Boys' Day Out

I'm in the newspaper!

This week, Matt was looking at back copies of the Craven Herald for some train vouchers when he exclaimed that I was in the paper!  I went over to look and found a piece about Lily Pad Bakery reopening after recovery from an operation. Matt was very perplexed as he thought someone had submitted it on my behalf.  Not true.  When I was recovering and bored, I went on the Craven Herald website to find out how to submit a story and found that you just write it in a contact form and submit it.  This I did but really didn't expect it to make the paper as it was blatant business marketing.  I did look through the papers when they came to see if I had made it but as I didn't hold out any hope, I missed it.  Anyway, now I know the local paper must be desperate for stories - so I might submit some more if I can think of a 'hook'.

This is a naked cake

Thursday I had my bone scan at the hospital.  I was the first patient of the day (8.40 am) so was straight in.  I got the usual - oh you are very young for this sort of scan etc etc - I guess I am now classified as an 'old woman' when it comes to medical stuff!  For once I got good news and left the hospital with a smile on my face.  My spine is pretty much where it should be for a female my age and my hips are better than they should be. The nurse told me to carry on doing what I am doing and I should be fine.  Obviously because I have no hormones and won't be having HRT I will go into a downwards slope with my bone density, but it should be a significant number of years before anything might happen and hopefully it shouldn't happen at all if I carry on as I am with weight bearing activity.

Friday I did my first naked wedding cake, and my first delivery to Hipping Hall - a very posh venue close to Ingleton, so I had to make sure it looked good.  Wondering what a naked wedding cake is - one without any icing - here's a pic of the finished cake set up at the venue.  Took me an hour to finish it off there, I had to do it in full view of all the wedding guests and staff as it was set up in the reception area, but I managed to not get too nervous and it behaved itself - phew.  Have already got a lovely email from the bride to say she loved it, so that's good.  This could be my next story: 'Lily Pad Bakery delighted to announce supply of new trendy Naked Wedding Cakes'...

Saturday
Yes, Saturday was one of our occasional boys’ days out on trains. One of the locomotives on Tom's model railway is a Class 37, which are still being used for passenger trains on the Cumbrian Coast Line, and he fancied having a ride on the real thing.

The original plan was to get Northern Rail rover tickets and head all the way up from Barrow to Carlisle, and then visit one of our favourite eateries, but I managed to lose the newspaper tokens at some point, so the day had to be changed.

Small boy, big engine

So, Nik dropped us off at Carnforth, where we got one of the usual dull diesel trains over to Barrow, although the ride along the edge of Morecambe Bay is very pretty in places. Barrow, however, isn't. In fact, that can be few towns in Britain that look so deprived and poverty-stricken. Two steps out of the station building told me that. We had a quick mid-morning tea and a bun, before heading over to get our "proper" train up to St. Bees. For the most part, it's a very pleasant journey, with the Irish Sea on one side and the Lake District mountains on the other. The only blot on the landscape is the enormous reprocessing plant at Sellafield, but even that is beautiful in a strangely industrial way. We spent our 20 minutes at St. Bees station eating our picnics, before getting another Class 37 back down the coast to Ravenglass, where we were planning to take a miniature steam train up the valley into Eskdale. Unfortunately, we missed it by seconds, meaning that we had an hour to kill before the next one, which we spent drinking tea, eating cake and playing in a little playground.

As time was tight, we only had enough time to go half way up the Eskdale Railway, and we nearly didn't make it back, as the return train was almost completely full. We then had a look round a little museum that tells the history of little railway, before we got our final Class 37 back to Barrow.

Eskdale resident

The driver took a bit of a shine to Tom, and let him sit on the driver’s seat in the cab, which was very kind of him. He then decided he would show off a bit, and absolutely raised the roof with engine noise as he took his train back towards Carlisle. It was pretty deafening, but it seems that he may have overdone it, as I read that it broke down two stops up the line from Barrow, stranding all the passengers for over 2 hours. He may be more circumspect in future.

Here's a video of one of the other Class 37s making a similar din at Ravenglass: https://youtu.be/ZIoq_Isf6io
We had about 40 minutes before our train back to Carnforth, which we had to spend listening to raucous seagulls and watching a couple of local residents who were paralytically drunk on the platform. One of them actually fell over unconscious, and required the help of paramedics, who didn't look the least bit surprised by what was happening. I must say, I'm in no hurry to get back to Barrow. Strange place.

Driver Tom

We then got a boring Northern train back around Morecambe Bay, where Mummy met us and took us for a rare (for us) Chinese in Bolton-le-Sands. The food and service were good, but something disagreed with me in a big way (I think I know what), and I spent most of the following day in bed unable to keep any food inside me.

Still, it didn't spoil our day out, and Tom was excellent company. I wonder where we'll go for our next train day.





Sunday

Nice hills, bad clouds!

Matt wasn't feeling well today - the Chinese from yesterday didn't agree with him, although it did agree with Tom and me - we were fine.  Don't think Matt even managed to get out of his pyjamas today - so it must have been bad!

Rose Hips?

Tom went for his usual cricket practise this morning - there were only 3 of them: Tom, Harry and Freya.  Tom and Harry were in high spirits and not listening to Mac - oh joy.  I didn't feel like I could leave Mac to it with them like it, so stayed for the whole session.  Tom and I then went to Inglesport for lunch whilst Matt tried to eat soup at home.

Daisy

I asked Tom what he wanted to do in the afternoon and he said he wanted to go for a walk around Oxenber Woods, so we went to Austwick and did so.  There were lots of nice flowers out on the walk - although no bluebells: there was absolutely no sign whatsoever of any of the 1,000s of bluebells which were out only 4 weeks ago.  We finished off, got back to the car and then the rain came down, so we timed it perfectly.  We got back in time to see the end of a football match which was good.  Tom and I then had salmon for tea whilst Matt had a bath.  Then another football match and bed for Tom.  Not the most exciting of days, but good enough.