Almost 30 miles today at an average of – drum roll – 8+ mph. I was very much taken by the Whalley railway viaduct and almost forgot about the abbey. Once past Ribchester, my route was less interesting: a B road to Longridge and then a busier B road to Red Scar to join the Preston Guild Wheel.
But I’ve enjoyed my two days (thank you, weather). I realise how unfit I am: I have no “spring” or acceleration, and cycling very quickly feels like toil. It can only get easier.
I’m not one for performance statistics, but perhaps I should note today’s Personal Worst for future reference:
And all this on a beautifully sunny day with a tailwind.
I haven’t cycled for some months nor done a solo ride for over a year, so I was both apprehensive and excited. Some things came back naturally, but others made me aware of changes in myself. My thumbs hurt when I have to brake on long downhills; I am more cautious around potholes and unmade surfaces; slurry tractors are the more lethal rural equivalent of Deliveroo riders; my tolerance for uphills is less than it was. It was a great day out nonetheless. Who cares about walking up hills?
I still find the juxtaposition here of industrial (or post-industrial) and quasi-feudal bizarre. Barnoldswick (lunchtime coffee and chocolate cake) definitely represents the long tail of Victorian industry, but Downham – only four steep valleys away in the shadow of Pendle Hill – is a quaint estate village. Oh, the pleasures of exploring!
I went to Accrington to look at the Tiffany collection in the Haworth art gallery, but as I did some essential prep (like working out my route from the station to the gallery) I recalled other things about Accrington: Accrington brick, Accrington Stanley and the Accrington Pals.
The town itself is a mix of grandeur and redundancy. Who needs (or wants to pay for) a magnificent market hall (about to close for redevelopment), so many chapels, or a Carnegie library with its enormous, draughty windows for long-gone “mechanics” to study by natural light? Who still believes that “Knowledge is Power, a Light to Guide” and “Industry and Prudence Conquer”? (Sorry for the cynicism, but I’m still recovering from sitting through ad breaks in a Channel 4 documentary last night about the miners’ strike.) The railway station is almost effaced by a giant Tesco, the next sight is the burned-out ground-floor façade of the old Conservative Club (oh, I wish I’d taken my own photo), and the grand 1930s fire station (prudence petrified) is no longer used, its most obvious current tenant a vape shop.
There is a park on the hill up to the gallery; at the top is a war memorial with rows and rows of the names of the dead and a marvellous view (even on a murky day) towards Clitheroe and the Forest of Bowland. Haworth art gallery is an Arts and Crafts house designed in 1909 (surely old-fashioned by then) by Walter Brierley for sibling mill owners. It’s a lovely building: the wooden frames in the billiard room have little acorns and insects carved into them. It owes its collection of Tiffany glass to Joseph Briggs, an Accrington lad who emigrated to New York in the late 19th century and worked for decades in Louis Tiffany’s studios, eventually becoming its president. When the company went bankrupt, Briggs presented Accrington with a collection of glass (which was then probably out of fashion) – which explains this oddball juxtaposition of Victorian mill town and American art nouveau.
I was expecting lamps but found none. Instead there were exquisite – and some less exquisite – vases and tiles, and information boards on topics like cameo, intaglio and iridescence with examples of all. I would have liked to steal a vase that resembled the kind that Emile Gallé made – until I saw one by Gallé himself, which turned my kleptomania in another direction.
It was too beautiful a day to leave immediately after checking out so we walked the route I had followed on Wednesday afternoon. The highlight was seeing goosanders: the way they hopped onto the rock told me at once that they were not mallards, even though I couldn’t see them clearly enough to identify them. Thank you, zoom lens.
Yet another day that felt like June and resembled March only in the bare outlines of the trees and the blackthorn blossom. The bus to Mitton first and a quick visit to the Church of All Hallows, where a chapel was crammed with tombs of Shireburns/Sherburns dating from the 16th century. One in particular was very well done, down to the little dog playing with the lady’s tasselled cord.
Then a walk beside the Ribble into Clitheroe, where we went up to the tiny castle keep and admired the views to Pendle Hill to the south and Longridge to the north.
One of those “devise-your-own” walks, which involved closed footpaths, tumbledown stiles, deviations and – most excitingly of all – fording a brook. I liked Ribchester, with its Roman baths and museum, along with a higgledy-piggledy church.
Most delightful sight of the day: some old almshouses just outside Ribchester – funded by, I learned later, John Shireburne. And we’re staying in the Shireburn Arms.
Three trains and a bus . . . and I arrived in Hurst Green at lunchtime. The station platform had been gritted at Blackburn; I spent the afternoon in short sleeves. A beautiful, slightly hazy day, which meant that my view of this side of Pendle Hill was soft-focus. I dumped my case and set off for Stonyhurst College and the River Hodder, and back along the Ribble. Unassuming countryside with a surprising number of Tudor buildings.
Aides memoires part 3 