearing in mind about bringing a picnic if we visit again.
With it being tea time it was time to find somewhere to have food. As has happened on a few visits to my mum’s, we ended up in The Royal in Heysham village. The last time we had been here there had been a somewhat brusque Italian guy serving. He was still there. He was still brusque, not even letting us sit down before demanding our drinks order, and saying there was no drinks menu, as it wasn’t allowed. Only for him to bring a food menu later. It’s difficult not to laugh, especially as he seemed to be wearing trousers cast off by Rupert the Bear.
Food was good, but the rain had descended by the time we were heading out to go home; thankfully after we’d done the day’s activities. All that was left to do was to plan where to go tomorrow.