2001 Cornwall Pilgrimage

Wednesday 22 August 2001. Fran and I set off for a few days in Cornwall. Mevagissy, our chosen destination this time, is sunny but full - there are no rooms to be had.

Mevagissy is one of those delightful villages and fishing harbours so typical of Cornwall. Some of the roads are perilously narrow and indeed the way to the car park is to drive along the quayside. Meeting someone coming the other way and you are sweating at the nearness of the unrailed drop to the harbour bottom to your side.

Whilst Hartlepool has a much more detailed version of the hanged monkey spy, local legend tells of a similarly unfortunate simian who was the sole survivor of a shipwreck during the Napoleanic Wars. Never having seen such a creature before the villagers thought it must be a French spy and hanged it on the beach. I would have thought it would have been better to hang it from something higher off the ground but then there's (possibly untrue...) a wall somewhere with a sign that a King was born there. So if a king can be born halfway up a wall....

Just to finish the Mevagissy portion of our story with something that is definitely true: Andrew Pears, the man who founded Pears Soap was born here in 1768.

Disappointed at our inability to stay in Mevagissy, we head for familiar territory and head for Newquay and Porth. The campsite at Porth has no vacancies but we find a room at a nearby B+B so all is well.

With a sigh of relief we can head for our favourite walk onto Porth Island. We can hear the steady boom of the blow hole at the far end and get to see it in all it's working glory. Get ready...

BOOM! The sea has worn a smooth shaft into the side of a large inlet and each wave hits it at speed and is diverted up and back outwards. Very spectacular!

An index will be forthcoming, just dig deep for your patience until I get round to it!

UK Places Index

This Index Page covers UK Towns and Cities not necessarily covered anywhere else. However readers can also try the Work Index which also has many non-work descriptions of town as well as the various Curiosities Index Pages.

Read about our adventures by clicking/tapping the photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.

Manchester Index

A collection of articles covering the city of Manchester in the UK. Known as England's Second City, it was Roman Mancunium and rose to huge prominence due to the wool industry during the Industrial Revolution.

Each article can be accessed by clicking or tapping the photographs below. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index page.

UK Places Index

Manchester 1998

Manchester was the "Big City" when I was young. A regular Saturday morning trip by train took us from home to the city and the afternoon would be a mooch around various shops and a stop at the burger cart that inevitably was serving at the top end of Market Street.

By the 1990s Market Street had changed out of all recognition. Outside Lewis's the road had been taken over by the platforms for a new tramway system. It was the first city to bring back trams when the Metrolink system opened in 1992, with the intention of extending the system into outlying towns, taking over existing railway routes or by the laying of new tracks. In the background, right, the Arndale Centre was a large totally enclosed shopping centre.

Built between 1971 and 1979, the first phase opened in 1975. It had a tower containing business units and at ground and first floor levels were shopping outlets. Unfortunately the outside of the building was covered in dull yellow ceramic tiles described variously as "distinctly lavatorial" and similarly "The longest toilet wall in the world". It replaced many streets, mostly of Victorian buildings and several dubious areas where "young men were fleeced" and "young women were forced into prostitution".

For myself I always thought it a great shame that the small collection of market stalls on Shudehill that sold second-hand books and records all disappeared...

On the 15th June 1996 the IRA left a van parked between Marks and Spencer and The Arndale Centre on Corporation Street. It contained a 3,300lb (1500kg) bomb which exploded in the later morning causing a huge amount of damage over some 40+ streets. Over 200 people were injured and it was a miracle that no-one was killed.

Marks and Spencers was condemned as was Longridge House where Dad had worked for the British Engine Insurance Company for many years before the family moved to Blackpool in the mid 1970s.

Work to clear the site took a long time. This was taken on the 9th April 1998 and is of the space left where the Marks and Spencers store was. Previously the view of the cathedral would have been blocked by Longridge House and others.

Manchester's cathedral is of the Perpendicular period (15th Century), though it was badly damaged by bombing in the Second World War. The 130ft tower was rebuilt in 1867. As I entered, I was accosted by an elderly lady who was acting as a Cathedral Guide. "Most of us are in our 80s," she confided, "...but I'm only 72!"

Still too old for me, Dearie...!

The interior is somewhat dark. Originally in a dark sandstone the stonework was coated in Roman cement (it has nothing to do with the Romans) but this damaged the stonework which was replaced by an equally dark grit stone in the second half of the 19th century.

The Midland Hotel in Oxford Square is a superb example of a 19th Century railway hotel. Manchester was served by the London Midland and Scottish (LMS) Railway Company.

The Barton Arcade of 1871. The ground floor contains shops and the upper floors, offices of solicitors, insurance and other such companies.

On a corner of Corporation Street is a pre-fish and chip shop eating place - Mr Thomas's Chop House. Established in 1867 typical fare would be lamb or pork chops and mashed potatoes.

So until next time - emjoy your chops!

Manchester Index

Manchester, 1970

Seeing as we have gone way back in time for the last few entries, let's have a look at Manchester as it was in 1970.

On Market Street, Debenhams had yet to take over Pauldens department store opposite the well established Lewis's. The trams and trolley buses had disappeared in the 1950s and the Metro trams were not to appear for another 25 years.

The Swinging Sixties had only just finished and mini skirts were gradually being replaced by flared trousers and maxi and midi skirts.

Piccadilly Gardens were still gardens - a mini park on the square at the top of Market Street. It was a place to sit and enjoy the flowers and lawns and the benches along the pathways. Across the road from the gardens Wellington House was still the home of the BBC in Manchester.

Mosley Street runs towards Market Street behind the camera - it's a long time since I've been to Manchester but since the introduction of the tramway system, Market Street seems to have been split into two with the side that contained Lewis's (later Primark) being called Fountain Street. I'm not quite sure how the two sides of a street can have different names, but there you go...

Anyway, this is still Mosley Street in the days when it was common to see two Triumph Herald cars next to each other.

I used to take the train every Saturday with my mate Alex and our first stop would be the burger cart on the corner of Pauldens. Burger were both yummy and eatable without quite as much mess as they inevitably produce today. A 2oz patty was considered standard and accompaniments were fried onions which stacked on a hot plate helped keep the burgers warm, mustard, tomato ketchup and nothing else. No salad, no pickle just a very tasty burger that you could expect to stay pretty much together whilst you ate it. Bring back those days! And whilst you're at it, let's have a Wimpy back on every High Street!

You can only see the very start of the word on the cart, but burgers were still hamburgers at this time. Trading Standards later demanded they be renamed beef burgers as they weren't made of ham, but the name came from the place burgers were first made - Hamburg in Germany.

Manchester Index

My First SLR Camera - The Zenit B

This article was originally published with just two photos in July 2009. I've refreshed and enlarged the images somewhat and found another two to join them.

I've laid off the negatives for a while and have dug out some old slides to scan.

These are from 1969 and go back to the first SLR (single lens reflex) camera I ever had. I paid a princely £20 for it...and it was brand new too! It was a Zenith B camera made in Russia and I bought it from Dixons who badged it as a Prinzflex - their own brand, gluing a plastic Prinzflex badge over the front of the camera where the word Zenit (the Russians didn't use the 'h') was etched in the metal body. This shot is of a rose stem with the sun coming from behind it. I only noticed later that the thing was covered in greenfly - that'll be my mum not spraying it then... ha ha!

The second shot is of some of the berries that grew in abundance on the trees at the back of our house. We lived in Milnrow, a village between Rochdale and Shaw in what was to become Greater Manchester, but was still part of Lancashire at the time. I remember a young lad who lived a few doors down from us, eating them. I was only fourteen and had a worrying moment when he refused to spit them out. I had to insert a finger to flick them out of his mouth. He was ok, but I bet he had a bad tummy ache that night!

A close-up look at the inside of a flower. Despite once working at an agricultural college for a while during my career, I have never got beyond this simple way of identifying plants: Coloured things on top - a flower; no coloured things - either a bush or it's winter; very tall brown "pole" holding it up - a tree; very low down, green and pointed ends - a mowed lawn... Works every time!

Personal Memories Index

Rochdale and Area in the 1960s

Almost as soon as I got my first instamatic camera (a Kodak Instamatic 50) in the 1960s I started experimenting with black and white film which could be developed and printed at home by taking over the bathroom and blacking it out with either sheets of thick plastic or by shovin drawing pins into the window frames through a few layers of blankets... This also meant that the family had to wait sometimes for quite a while before they could use the loo... but sacrifices have to be made. Not by me though - I was already in there!

Hollingworth Lake in Littleborough was Rochdale's main go-to place for relaxation. It was really a reservoir, covering a village so the rumours went. Of course there was another that said you could hear the church bells on stormy nights... Must be a ghostly one then because there are no buildings left apart from very low walls and foundations some of which showed themselves during the droughts earlier this year.

The lake used to be a hive of activity in summer, yachting, motor boats for hire, the odd brave person (or the brave odd person) swimming... and fishing. I was never a dedicated fisherman, but went several times with a mate, Barry, fishing on the canal and once at the lake where we persuaded someone in a boat to take our lines right out from the shore. On reeling back with a spinner lure I felt a bit of weight and eventually had a 2lb pike on the line. Perhaps not on the hook through as it dropped back into the water on being lifted out. Drat!

There was a tiny fair and a few one-armed bandits at the Lake, but every year a travelling fair would set up and we would go to enjoy the atmosphere and grab a few photos.

There was a scrap yard somewhere, possibly around the end of Albert Royds Street (now Rochdale Bypass) but round the back of Halifax Road, and I used to go taking photos of the wrecked cars there, with a mate. The chap who worked there soon got to know us and apart from a warning not to go climbing up the stacked cars, was happy to let us in to wander.

This was a Hillman Minx, a tank of a car, one of which was to be my own first four-wheeled car after a brief dalliance with Reliant three-wheelers at the age of 16. I would only be 13 at the time of these outings.

It's fascinating looking at these now - not so much for the girls - who let's face it are a bit young for me now ha ha - but this is Yorkshire Street, Rochdale in the swinging 1960s. As far as I remember it was 1967, the Summer of Love. You know, I always wondered... Where was all that free love that we heard so much about, going on? This must have been one of the first black and white films I ever developed myself. Full of drying marks too... But just look how busy Yorkshire Street is...

Snapped walking across a zebra crossing. The girls were walking the opposite way, towards us and I got a smile from one of them.

Rochdale Index Page

Stock Cars at Rochdale Hornets Ground

These photos were taken oon a 126 Kodak instamatic camera, and I guess they date from 1969.

At that time, Rochdale Hornets rugby ground had a dirt track running around it that was used for BRISCA Formula 1 stock car racing. Races used to take place on Sunday afternoons and we quickly became avid followers.

Cars that had been written off were resurected from scrap yards and furnished with huge engines - 7 litres were the most highly prized cars. It was part of the fun to look at the backs of the cars to try and recgnise what they were originally when they were just ordinary road cars.

At the tail end of the 1960s we were looking at the tail ends of cars originally sold during the later 1950s. That bit of bodywork, though, was almost the only surviving component. Apart from the supercharged engines, roll bars and cages were the norm and brakes that could stop a car without the need to open a door and drag your foot on the floor...

This was a contact sport. nudging or "nerfing" another car either to try to pass or to spin it off the track was encouraged and a well-practiced manouvre. Very occasionally it would result in a more spectacular result with a car riding up the outer barrier or rolling over (hence the standard fitting of roll cages!) Whilst injuries were a risk they were very few and far between.

Coloured lights were used to warn drivers of a serious pile-up ahead causing an obstruction and in cases where an injury or high risk, such as someone trapped in a car where it was likely to be hit, the red lights used at the end of each heat to stop the cars were lit.

Rochdale Index Page

Rochdale Index Page

A series of articles covering our original home town of Rochdale. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book, started out in Lancashire and somehow found itself in Greater Manchester.

I've had to be selective a little bit as some other articles set in the town can be reached from the Personal Memories or Family Memories index pages, though the articles featured here are mostly about the town itself rather than what I or my ancestors got up to in it...

Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to each of the articles. A link on each page will bring you back here.

UK Places Index