Golcar

Ann welcomed us to the Colne Valley Museum. She wore a practical grey dress, a simple white apron that my grandma used to call a pinny, and a cotton shawl. She was expecting us; Sarah’s friend, Bob, had managed to persuade the museum staff to open early, so we could be treated to an exclusive guided tour, enabling us to rapidly acquire an insight into the history of Golcar, a small village that is three miles from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

The museum was formed from three weavers’ cottages that had been knocked together. Not having been a very good student of history I didn’t know what a weaver’s cottage was, but it didn’t take me long for my interest to become thoroughly piqued: my day job is all about technology, and the museum was all about industrial history.

Ann introduced us to her colleague, a fellow volunteer, who was also called Ann.

 “All my family come from around this area” said Bob, not wasting a moment to learn more about the area. Sarah had known Bob and his partner Miriam since she was little; they were close friends of her family from when they lived in Manchester. Not only was this trip an opportunity to do a ‘G’ and visit Golcar, but it was also an opportunity to visit them both and to catch up.

“You remember my mother?!” exclaimed Bob after chatting with one of the Ann’s for a few minutes. Bob had been recently doing a lot of research into his family history. In some respects, Bob’s trip to Golcar was a lot more significant than my own. I had no reason to visit the town other than it began with a letter, whereas Bob’s identity seemed to be bound closely to the valley.

A neat graphic charted the history of the property, showing how it was divided and subdivided and occupied by different families. A sign, entitled ‘a family weaving business’ offered some useful background information: “Cloth makers James and Sally Pearson built two cottages here at Cliffe Ash in the early 1840s. By 1845, two more cottages had been added and the row was called Spring Rock. The four homes housed textile workers until the early part of the 20th century”.

I chatted with the first Ann. The entire area was defined by the wool and textile industry, which had all but disappeared. Ann’s woollen shawl wasn’t produced from a mill in Yorkshire. Instead, it was bought from Primark, made in China and was probably polyester. Ann had been a mature student, studied science, technology and engineering in her 40s.  Her dissertation was about the architecture of the textile industry.

After walking through the length of the ground floor, we found ourselves in one of the main exhibition rooms: a kitchen. There was a range that had been recently lit, a couple of tables, and a frame on which you could hang things using tenterhooks, used for the stretching of woollen cloth. On the tables were period items; jugs, pots and bowls. There was a room at the back of the kitchen which contained washing paraphernalia: a mangle, a bucket, and a device which was used to agitate your laundry. Our attention was drawn to a couple of framed pieces of needlework, which were made by girls and young women to demonstrate their skills.

A sign directed us upstairs towards the 1840s bedroom, which contained period furniture: a substantial chair, a bed, a dresser, and a spinning wheel. Ann told us something else about the bedroom: it had been used for drinking when the building was taken over by the Golcar Socialist Club. Ann told us about the hard drinking Colne Valley MP, Victor Grayson, a skilled orator who mysteriously disappeared in 1920.

There was another room at the top of the building. I was struck by two things: the light streaming in through the windows, and two large looms.

“Everyone does that” said Ann, who saw me walk towards the window.

I wanted to catch a glimpse of the surrounding countryside, to learn more about the valley. I wanted to see what the weavers saw. “When we first opened, we had the looms directly next to the windows as they would have been, so there would be as much light as possible for the weavers to work, but then visitors would move between the looms to look out of the window, so we moved them to where they are now” explained Ann.

It was only then that I noticed the size of the windows. They were different to other windows I had seen in buildings of a similar age. They were massive; the windows frames hewn from stone. Behind me were two massive wooden framed weaving looms. A volunteer demonstrated how they worked.

Bob was fascinated by its operation, how the shuttle moved back and forth, and told us how the mechanism changed to create different patterns in the material.

“Jacquard” Bob said, referring to the Frenchman, Joseph Jacquard, who had once visited Huddersfield.

I knew of Jacquard through the history of computing. Jacquard invented a system where looms could be programmed using sets of abstract cards that could be used to realise physical cloth that contained complex repeating patterns.

The final room was different to the rest. Rather than focusing on spinning and weaving, it was all about shoemaking. The weavers of Yorkshire, like textile workers in Lancashire, wore clogs. After the death of one of the last clog makers, the entire contents of a cobblers, including stock, tools, and materials were moved to the museum to be preserved. Visitors could sit on a bench and try on pairs of clogs in different sizes. Our visit to the museum ended with a short walk through a café and gift shop, where Bob continued to chat with the two volunteers.

Our journey to Golcar had been a journey through personal and industrial time. It began at the town of Macclesfield, spending the night at Miriam and Bob’s house. Bob explained that Macclesfield used to be a famous silk town, but I only know it as an anonymous train station that I always used to pass on the way to Manchester. Macclesfield is a part of the North West that I didn’t know anything about, but in this instance, the notion of the place was secondary: it was friendships and shared personal histories that mattered. Sarah shared stories and greetings from her parents, and Miriam and Bob gave us a tour of a well-tended garden that overlooked a quiet canal; an important echo of industrial heritage that we were only just starting to explore.

When Bob had heard we were visiting Golcar, he was very happy to help. He prepared us a printed information pack entitled ‘Golcar: a West Yorkshire village’. His pack introduced the Colne Valley and highlighted sights, such as the village church, the valley museum and a café. A very concise history referenced wool, the building of canals and industrialisation. Bob also offered to guide us from their home in Macclesfield to Golcar, which was really helpful, since I had no idea how to get there.

On the morning of our drive to Golcar, we followed Bob and Miriam in their car. Bob’s route took us to a place called Standedge which is the site of a series of canal tunnels connecting West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. We stopped at Standedge visitor’s centre, a former warehouse, now a museum.

We wandered around the visitor centre for around half an hour, looking at the various exhibits; a set of display boards that explained the term ‘legging it’, and revealed that Standedge tunnel was ‘the highest, longest and deepest canal tunnel in Britain’ and a series of wooden life size cut out characters who played a significant role in its construction. One board explained that its construction began in 1794 while it opened in 1811. “The railways” said Bob, reflecting on its closure in 1944.  The tunnel was restored and reopened in 2001, and is now open to canal tourists.

Just as Sarah was catching up with Miriam and Bob, I had the opportunity to catch up with one of my old friends: Dave. I met Dave on the first day of university at a cheese and wine party. I remember Dave because I was envious of the way that he could seemingly talk to anyone and the fact that he had a bold plan, which was to liberate some of the free wine and take it to the lake side, and continue drinking. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I think I was party to his scheme. There is something else that I need to mention about Dave. Just as Bob had a connection to Golcar, Dave was, more or less, a local: he was from Huddersfield.

We met Dave in the Golcar Liberal Club, a working men’s club. The club was almost empty, except for a single family celebrating a birthday. A huge television on a back wall displayed an ignored football match and two bored barmaids chatted with each other. A flyer on our table suggested that there would be a club singer performing during the evening. Later on that evening two local lads started playing pool at a table that was just behind us.

Dave lived on the opposite side of Huddersfield, but had cycled for over an hour from Halifax, which was where he seemed to be spending most of his time. I asked Dave what it is like around Huddersfield.

“You look around you and you see history everywhere; it’s just there. You see it when cycling around, next to the canal and going into the different parts of the town. You’ve can’t escape it. It surrounds you. It’s everywhere, and you’re a part of it too. You see that parts of this area were once really very wealthy, because of the industry, because of what this area used to mean”.

After an hour or so, we invite Dave over for dinner. We were staying in a small house situated two hundred metres away from the Colne Valley Museum. Our house had been built on a steep hill. The bottom floor contained a kitchen and a living room, and access to a garden. The ground floor contained a single bedroom dominated by a series of substantial windows, like the windows that I had seen in the museum. Although it had a high ceiling, it didn’t seem to be large enough to have once accommodated a loom, but it was certainly a place where someone worked. Perhaps it used to be a finisher’s cottage; a place where fine detail to cloth was added.

The house was dwarfed by the adjacent building, which appeared to be a former industrial building, perhaps a mill. There was one main tell-tale sign of its former use: an external beam that was used to haul materials up from the ground level and into the building for processing.

I ask Dave about what he was doing in Halifax. Dave was between jobs having recently returned to the UK from a university in central Europe. He was working on a personal research project that was connected to his doctoral studies. Dave has interests in philosophy, politics, sociology, economics and computing. He connects these subject together by writing computer simulations and studying the emerging patterns. Writing simulations, or any types of software forces you to really think about your assumptions. If you’re using a computer to simulate anything, the computer becomes a philosophical tool because you need to define everything that the computer does. In some respects, you can describe a whole universe within a computer and define the laws that govern that universe. Dave cycles to a well-known pub chain in the morning, orders a coffee and gets to work on his simulations. He says it suits him: it is warm, he’s not disturbed, and the coffee is cheap.

The discussion moved onto politics and the debates regarding the European Union, and I sensed that Dave had different views to many members of his immediate family. One of the last things that I remember from our discussions was his point that it is important not to condemn those who have different perspectives, but to understand.

Dave left our weavers cottage at around 11; he had a long ride home in the cold but he didn’t seem to mind. It looked like he was used it. He donned a waterproof jacket, turned on his lights, unchained his bike and cycled to the centre of Golcar and followed a road that travelled downwards to the centre of Huddersfield.

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We found some time to walk around the village, which didn’t take us very long. The heart of the village seemed to be a road called Town End which contained a library, a post office, a hairdressers, a tanning salon, a small supermarket and what appeared to be a wine bar. As I walked, I looked upwards, towards the windows and again saw evidence of distant industry.

A walk took us to a closed pub and a small deserted industrial estate that contained a brewery. We retraced our steps, found another pub, and soon discovered a narrow footpath. We nodded at dog walkers as we made our way to an unknown destination, and I looked around, gradually falling into my own thoughts about what it would be like to live in one of those weavers houses. The footpath emerged in a part of the village that felt unrecognisable from the Golcar of Town End.

We found ourselves in a version of Golcar that belonged to the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties; streets with cul-de-sacs and closes, filled with simple box-shaped detached houses with integral garages, and homes that an estate agent might describe as ‘alpine bungalows’. I felt unnerved and disorientated. In my mind, Town End gave Golcar its sense of place, whereas its estates reminded me of the time I spent in a similar sized village in rural East Anglia. Somehow, time and architecture had collapsed space and distance through childhood memories.

Whilst Golcar is its very own place, every place exists within its own geographical context which deserves exploration. We had a choice; we could either head into the metropolis of Huddersfield, or follow further footpaths to leave the town and into the next village.

The following day we decided to head to Slaithwaite, a village to the west of Golcar. We began from our weavers cottage and walked down an adjacent snicket, twintern, or passage and onto a road that roughly followed the course of the river and the railway line. As we walked, I started to play a simple game with myself called: ‘spot the weavers cottage’.  It was a very easy game to play; stone houses with large sets of upper windows overlooking the Colne valley could be easily found along the road to Slaithwaite.

I liked Slaithwaite. I like the stone uniformity of its buildings and the way that stone shop fronts offered visitors an assortment of useful establishments: cafés, butchers, and newsagents. The village was dominated by what was called the ‘Globe Worsted Mill’; an imposing monument to the industrial revolution which sat ominously in the middle of the village, its location dictated by the river and connected by canal. The mill opened between 1887 and 1889, and closed in 2004. I later read somewhere that it might become a technology and innovation centre with a connection to the nearby Huddersfield University, leading to a delicious play on words: the establishment of a Sili-Colne valley.

We discovered further abandoned mill buildings in Slaithwaite; industrial buildings that could be described as a five storey wall of windows, like the weavers cottages, expressly designed to let in the light. Some of those windows had been bricked up, others had been smashed. Dark streaks ran from the top to the bottom of the building, following the path of downpipes. I didn’t feel sad looking at these buildings. Instead, I felt curiosity: what stories emerged from those buildings, and a curiosity about what those buildings would or could become.

On the way back to Golcar, we stopped in a local pub called The Swan for a couple of pints. The Swan felt timeless. It had two bars; a saloon bar and a lounge bar. Musical hall era posters adorned the walls. One advertised ‘five Braemar Pipers’ and ‘eight dancing lovelies’. An extended family came and sat down for an afternoon pint; grandparents, parents and children all occupying a set of tables.

We left the following morning. It had snowed heavily overnight. We had opened the curtains and white night blazed through the windows of our weavers cottage. Clouds hung low in the sky threatening further snow, but it was clear that it was melting quickly. We loaded the car, and followed the snow to the motorway, where it disappeared.

This trip had a slightly different feel to the others. Golcar was Miriam and Bob, and Golcar was Dave. It was a trip that seemed to be less about place and more about people.

I liked Golcar. Perhaps it was the light, the large windows. I like that it was idiosyncratic. I liked that there were wine bars and closed pubs, weavers’ cottages and alpine bungalows. I liked the friendliness of all the volunteers who all seemed to be called Ann. I liked that their museum seemed to be saying: “this is Golcar; it’s a small place, but what happened in these valleys was important for a time, and this is a part of us”.

Fron

I pointed towards a solitary sign, took my foot off the accelerator and edged the hire car to the side of the road. We were there. We were at Fron, Powys, mid-Wales.

I got out of the car, took a photo of the sign and then a celebratory photo of Sarah. It was just after ten o’clock in the morning; the air contained a touch of cold, reminding me that we were now in autumn.

“Shall we have a walk about?” asked Sarah.

I had spent a few minutes studying the map before we had set off; I had a slightly different idea.

“I want to go up one of these roads; I’ve seen one on the right which looks like it might be, you know, the village”. I turned the ignition, put the car into gear and pulled out onto the A483. As soon as I was on the main road, I took a right turn onto a residential street.

“This is nice!” said Sarah, who was looking at all the houses as we passed. “Look! That one’s for sale! We could move to Fron!”

The hill got steeper, then narrowed and began to wind its way up the side of a valley. I passed a pair of well-maintained iron gates and drove into an empty church car park. We got out and found a path that led us on a route past the side of a well maintained building that looked less like a church and more like a residential home; there was signs of life, but nobody was about. The path led us to an unkempt graveyard, complete with tall grass, gravestones with faded lettering and a warning sign that said they were dangerous and may cause serious injury.

We rounded a corner and found another graveyard. This one was different; it was tidy and well maintained and was situated on a steep hill. As I climbed the hill towards the boundary of the church my eyes caught the names: Evans, Jones and Morgan. I saw something else: distant hills filled with light valley fog. This was the Wales of my imagination.

Wales features little in my personal biography. I have one main memory which has faded with time. It is a memory of when I was fifteen; I had joined a scout group out of my own volition after realising that I had inadvertently become a teenage recluse. I lived in a different part of London from where I went to school and I felt as if I was under house arrest since I wasn’t yet allowed to roam the streets and hang out with my friends; joining ‘scouts’ seemed a way around this.

My fifteenth year was punctuated by a trip to ‘climb’ Snowdon. It was an adventure that I remember finding entirely baffling. I didn’t understand why anyone would walk up a mountain ‘for fun’, especially when you had to share bunk beds with a group of malodorous teenagers. There was another aspect of bafflement: the endless car journey from London to our simple hostel was accompanied by a soundtrack of endless heavy metal music that was favoured by the nineteen year old driver who gave the impression of being impossibly grown up.

One thing I did get out of that particular adventure, other than a profound feeling of exhaustion, was a sense of achievement, awareness of different way of being or living; the scenery I encountered during the adventure was an overwhelming contrast to the urban environment in which I was familiar. In some respects, that trip had changed my teenage self. I had returned tired, but happy.

This trip was very different; Sarah had booked an AirBNB that was a ten minute drive away from Fron. Our journey had taken us to the borders of Birmingham and into the county of Herefordshire. Our route had changed from dull motorways into A-roads that were devoid of traffic.  Strips of asphalt and bridges had given way to picturesque landscape of gentle hills and pretty settlements. Half an hour of post-motorway travel made me realise that I had thoroughly escaped my familiar urban environment of buses, crowded trains and streets packed with idling cars.

Leaving London had been brutal. Although we had set off outside of rush hour, it took us over an hour and a half to wrestle free from the urban traffic and onto a densely packed but free flowing motorway. Our route out of the city took us past districts of Forest Hill and Shepard’s Bush, rural suggestions that were at odds with the claustrophobic city.

Our AirBNB in Fron was a 17th century stone cottage, owned by Michelle and Peter who were, like us, both in their mid-forties. Michelle took us through a hallway, past Peter’s dismembered Ducati motorcycle and into a kitchen that was warmed by an exotic emblematic fixture that you only tend to see in rural homes: an Aga. Michelle talked us through how to use it, before returning to the lounge area where Peter explained how to use the wood burner. Our room was on the first floor through a second living area that also doubled up as a bed room. I remember highly varnished stripped floorboards that sloped downwards from one side of the room to another. Our room was small; a dark structural beam was set in the wall. My eyes later traced the grain of the wood, following a line from the top of the room to the end of the beam, my imagination trying to visualise a network of beams, all working together to support the structure of the building. It was very different to the beige box of a house that I had in London.

When the tour of the cottage was done and Michelle and Peter had left I suddenly began to realise this was their main house; I had initially thought that it might have been a second property, an investment holiday let, or a house that may have once belonged to a deceased relative. It was immaculately clean and well prepared. Although we were paying for the privilege, I was also struck by their trust: all their possessions were on show, which included a guitar and accompanying music, a CD collection and a carved wooden duck.

The outside was equally lovely: the back yard was small but offered adventure. I later found a small path that followed a steep incline, arriving at a weathered bench. Peter later told me that there was more land beyond the house, which now I understood had been built in what appeared to be a semi-sheltered cove.

The front garden was different. To complement a stone outbuilding, which doubled up as a motorcycle workshop, Peter was building what appeared may become a warm wooden hut, or some kind of showroom where he could store his motorbikes. Beyond the garden lay a gate, a single track road, a neighbouring farm, and a stream.

An hour later, it was dark; we had followed the single track road and had driven to the nearest major town, Llandrindod Wells, to find a supermarket.

“Did you see that woman?” I whispered to Sarah as we walked back to the car, laden with milk, bread and pasta.

“What woman?”

“That woman! The woman we just passed!”

“No. What about her?”

“She smiled at us.”

“What did she want?”

“I don’t think she wanted anything.”

I unlocked the car and put the bags in the boot. Minutes later we were back on the road, heading towards our cottage, anticipating the very middle class challenge of figuring out how to use an Aga and wood burning stove.

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We were up early the next morning, ready for our trip to Fron. Our journey was straightforward; a short ride over scrubland, a right hand turn towards a settlement called Crossgates and then onto Fron and a layby; the point where I got out of the car and took a photograph of the sign to document our arrival.

“There’s something satisfying about seeing a random place on a page and actually getting there” said Sarah.

I couldn’t help but feel that there must be more to Fron than a bunch of houses and a church. Fron is a part of a community called Llanbadarn Fawr. I had a need to collate stories and facts to get a sense of the area; I chastise myself for not taking time to visit the Crossgates community centre, or loiter in the only pub in nearby Penybont. Later, I would think: ‘maybe I need to go back, to find those stories’. In some ways, the visit to Fron had morphed from journey of accomplishment to a journey of tourism. Instead, we were again drawn to the more urban environment of Llandrindod Wells, a couple of miles to the south.

We parked up not too far from our previous visit to the supermarket and started to walk around. We discovered an imposing municipal council building called The Gwalia, a park, and a pleasant high well-used high street. A trip to the town museum had an exhibit that explained how the town had become a tourist attraction due to its natural spa.

“The waters contain lithium! That might explain it!” whispered Sarah, as we walked around the museum.

Before our trip Sarah had found a survey that reported that Llandrindod Wells was the happiest place in Wales (and twelfth overall in Britain). A bit of research revealed that I lived the 145th happiest place in the country, and Sarah lived in the 124th, but neither of us could identify any qualitative difference between our two locations other than my area had a park and chicken shops and Sarah’s area had a Tube station and Irish pubs.

After being forbidden to use the museum toilets by an enthusiastic receptionist, we popped into a local landmark, the Metropole Hotel and Spa, to inspect their plumbing. There was a conference going on. We found ourselves surrounded by very jolly farmers, most of whom were wearing tweed, clearly relishing the opportunity to network and discussing loudly the subject of farming processes and development; a subject entirely alien to us both.

Following the advice of Elena, who worked in the tourist information office that was practically attached to the museum, we drove across town and parked up next to Llandrindod Wells Lake. The lake sits just on the edge of the town. In summer, it would be glorious; in deep autumn, it was merely ‘pleasantly quiet’. I could imagine myself looking forward to a walk around the park, ending up at the café called The Lakeside, which was a clear draw for locals. I began to see why Llandrindod Wells was a happy place to be.

In the space of a couple of hours, we had walked around the lake, got vaguely lost in a wood, and traipsed back into town to look for something called the Bicycle Museum, which was closed. Realising that we had covered a lot of ground, we returned to the car and set off, heading south, to the nearby town of Builth Wells.

Builth Wells is a small market town that sits next to the rivers Wye and Irfon. After crossing a road bridge over the Wye, we parked up and set off on a walk that was listed in a guidebook that Michelle had said we could borrow. I looked at my watch; we had a couple of hours of light left. I looked at the sky; it wasn’t going to rain. We found a riverside path and followed it until we found the Irfon, and then tried to follow that too, until we realised that we didn’t really understand what the guide was telling us. After a few turns, we followed some increasingly steep roads that took us onto a housing estate, before following other roads that made a gentle descent into the town.

In the town, we found evidence of its rural heritage; a large livestock market situated at the back of the high street. In the late afternoon, shops were starting to close. We also found a smart looking café that was still open. It was empty except for ourselves, and a solitary customer.

“Is there anything to do around here, in the evening?” asked Sarah. The café owner paused, before eventually saying: “Not around here… You could go to Llan’dod, but there’s not much going on there either; there’s more going on in Newtown”.

We found a sofa and sat down. Sarah had bought a copy of the Radnorshire County Times and Gazette. Amidst stories of local tragedy, and a feature about a potential ‘tourism tax’, there was a report that Preseigne town council had made a decision about the species of cherry trees that they were going to plant. The story, sadly, omitted to mention the name of the species.

I liked Builth Wells. I liked the houses that we passed on our walk, and the fact that there was a group of middle aged motorcyclists congregating by the bridge next to the river Wye, perhaps out for one of their last rides of the year. I liked the quietness, and that there was a café where I could read about cherry trees.  A visit to Builth Wells marked the end of the day that we had visited Fron, but we had booked another day in Michelle and Peter’s house. We traced our route, heading north to Llan’dod to Crossgates, and then across the scrubland to our cottage.

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Rhayader is eight miles to the west of Crossgates. Like Builth Wells, Rhayader is a market town. At its heart lies a war memorial and a simple clock tower which sits adjacent to a road junction. We parked up and walked up and down the high street, which took around fifteen minutes. I liked it for the simplicity of its topography and practical array of useful shops: a newsagent, a picture framer, and a kebab shop named ‘Turkish Delight’.

We stopped off at the local tourist information office to learn more: Rhayader’s heyday was between 1893 and 1904 when the nearby Elan Valley reservoirs were being constructed. Thousands of workers flocked to the area to work on a series of dams and reservoirs which were designed to provide clean water to the Birmingham area; a necessity due to the industrial revolution.

After our wander, we took a drive to one of the reservoirs, parked up, and attempted to follow a trail that had been recommended to us by a chap who manned the Elan Valley visitor centre. Well-made paths led to well used foot paths, and then onto a roughly marked woodland trail that was encouraging us towards the shores of a reservoir. This unexpected and somewhat muddy hike, complete with confusion about which direction to take, led thirty year old memories to resurface. There were differences; this time my legs didn’t ache as much and I wasn’t engulfed in a tiredness that gave way to an existential teenage crisis. Rambling around a series of muddy hills and fields was, in some ways, something that I had been looking forward to.

In anticipation of this trip, I had tried to make contact with some community groups through social media. I had been mostly unsuccessful; perhaps my limited success had been down to my choice of social media tools and unfamiliarity as to the communities that I could approach. There was one online community that were willing to chat, and they were based in Newtown.

Newtown caught my attention since it was the largest town on the main road that runs from Fron to Crossgates. The journey from Rhayader, to Llangurig and then onto Newtown was fast, quiet and lovely. The main road we followed sat in a valley and traced the path of the River Wye. As I drove, I remembered a vague plan that Sarah and I had discussed some time earlier; a plan to visit the Machynlleth comedy festival. Sarah would catch a train and I would go by motorcycle to experience the elements and drama of the countryside. The scenic roads reminded me of those thoughts, as did a road sign as we approached Newtown.

Newtown was more than twice the size of Llandrindod Wells and felt noticeably busier. Our timing, however, was unfortunate. After chatting to the manager of a co-operative store that was called Newtopia we discovered that all the key attractions, the Robert Owen Museum (which celebrated the founder of the co-operative movement), the Oriel Davies Gallery and the Newtown Textile Museum were all closed. To kill time, we wandered around Newtown, exploring its streets and studying its character. I liked it. It was a town with a definite centre. Although it had the same type of shops you would see on any high street, it appeared to be punctuated by independent businesses. Before heading off to a restaurant we settled down for a pint in a back street pub called The Sportsman.

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“This is it…” I said, turning to Sarah. An hour and a half had passed. It was now dark. We walked towards a community centre situated on the corner of a small housing estate. I pushed a set of red double doors that opened up into a short corridor and into a large open room, where we met a chap called Patrick who had invited me to ‘bell ringing’. Patrick greeted me enthusiastically, said hello to Sarah and introduced us both to his wife, Sam.

Patrick asked me what we were doing in Newtown. I explained that we had just done an ‘F’, and that meant visiting Fron.

“Did you know that Fron means ‘breast’ in Welsh?”

Patrick ran Newtown Handbell Ringers. As we talked, furniture was moved around and cases of hand bells were unpacked and carefully placed on tables that had been covered by a thick felt-like material and arranged in a simple horse shoe configuration.

“Can you read music?” asked Patrick.

“No.” I replied. I admit to being slightly worried; I had musical baggage. I had once been fired from the school orchestra due to my inability to play the triangle; my ineptitude was down to a bad case of day dreaming.

“You don’t need to read music; you just follow what everybody else does; it’ll all make sense”. Sarah had grade seven for flute and piano. I felt out of my depth.

I assumed that his group attracted a diverse group of people but this particular evening Newtown Handbell Ringers was comprised entirely of retired women.

“Stand over there, next to Sally. You’ll be taking over from Gladys. Gladys can’t make it because of her sciatica”.

Each ‘ringer’ was given two bells and a music book. Each book was different and had been annotated for each performer; Patrick has highlighted exactly where each bell should be rung. Further annotations connected the notes to the left hand and the right hand. With books allocated, bells grasped and a few directions offered about how to hold the bells, it was time for first performance of the evening: a rendition of Waltzing Matilda. Patrick stood at the front of the tables and conducted, enthusiastically pointing and announcing each note. Our performance was halting, confused and yet vaguely recognisable. We gave it another go. This time our rendition was slightly better, even though I managed to confuse my left hand with my right hand.

We soon moved onto another song: a Christmas carol; I forget what it was. I have never been in a band or a choir. This session of bell ringing is one of my very few experiences of communal music making. While this experience might be familiar to some, the translation of highlighted notes in a photocopied book, to the movement of two different bells, and onto the creation of a simple collaborate enterprise felt unfamiliar and exciting. Although I didn’t know who Sally, Edith or any of the other bell ringers were, I know what they did; they were different notes in time, connected through Patrick’s highlighted score.

After our visit, I asked Patrick why he ran Newtown Handbell Ringers. His answer was brilliant and simple: it gives something to the community; it makes Newtown become a better place.

“It allows non-musicians to play music” he continued. “There is something good for the soul to play in a group or band or orchestra. It has a bit of physical exercise and mental stretching, which is good for preventing dementia. When you perform, there is an element of fear; you should know about that, and it's good to face fears. [I run it] because the members of the group want to play and I get a thrill out of giving them music arrangements that no one else has ever played, and I get to hear them play it for the first time ever.”

Our drive back was fraught; our simple journey back past Fron and onto our cottage was interrupted by a road closure. I adopted a simple and pragmatic approach and decided to retrace our route through Rhayader.

In the car, we were silent. I couldn’t quite believe that we had played Waltzing Matilda in a community centre in Powys with a group of pensioners.  What’s more, I was surprised that I had thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

“We could move here” said Sarah. “We could live in a stone cottage and I could take Aga lessons”. It was a thought. It was a thought that was not entirely unappealing.

Evesham

If you were to mention Evesham to me, my imagination conjures up sepia tinted images of tractors, and perhaps a vicar driving around his parish in a Morris Minor; a place where people would greet one another as they pass on the street. I would also think of the Cotswolds; a part of Britain that I immediately associate with being terribly middle class. Truth be told, I knew nothing about Evesham, other than it being located between Worcester and Stratford-upon-Avon.

“Are you Simon?” asked Sarah, after finding a very tall and well-built man who was standing next to a ridiculously expensive Audi.

Evesham train station garden

Simon, our AirBnB host, said he would collect us from Evesham train station and drive us directly to his home where we were staying. AirBnB seemed to be an interesting alternative to staying in hotels. Plus, renting a room in someone’s house could provide the opportunity to gain insights about the town from a local.

The process of booking into Simon’s house had been fraught: Sarah had spent two hours on the phone speaking with Vicki, an AirBnB operative as part of a desperate bid to authenticate her identity. This involved pressing non-existing buttons on an app that had a feature that ‘wasn’t quite finished yet’ and sending various photos of her passport from a range of different devices. After Sarah had recounted this tale, Simon said that it was all about insurance. I wasn’t quite sure what kind of insurance it was, whether it was for Simon to protect himself from dodgy house guests, or us house guests being insured from dodgy hosts.

“So, what brings you to Evesham?” asked Simon.

“You explain” said Sarah, turning towards me.

“You know the alphabet, right…?” I began. I explained that we had been to Adlington, Batley, Clock Face, Dornock and that we had now randomly ended up in Evesham. Simon gave us both a smile. He liked the idea.

After a ten minute drive around the outskirts of Evesham we arrived at his house; a recently built four bedroom detached property with integral garage. We were taken to one of his spare rooms. It was bright and spotless, and although in terms of size it wasn’t much larger than our room in Adlington (which has now become a form of measurement), it didn’t feel at all oppressive.

Simon worked in IT and had recently turned freelance. He lived with Heather, who had given up her job and was in the process of retraining as a healthcare professional. They advertised their spare room as a way to earn a bit more money. I also sensed that Simon enjoyed it. One of the obviously enriching things about travel is your exposure to different people from different places; as an AirBnB host this principle is inverted: you meet different people from different places without actually having to go anywhere. It turned out that Simon and Heather were pretty booked up with visitors from Australia and Hong Kong, business people going to interviews, and a film editor from America who regularly visited for a couple of months for the sole intention of playing football at the local Church football team.

“What is the main industry in Evesham? I mean, what do people do here for work?”

“House building. It used to be agriculture. When the financial crisis hit local farmers sold off bits of land to developers so they could keep going, which has meant there’s been all these estates popping up. When we moved here it was different; the town was hit really badly; you could really see it. It’s only recently that it has started to recover with new shops opening.” Simon paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts about what else he could say. “We’ve been here for three years, and Evesham was very much a compromise. We wanted to move to Chipping Campden, where everyone wants to live, but we couldn’t afford it, so we ended up here.”

I had no idea where Chipping Campden was, but I later discovered it is a village or very small town in the Cotswolds; a place that was very much on the tourist map.

With our bags packed, we navigated our way through the very middle class estate and onto Port Street, heading towards the heart of the town. Along the way, we were struck by the number of Eastern European and international supermarkets that we passed. There were eight within just a few hundred metres: the Port Street Super Mini Market, Balkanika Food Shop, Europa Food Store, Lifestyle Grocers Limited (with the catchy slogan of ‘make it your… lifestyle’), Stokrotka, International Mini Market and off licence and finally the Port Street International Food Store (all produce English, Polish, Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and from many other countries).

Evesham sits within a horse shoe shaped meander of the River Avon, which defines both its topography and size. Bridge Street rose from a gentle valley. Following its path to a cross roads we embarked upon one of Simon’s suggestions: a visit to the ‘award winning’ Royal Oak pub where we stopped for lunch. I indulged with a pint of local beer, whilst Sarah studied the menu. Although it was a Saturday lunchtime, it was quiet, except for couples in their sixties on double dates.

Our explorations continued. We found the Word of Mouth Café (another of Simon’s recommendations) and a sign to some ‘award winning’ toilets, which we couldn’t seem to find. We did, however, find the Tourist Information office, which also doubled up as a quaint local museum. I spoke with Phil, the tourist information officer, who suggested that we looked at the two local churches: St Lawrence’s, and the All Saints Parish Church. An accompanying website for St Lawrence’s is enticing, suggesting that it is: ‘full of activities for the whole family, taking you on a journey of historical discovery’ also mentioning boxes of treasures and a ‘bishop’s mitre’.

A visit to the Almonry museum offered a better journey of historical discovery. Situated on the site of the former abbey, the museum is housed in a wooden building that appears to be dealing adequately with some quite significant structural movement. A walk through the museum took us through a series of galleries dedicated to the history of the town. The rooms were busy and eclectic; objects were displayed sat and hung in every conceivable space. Whilst it was crammed, it wasn’t oppressive. One corridor took us to the formal garden, which was also a museum all of its own. We found a bench. A solitary volunteer sat on the ground, tending to the garden, pulling up weeds.

Almonry museum

Outside the museum, my eye caught a sign for something called the Asparagus Festival. Asparagus is for Evesham what biscuits are for Batley. Asparafest, as it is called, is an initiative that was established by British Asparagus Growers association, and has been cited as the Best Festival in Worcestershire. As well as a stage for music, there is also a cookery stage and an asparagus eating competition. I read that there would be the crowning of the ‘Asparagus King and Queen’. Everything seemed to be fronted by a jolly asparagus related cartoon character who goes by the name of ‘Gus’. Compelling as Asparafest seemed, we were unfortunately a week early.

We followed Phil’s advice and wandered around the two churches, but we didn’t linger for long; churches mean little to me. I see them as lovely buildings and interesting historical artefacts that are connected to the very human and earthly need for community and companionship. The echo of our footsteps and a small loud speaker that played piano music in one of the churches didn’t encourage spiritual connection, but instead made me think about the complexities of acoustics.

A short walk around the corner took us to another church of Evesham: the Riverside Shopping centre; a modern building with a light interior made possible by a glass roof. Very few shops were open. Wherever the people of Evesham went to shop on a Saturday, they certainly didn’t go to the Riverside Shopping centre.

Riverside shopping centre

There was something else to do; a walk. We retraced our steps to the churches, made our way through the well-tended Abbey Park towards Crown Meadow to the north bank of the River Avon. We had a very simple and manageable challenge; to trace the horseshoe meander of the river.

The walk can be is best described as ‘pleasant’; it was warm enough to dispense with a jumper, and there wasn’t any hint of rain. We walked along a foot path and under canopies of trees, passing the infrequent jogger and dog walker. On the south bank of the river, we saw some very fancy houses. Fifteen minutes later, we found a ferry boat that operated across the River Avon. It was a ‘chain ferry’; it was operated by a man who pulled the boat along using a steel cable. The cable was anchored at the end of a street known as Boat Lane, and was situated next to an establishment called Raphael's Restaurant, which sold (of course) asparagus.

We wandered along Boat Lane back to the town and decided to find something to eat. We followed Simon’s final recommendation: a newly opened Italian restaurant, which also served asparagus. As we ate and talked, I noticed the cars that were pulling up in front of the restaurant and parking. They were smart, expensive cars, which suggested an abundance of money. I couldn’t decide whether it was the choice of restaurant, or something specific about Evesham that was the cause.

After our meal, we had a drink, and leafed through the local newspaper to see what was on during the evening. After reading stories about kittens, Asparafest, the theft of a van, and news about a new Waitrose, we discovered that we had missed the knitting circle and a meeting of the Hardy Perennials Society. We visit the Evesham Arts Centre to attend a comedy show.

A fifteen minute walk to the arts centre took us past some boarded-up shops, a heavy metal pub advertising a performance by an ex member of Judas Priest, and eventually onto a cul-de-sac. The arts centre turned out to be a modern theatre that was physically connected to a reputable school. Our entertainment for the evening was provided by comedian Zoe Lyons, a regular on TV panel shows. Zoe spoke about the challenges of working with technology, politics and, of course, asparagus.

After the show, we found ourselves in what I assume was the main  market square. I spotted an establishment, Chancer’s which advertised a disco. There was music coming from another place called the Valkyrie Bar, which seemed to be filled with young middle class people on an entirely respectable night out. For a few moments, we wondered what to do; whether we should take a chance and go to Chancer’s, but in the end, we opted to call it a night. Perhaps it was tiredness. Or perhaps Evesham had instilled within us a powerful feeling of respectability and responsibility that we couldn’t quite escape.

Simon had told us that there were some areas that were a bit ‘rough around the edges’ but we didn’t see any of them; it all remained civilised, tidy and well kept. Other than the eerily empty but perfectly clean and quiet shopping centre, Evesham didn’t raise any eyebrows to us casual visitors; there was nothing to suggest that Evesham had any kind of ‘edginess’ to it.

Despite its proximity to a famous and very lovely river, and having a set of glorious churches, a charming museum and an art deco cinema, it seemed to lack a little ‘something’. Perhaps this has more to do with my own experiences and expectations and less to do with Evesham; I didn't have the time to wind down from the perpetual challenge of being a city dweller.

Dornock

“There he is!” I said to Sarah, pointing and waving. I could see Leys from the bus; he was standing by the side of the road, looking like a Scottish country gent. He was wearing a tweed hat, a khaki waterproof jacket, and was carrying a small tweed ‘man bag’; a mix of urban sophistication and country practicality.

Two days before the trip, I asked myself the question: ‘who might I know who might live close to Dornock?’ a small village, just over the border from England. To my surprise, I discovered that my friend Leys had moved to a house in a town that was around fifteen miles away. We arranged to meet in the Café Royale, in a small town called Annan, which was just down the road from our final destination.

After handshakes and hugs, we went inside. I was immediately hit by humidity and a very strong smell of chip fat. Not only did the café sell cakes and coffee, it also doubled up as a chippy. We found a seat towards the back and sat down. I was relieved we were nearly at Dornock; it had been a long trip.

I had met Leys by accident. Over a decade ago, I began reading a very niche blog about scientific research into a speech ‘disorder’ called stammering (or, stuttering, if you’re American). I put the words ‘disorder’ in quotes for the reason that it is a particularly negative word and I don’t like it; the reality is that people who have to deal with it have to just get on with life.

I left a comment on one of the blog posts and a few weeks later, I received an unexpected email. Someone had done a bit of Googling and figured out who I was. At the time I was unnerved and annoyed at being unmasked, but then I realised that I probably had gone public with my ‘speech’ identity for a simple reason: there was no reason not discuss it.

It turned out that Leys lived in the same part of London that I once knew. It also turned out that Leys was then the chairman of a national charity that supports people who stammer.

Fast forward a few years, after meeting Leys for a few pints in a pub, I decided to get actively engage with the charity. There was a simple thought at play: I had nothing to lose; plus, it might be fun. And it turned out it was. I remember that Leys gave some cracking speeches, and helped to set up an organisation within the charity to try to educate large employers about the condition.

“How was your journey?” asked Leys.

Our journey had been confused, fractious, and long. Rather than going direct to Carlisle from London, and then travelling to Carlisle to Annan, a bit of research had told me that it was cheaper to go up the East Coast to Newcastle and then travel the entire width of the country to Carlisle.

There was another complexity. After booking the ridiculously cheaper train ticket, Sarah discovered that there was only a single place to stay in Dornock, which was available on a Sunday, rather than a Saturday. This led to a decision: we could either book new non-refundable tickets, or we could spend a bit more money on an additional night in Newcastle or in Carlisle. I thought of a compromise: spend a bit of time wandering around Newcastle and then the night in Carlisle, before then catching a bus to Annan in the morning.

We arrived at Newcastle train station just after ten in the morning. Emma, the Newcastle University student that we met in Adlington had recommended that we visited the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, which was just across the river in Gateshead. I had been there once before; I remembered an exhibit which featured a fan, a plastic bag, and a sign which said ‘do not pick up the bag; it is not rubbish; it is an exhibit’.

I have an ambivalent opinion about contemporary art. I like some of it. I especially like pieces which have a simplicity about them, or express an essence of some kind of principle, concept or idea. I think this perspective comes from once being a computer programmer. I used to create software that used to move numbers about and transformed them into different formats. Sometimes, you discovered and created program structures that had a weird kind of beauty.

We wandered across a bridge, and along the Tyne and into the gallery. It was almost empty. We started to explore.

“Do you like that?” Sarah gestured towards a giant tooth that was dangling close to the ceiling. The tooth had a couple of metal rods.

“No.” It reminded me that I needed to visit the dentist. I didn’t like the dentist. It made me think of a dental surgery in Catford, South East London. The last time I was there I started to worry about an elderly visitor who was talking to the receptionist about her lost teeth.

We wandered to another gallery. Four squares sat on the floor. One square was filled with pebbles; another square was strewn with life jackets. A weird looking contraption and a set of headphones dangled from the ceiling. A gallery attendant looked up at us.

“Would you like a go? Its virtual reality” The exhibit was about migration and refugees. “You put the headset and headphones on and you look at four exhibits”. I looked at Sarah and asked her whether she wanted a go. She did.

Sarah donned the virtual reality head set and I was sent to a viewing screen at the back of the gallery to see what she was seeing. She saw ethereal figures. She was at a refugee camp, perhaps a camp in northern France; a camp called the Jungle. She was then in an unknown space, filled with distant figures; the images creating a feeling of disconnectedness. The pebbles represented arriving on a new land, or over the sea, and an entirely new scene. The square with the life jackets was connected with another scene where there were piles and piles of life jackets, all stacked on top of each other. There were valleys of discarded jackets.

With Sarah safely returned to reality, we gathered our bags and made our way to an adjoining gallery that contained an array of video installations. I remember three of them: a digital screen showed a mysterious object, like a body, floating underwater. The second was a video representation of a flight across the sea, towards land. The third had the visual appearance of a catholic confessional. You sat down on a simple chair, opposite another screen, and saw a stranger’s hands and torso, moving and gesticulating. Subtitles told a story of a journey; a story that involved fear and dislocation. The adjoining gallery continued the theme of refugee by presenting a number of visual narratives, telling stories of travel from a place of terror, to a place of potential sanctuary.

We eventually found ourselves in the gallery café. One woman who was wearing an inappropriate hat was accompanied by a man who was wearing an incongruous suit. Within a period of fifteen minutes, the café was full with people who were clearly going to a wedding. We later realised that the wedding was to take place in the Baltic Centre. We watched as people went to the counter, and then were told to find a seat, and then find some fellow friends.

It was soon time for us to go; we had another train to catch. We hauled our bags onto our shoulders, walked out of the gallery, and across the Millennium Bridge and back to Newcastle. We navigated our way up the banks of the Tyne and towards the train station.

I never thought that I would ever cross England in an hour, but that was exactly what we did. Our journey along the Tyne Valley Line was busy; we shared a carriage with a group of jolly drinkers. At Hexham, we were joined by a group of women who were on a hen do. I looked out of the window saw pleasant northern countryside; the only thing that detracted from the ride was the bumpiness of the train and high pitched grumbling sound emanating from an aging diesel engine.

Didn’t take us long to find our B&B in Carlisle. We were met by a very jolly man who took us to a room that was extravagantly luxurious: it had rich deep carpet, thick floral curtains and expensive looking furniture that had a glossy dark wooden sheen. Our room was, in every way, different to the room that we had inhabited during our stay in Adlington.

With our bags safely deposited, we explored the town. It felt quiet until we found the centre of the town; people were finishing their weekend shopping. After a brief stop in a local pub, we found the town’s main attraction: Carlisle castle. We crossed a road, paid and entrance fee and started to find our way through its spiral staircases, corridors and rooms. Exhibits told us how its different rooms were used and told us about the Jacobites; an aspect of history that I have always found too distant to be accessible.

On our way back to the B&B, we stopped off at another pub. I saw an opportunity to recover memories from my past and ordered a pint of bitter, and instantly regretted it; my southern palate was too used to continental lagers and fancy porters made by bearded hipsters. Our night out in Carlisle concluded with a visit to a local Greek restaurant that was known to have a very good reputation. Sarah didn’t disagree, saying it was one of the best meals she had ever had.

“He’s very jovial, isn’t he?” said Sarah.

We had just finished breakfast; we were only a few hours away from arriving in Dornock. Andrew was the most jovial B&B owner I had ever met. It was unnerving.

“He’s so jovial, I think he might have murdered his wife.”

I stopped packing for a moment. I knew what she meant. It was his laugh.

“It’s almost as if he’s very cheerful after having buried her in the garden in revenge for all her nagging”.

She did have a point. The proprietor of the B&B was called Helen, and Helen wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Our penultimate journey was by bus. With our backpacks donned, we found our way to the bus station to wait for the number 79 that was going toward Annan and Gretna Green. We travelled with a young chap who appeared to be visibly stressed, a nun, and two women who were on their way to an out of town shopping centre to begin their shift at Argos.

Leys returned to our table with a round of coffees and a selection of cakes. I asked him about his new life in Scotland. It turned out he had only been living in the area for six months but his connections to Scotland ran deep; he was born in Edinburgh but had spent all of his life in England. His new house was just down the road from where his father used to live. Although he had retired some time ago, this recent move seemed to represent a new chapter in his life, and one that I had been watching unfold over recent months over Facebook. One a few days earlier he had posted about garden renovations, and I remember feeling a twinge of jealousy. He said that it wasn’t a problem that he sounded like an upper class Englishman, and explained that the society was ‘pretty flat’ in terms of not having too much of a class structure.

“People around here are really resourceful; they’ve got to be, and many people have several jobs” he explained. He was becoming established in his local community and having been involved in marketing all his professional life, he now wanted to place his new home town of Moffat on the map.

We chatted about dogs, Scotland, double glazing and planning permission, travel and how his two children were getting along. One thing was clear: he loved where he lived, and he was happy. With our cakes eaten and coffee drunk, I vowed I would make a trip to Moffat to see him; a side effect of this randomness was to discover what trips I really do want to make.

After Leys left us, we had an hour and a half to kill. We wandered around Annan. We found signs to a distillery and discovered a closed museum. We walked past the derelict ‘Central Hotel’; it was a beautiful stone building that was rapidly falling into a state of disrepair. Windows had been smashed and boarded up, letters from its entrance sign had fallen away. It was almost as if the building was trying to tell me something about the area, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Except from a shell of a nearby warehouse, everything appeared to be presentable and well kept; the hotel was an anomaly.

It was five minutes to three. We stood outside Annan railway station. In the distance we could see a chocolate coloured car; our lift to Dornock; the final stage of our journey. It was a journey that I was looking forward to; Sarah had been chatting to the owner and had asked what there was to do ‘in the area’: an outing was planned.

The car was occupied by Julie and Nick, owners of The Waterside Rooms. We stuffed our bags into the boot, and jumped in the back. The journey between Annan and Dornock only took around five minutes. Our destination was a house that was situated at the end of a long single track road, overlooking the Solway Firth.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” asked Nick, after we had been escorted to their living room. I thought for a moment, and then relented, reminding myself that I was on holiday, albeit a very long and a very weird one.

Julie was English; she had once lived in London, working in a well-known news agency. Nick had a hint of a Scottish accent. He was originally from Edinburgh but had ended up working in Newcastle. They had been running their B&B for over ten years. They took to it after having been made redundant from their respective jobs; circumstance had guided to the shores of the Solway, which led to time and money being spent to convert an exposed house into what was now a lovely home. ‘Half an hour’ of wine led us directly to the inevitable subject of politics: the local MP was a Conservative, the only one in Scotland, but the area, Dumfries and Galloway, had voted to remain in the European Union; it was a contested mix of opinion and allegiances.

With some of our political views explored and exposed, Julie showed us to our room. It had a window with a clear view of the Solway. We could see England, which appeared to be distant and mysterious. The tide was visibly rushing out. I liked it. Julie and Nick’s world in Dornock seemed to be a nice place to live.

A night out in Dornock turned out to be a night in Powfoot; a short drive past Annan. Like Dornock, Powfoot was also a small village but it was one that had a series of caravan parks; its focus was less about agriculture and more to do with tourism. At its heart was a small pleasant hotel, which featured a fancy restaurant that had been recommended to Sarah by our hosts. We were taken to a table that overlooked the Solway. It had a very grown up feel to it: there were no children running about, and everyone looked smart. The only mildly baffling aspect of the meal was the menu. I had no idea what a ‘cushion of cod’ was, but I ordered it anyway.

It wasn’t difficult getting back. Mike, a local taxi driver, knew the way to the Waterside Rooms. Mike asked us where we were from.

“I couldn’t be living in London; it’s just too busy. Whenever I go there, I want to get out”. Mike was a local. He spoke with an accent that I had never heard before: Scottish vowels mixed with Cumbrian.

“I wouldn’t be able to look after my horses if I lived in London!”

As well as being a taxi driver, he had a job at a local stables: he was a horse trader. He bought young horses, broke them in, rode them, and sold them on. Even though he was in his mid-forties, he looked like a man who was in his thirties. I had never met a horse trader before. Sarah asked him whether he liked living in the area.

“I guess so. I’ve lived here all my life. I mean, from the stables you can get out and go riding, you know?”

Mike drove us through Annan.

“This is where people go for a night out. You’ll see people on some of the doors, for security, like? I used to do that for a bit, you know. People have too much to drink, and you keep a lid on things, just to make sure everything is okay.”

“How long have you been a taxi driver for?”

“Ah, just a week. I don’t like sitting at home looking at the same four walls, you know? I like to get out”. Mike was one of those locals that Leys had told us about: resourceful, with many jobs; someone who isn’t afraid of getting their hands dirty.

The following morning Julie and Nick had prepared us for an extravagant multi-course breakfast. We again sat at table that had a view across the Solway, eyeballing the English.

We had an hour to kill before we left, so we went walking. We left the tranquility of the Waterside Rooms and found our way to the shore. The tide was still out, exposing huge expanses of sandy banks. We found a path amongst a scene of sea sculpted rock pools that sat in a space between fertile soil and ever changing salty water. We had to watch our step; our shoes were designed for fancy hotels and friendly urban environments, not muddy inclines that could easily become hiker traps.

Wherever possible, we stuck to a route that was resembling a path. In the distance, we saw a bank that appeared to be covered in a light coloured sand. With the sun shining, we carefully stepped our way through passages between the pools, until we started to approach the bank. It was an illusion. It wasn’t sand, but a bank that was filled high sand coloured reeds, which were hissing collectively in the persistent wind; it was a wind that never seemed to go away.

It was time to turn back. We turned around and retraced our steps to the Waterside Rooms. Just before we started to climb a slight incline to the front of Julie and Nick’s house, I saw something in a rock pool. Tiny fish darted in and out of the shadows that I made when I peered inside. Hours later they would be gone, lifted by currents, and taken away across the great expanse of the Solway.

It was Nick that gave us a lift back to Annan station. During our drive back, I learnt something else about Annan and our night out at the restaurant. The restaurant had only been going in that venue for a couple of months. Before then, they occupied the space above The Café Royale.

“That’s a really striking building” I said to Nick, referring to the derelict hotel that we could see from the train station car park. Nick chuckled. He said it used to be owned by a chap who owned lots of buildings in Annan, and he had recently sold it to a development group for thirty grand. He said that the hotel used to cater for ‘the bottom’ end of the market.

My thoughts returned to my earlier question of what this building was trying to tell me. In fact, the building was more of a symbol, a marker in time; it was more important to think about everyone we had met. I didn’t have a conclusion but I did have a feeling, and that feeling was positive.

Clock Face

Our alarm clock sounded. I climbed out of bed and padded to the window to open the curtains. Our room overlooked a simple court yard. A solitary car was parked; my sleepy eyes caught sight of tall trees, which were starting to bud in the early spring. I had no idea what the day would bring; our main constraint was the need to return the hire car to Manchester. Although I roughly knew where we were heading, I didn’t know anything about the part of the country that we were going to explore.

Vaguely conscious, we found our way to the hotel dining area for breakfast. We were met by Martin, who we assumed was the proprietor, and Mary, who seemed a lot calmer than she was when we arrived the previous day. It was a very pleasant dining room. Like the rest of the hotel interior, it had been painted bright white. We sat by some French doors with a view of a garden. One other resident sat in the corner of the dining room, intently playing with his mobile phone.

“Where did you get to?” asked Mary, as Martin looked on.

“We had a guided tour of Batley” I replied. Mary appeared confused. “A friend picked us up and drove us around” I paused for a moment. “It took about ten minutes”. Mary started to laugh. We told her about our walk, the visit to The Cellar Bar, a walk in the park, and a visit to the Bagshaw Museum. We changed Mary’s perceptions of Batley: there were things to do.

With our orders placed, we got chatting to Martin, who was a friendly chap in his early fifties. He asked us where we were from.

“What part of London?” he asked. Martin has a brother who lived in Kensington. He told us that he used to look after the Queen’s horses. Martin and Liz, the sweet shop owner in Adlington had both surprised me. I expecting northerners to be suspicious of us fancy London types, anticipating a degree of apathy and distain, but I was beginning to feel that this was more a reflection of a personal prejudice than a reality.  Liz and Martin had spent time and had a connection with our capital; they had memories and stories to share; this reflected in their interest and friendliness.

Mary’s breakfast was good: it was simple and no nonsense. Plus, we were given a choice; we were not subjected to ‘the black pudding challenge’, as we had been in Adlington.

The next time we encountered Martin, he was sat behind the reception desk. As he checked us out and shuffled papers around, he explained that the hotel was a lot quieter than usual. On Sundays a part of the hotel became a school; a popular mathematics teacher hired the hotel facilities, running an ‘exam preparation hot house’, helping students to get through their GCSE exams.

“He’s really popular, but he’s very strict; he’s one of the old school teachers, you know? Parents come from miles around; as far as Leeds. They pay a couple of thousand pounds per pupil.” I started to wonder about the parents of these children, imagining expensive cars pulling up to the Healy House Hotel entrance, leaving their half asleep children who were grumpy because they would rather be watching television or playing video games. “He works the students really hard so they get great results; he’s really respected”.

Sarah took her credit card statement and put it in her bag. I misheard something Martin had said; he started to make a joke about it.

“I asked my wife the other day whether she needed any ‘hosiery’. She said, ‘what?’ She had never heard of it! She didn’t know what hosiery was! So, I told her: you know, tights! She had never heard of hosiery! Can you believe that?”

“How long have you been married?”

“Twenty years” A cleaner who had been pushing a vacuum cleaner through the reception area started to laugh. Martin shook his head. “You know what, some people have real trouble saying the word ‘fire extinguisher’” The Healy House Hotel seemed like a fun place to work.

We put our bags in the car, and set off: we needed to find a path back to the M62. We would head towards Manchester and continue onwards, following the signs to Liverpool. We were going to St Helens. We traversed a map that Sarah had printed out and soon got lost amongst the Yorkshire streets and houses, but I didn’t mind; it was a pleasant lost. Despite being a little chilly, the streets had a friendly and cosy feel, amplified by the soft tone of the Yorkshire stone.

As we drove, the streets changed from being empty and quiet, to busy and full. We picked our way through streets and navigated around roundabouts and onto the motorway. Despite being early, and a Sunday morning, it was unexpectedly busy. I switched on the windscreen wipers, and then increased their pace: we were reacquainting ourselves with the Manchester rain. As we climbed into the Pennines, the sky darkened as the clouds became closer. The character of the rain had changed: it had become heavy and dense. Traffic slowed, but remained constant.

“How are you driving in the rain?”

I didn’t mind driving in the rain; it’s all about being sensible. As I drove, I had a memory: I remember driving through a rainstorm between Sheffield and Manchester. I was driving on the A57, which is known as Snake Pass. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had a cracked distributor cap. As I drove, rain lashed down onto the front of the car and into the bonnet. Part way across the Pennines, the rain unsettled the electrics of my car, causing it to a stop. I didn’t tell Sarah any of this; I didn’t want to worry her.

We counted down the junctions until we reached the M60 and the outskirts of Manchester. We continued to count again when we continued along the M62, heading towards Merseyside and the coast. As we approached the junction that we wanted, the rain had softened; it was less aggressive, but still persistent.

Our destination was a village called Clock Face, which is situated between Widnes and St Helens; towns I had never visited and knew nothing about. The whole area represented a gap in my geographic understanding of England. The names Bold Heath, Prescot, Huton and Newton-le-Willows meant nothing to me. I had no family connections, and no reason to visit any of them. I did, however, know someone who lived in Widnes, but she wasn’t able to meet; she was laid up in bed with a nasty cold.

We turned off the motorway, navigated a roundabout, and accelerated down unfamiliar country lanes, our windscreen wipers running constantly. I remember passing fields, rural houses and bungalows, wondering what there was to do in this area.

“This is it; this is Clock Face” I said, as we saw some signs. I couldn’t help but feel that I would have been happier if we were visiting Clock House, which is a short cycle ride away from where I live in South East London. I slowed down. Low clouds had returned. Tightly packed red brick terrace houses sat next to the road. I caught a glimpse of the Clock Face labour club; a post office, a crèche, and then a pub; the pub that bears the name of the area: ‘The Clock Face’.

We pulled into the car park and put on our jackets, and walked over to the pub. It had started to pour down with rain; car tyres hissed as they drove past. I pushed the door. I then pulled the door. It was locked. I tried another door. The pub was closed. I wasn’t happy. I hadn’t dressed for rain, and I was starting to get wet. I needed a coffee.

We got back into the car and continued along down the road, and into another area called Lea. I saw another pub that was just off a large roundabout; it looked big and cars in the car park suggested that it was open. It too was locked. Clock Face and Lea seemed to be closed for business.

Sarah had done a bit of research; a family friend (who lived close to Adlington, but a different one to the one that we visited) had told her about something called Dream; public art work that was situated very close to Clock Face. The only thing to do around Clock Face was to visit the “Dream”.

We got back into the car and started to drive back in the direction of Clock Face. As I returned to the roundabout, I saw a sign to “Dream”, our new destination. A few roundabouts later, we were at the official “Dream” parking space. It appeared we were not the only visitors; there was another couple who had also parked up, and who were armed with umbrellas.

The Dream is a twenty metre high sculpture, made of concrete, of a girl’s head. It sits within the grounds of Sutton Manor Colliery, which closed in 1991. In 2004 work began to create a wild life park and Dream was commissioned as a part of a ‘big art’ project with the intention of it becoming the park’s centre piece. Clear signposts directed us across a road and into the park and onto a footpath that took us on an undulating route past a copse of young trees. There was absolutely no sign of an industrial past, just greenery, tree and mud. The rain had turned into a cloying light mist which defeated our single umbrella.

Around a corner and up an incline, we caught our first sight of Dream. It was a striking object; its size was super human, but also relatable in the way that another big sculpture, The Angel of The North isn’t. The girl’s head had been vertically elongated, making it difficult to appreciate its proportions, creating a sense of disorientation. It stood on a formal plinth, which we stepped on and then walked across. What was once bright white concrete, mixed with marble, nearly ten years of rain had streaked the head with grey tears, emphasising the components of its construction.

I later read on the Dream website that the artist wrote: “the girl’s eyes are closed, looking inward. This is in part my homage to the miners and their dream of light when underground”. There was also a reference to the hopes of members of the local community, and the reference to their post-industrial aspirations.

I looked around. Sarah and I were the only visitors; the other couple had disappeared. We had found Clock Face, and had seen the Dream.

“Shall we go?” I asked.

Sarah’s boots were leaking. Our umbrella was broken. I wasn’t wearing a waterproof jacket, and my glasses were spotted with drizzle. I was starting to become hungry and grumpy, but I also felt something else: I had a sense of place anxiety; I felt unnerved, not just by Dream, but also by Clock Face. Perhaps this feeling came from knowing how quiet the village was, or perhaps it was just because of the rain, the dullness of the early spring light and the need to constantly accept the unfamiliar.

There was another dimension: an awareness that something had once happened in Sutton Manor, and now there was nothing; just the occasional dog walker and day tripper. I later read that Clock Face was once a colliery too. Silence now existed where once there was the constant crashing of machinery; sounds that I would never know and never hear; a sense of history passing, of a difficult-to-imagine industrial past that was, in itself, difficult to live through.

Back in the car, I had a look at the map, tried to memorise some road numbers and then set off towards Manchester. Before we found the motorway, I took a wrong turn and I found myself amidst a set of red brick terrace houses; homes for colliers. The streets were empty of people; cars sitting on sides of roads were the only sign of life.

There was another landmark; a pub called The Smithy Manor. It was derelict and forgotten; a desperate looking building guarded by high fences. I assumed it was a pub or a social club that had once had a close link with the former colliery; a physical representation of both economic and social change. My feeling of ‘place anxiety’, as I called it had returned, moments before I accelerated out of Sutton Manor, through a set of unfamiliar roundabouts, and onto the M62.

Batley

“Would you like tea?” asked our landlady. “Or, would you like coffee?” she continued, noticing slight pause in our response.

“No, tea would be fine”.

We usually drink coffee.

Our landlord, Dave, brought us two massive plates of breakfast: two sausages, two slices of bacon, beans, a fried slice, two eggs, a substantial slice of black pudding, mushrooms and tomatoes. It was quite possibly the biggest fried breakfast I had ever seen. I gave it a good go, but I wasn’t able to make much progress.

“I can tell you’re southerners; you haven’t eaten the black pudding” said Dave, who appeared to be disappointed with our progress.

Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way to Yorkshire. We retraced our steps, going back on the M61 and onto the M60 for a second time, then picking up the M62.

The M62 is Britain’s highest motorway, traversing the Pennines, connecting Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester. As I drove, more memories came back to me; I remember driving to university from London to Manchester with my friend Mike in an old mini.

Mike and I left home at the same time to start new lives. When I had dropped my stuff off at a halls of residence at Salford, I then drove Mike to Huddersfield University, or Poly, as it was then known, not really knowing what to expect. I remember my car struggling, the engine temperature visibly rising and a general feeling of worry. I returned to Manchester hours later, exhausted but elated. This time, there were no worries. The weather was good with no sign of rain, just hints of menace from steel grey clouds.

I asked a few colleagues whether they knew anyone who lived in Batley.

“Ah, yes… Batley; the Yorkshire Riviera” chuckled my colleague Matt when I told him about my impending trip. “You find it nestles in a set of motorways. It’s just on the edges of Cleckhuddersfax.”

“Cleg… Cleg what?”

“Cleckhuddersfax. It’s a combination of Cleckheaton, Huddersfield and Halifax. It’s like a strip of urban areas that are gradually encroaching on each other”.

None of this made any sense. I asked another colleague, James, who had moved back to Yorkshire after my office had closed whether he could give me a bit of direction.

“Honestly, I live there and I love it, but it’s hard to recommend a single thing. It’s the general feel of the place…  It’s very small town, but it is friendly and you’re never more than a short walk into what is basically the wilderness. Great beer and low prices. Most tourists go to Hebden Bridge; the entire area is basically hills and valleys with rivers and canals.”

James told me about the TransPennine ale trail. There are seven stations between Batley and Stalybridge. The idea is to catch a train between each station and have a pint in each one.

“I'd suggest doing a 'station pub crawl'” James and I have previously taken part in a world record attempt to have the biggest number of people in one pub drinking the same brand of beer at the same time.

“You could start at Batley, then go onto Dewsbury. It’s four minutes away and the station pub there is superb. Then Huddersfield and go to The Sportsman and The Grove. There is honestly nothing in Batley itself.”

We turned off the motorway and started to make our way through villages and towns with unfamiliar names like Rawfolds, Littletown and Heckmondwike. The roads were hilly, and houses and shops appeared to me as unfamiliar, having been built from light brown Yorkshire stone and brick. Our journey took us to an area called Healey, which was on the outskirts of Batley, and towards our destination, the Healey House Hotel.

The hotel was a small but grand looking building, tucked away on a side street. The reception area was professional and efficient. We were met by a hotel worker called Mary, who appeared to be spectacularly stressed.

“What is there to do around here?” asked Sarah, after enquiring about the check-in process.

Mary appeared if she was about to combust with worry.

“Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t know what there is to do around here; I’m not from Batley.”

With our room not quite ready, we decided to walk into town. I felt vaguely excited, since everything I saw was unfamiliar; the streets, the look of the houses, a deserted newsagents that served the local community, and a Fox’s biscuits factory.

We found ourselves in a quiet well-kept square that appeared to be the heart of the town. My eyes were drawn to what was an imposing Methodist chapel that exuded Georgian elegance.

“This is weird; I remember this from the TV” said Sarah. “Do you remember that MP that was killed? They did some news stories from here”. Sarah was referring to the murder of Jo Cox, a Labour MP, who was brutally stabbed by a loner who was motivated by extreme right wing beliefs. I had seen the same news stories, but didn’t recognise any of the buildings. We found a main street and rounded a corner, my eye catching a sight of a building that was clearly once a mill.

“Look!” said Sarah, pointing towards a street sign.

I looked up; a poster. The words “home rule” were written on the background of an English flag. The poster had been stuck on the rear of the street sign. We paused for a moment. I didn’t know what the poster meant, but my imagination could be easily drawn to dark places. Did it relate to the debates surrounding the European Union, or was it something darker?

I saw a quaint looking church, the church of All Saints, which sat in a court yard surrounded by spring cherry blossom. The sun was trying to come out. I saw a photographer with an expensive Nikon camera taking pictures of the trees. I wandered over to her and Sarah followed. I realised that had I been on my own, I might have come across as potentially intimidating; it was easy to talk to people when you’re a couple.

“Excuse me, do you know what places we should visit around here?” The photographer was called Susan. She was happy to talk. I got my camera out, and I confessed to having no idea about how to use it. Sensing that I was clueless, she suggested that I should set it to the automatic mode ‘to get some good settings’.

We picked our way through side streets, circumnavigating a massive Tesco, arriving back on the high street, struggling to get our bearings. I needed a coffee. Still carrying my camera, I looked up and down the street, looking for anywhere I could buy a Cappuccino, toying with the idea of heading into an ice cream parlour.

“It’s a dump isn’t it?” said a middle aged man, who wore a grey beard and scruffy jacket. By the time we realised what he had said, and wanted to know why he had said it, he was gone. Sarah and I looked at each other. I felt slightly unnerved.

We ended up in the Corner Café drinking weak and milky coffee, surrounded by pictures of kittens. As Sarah leafed through the Batley & Birstall News looking for interesting stories, I sent a message to my mate Dan.

I had met Dan at a charity conference a couple of years earlier and had discovered that he lived not too far from Batley. In passing he had offered to show us around. I looked up from my phone. Sarah was reading an advert about carpets.

“Dan’s going to be here in fifteen minutes. He’s going to give us a tour.”

Sarah’s expression suggested that she didn’t quite believe it. True to his word, Dan arrived in an expensive red Volvo with his partner Yvonne and parked directly opposite The Corner Café.

Implicitly echoing the more direct language of the middle aged stranger, Dan began by telling us that Batley was considered a deprived area. Like Adlington, its history is closely connected with the textile industry. We drove past an impressive old mill, which had been recently converted into a gym.

“What do people do here? I mean, where do they work?” asked Sarah.

“They commute to Leeds or to Manchester” replied Dan. Dan worked for a local hospital, providing IT support. He had been working in IT for the last twenty or so years. Yvonne worked in a boiler company, providing customer and engineering support.

We were driven past the huge Tesco towards the other side of the town. I looked outside of the window; the light brown bricks of the buildings remaining a novelty. Dan drove us up a street that was once clearly spectacular; station road. My eye caught sight of three storey Victorian buildings with grand architectural features, not dissimilar to the Methodist chapel that we had seen earlier. Suddenly, I saw a gap in a terrace of richness: a building was missing.

“This is Batley train station; there used to be all these other train lines that used to take wool into the town, but they’re all gone. Just behind you, there’s The Cellar Bar.”

Dan turned around, and retraced the route, took a couple of turns and we were on a road that was heading out of town.

“That’s another thing they do here; they sell cars.” said Dan, referring to the surprising number of used car lots that we had passed. “And beds. Beds are big in Batley” I later found out that there was a very good reason for the number of bed shops in Batley; bed manufacture was once a part of the industrial landscape of the town; wool, weaving and beds are intrinsically connected.

“You see over there? That’s the Frontier club. It used to be a night club, and before then, it used to be a really famous variety club where loads of famous bands played. It’s now a gym. On the corner, there’s an Italian restaurant called Zucchini’s that’s really popular. So, it’s still a place where people go” I continued to peer out of the window, registering Zucchini’s.

After a few moments, and feeling thoroughly disorientated, Dan drove on, passing a blur of bed shops and car sales rooms. We stopped a few minutes later.

“This area is called Batley Carr. Do you remember the case of Shannon Matthews?” I did; I remember it being on the news. Her mother, Karen Matthews, had pretended that Shannon had been abducted. The motivation was to try to get some ‘reward’ money when she was miraculously found. It was a story which resonated with Dan’s assertion that Batley was a deprived area.

“They found Shannon in a house just over there. She was being looked after by her uncle; they didn’t do anything to her, but she might have been drugged or something. I remember this area was filled with police cars and news vans. One thing I do remember was how the community rallied round when it was discovered she was missing; there was a real sense of community.”

We were taken to another site; a site of an old theatre.

“I remember this from when I was a kid; it used to be a grand old building, but now there’s nothing”. I looked over at a piece of land that had been boarded up. “A local comedian who used to play there.” His voice trailed off, his thoughts moving from the present to the past.

It was time to leave Batley Carr and head off to another district: Birstall, a neighbouring village that could be considered a part of ‘Greater Batley’; a notion that I understand would greatly offend those who lived there.

Sarah chatted to Yvonne about politics; in particular, the referendum.

“People would rather say who they vote for in the general election than tell you how they voted in the referendum. People just don’t talk about it” said Yvonne.

Dan parked up close to the local library. I knew where we were; we were at the second crime scene of our tour. I felt unnerved.

“This was where Jo Cox was murdered” said Dan.

Perhaps every town has its own peculiar side of darkness, but the events that took place in Birstall resonated across the country; the political debates had reached a fever pitch. War was being raged by poster and battle bus. There were images of desperate immigrants and words stripped of context, and then a member of parliament was senselessly murdered.

We were on the move again. Dan took us to his old school, which was in Birstall, where he drove around a couple of the blocks. We asked him what it was like going to school in Batley.

“I hated it; I was bullied”.

Dan told us that the school was mixed in terms of cultures, but not in genders; Batley was one of those areas that had separate boys and girls schools. Having gone to a mixed comprehensive, segregated schooling is an idea that I find baffling. The multicultural nature of Batley goes back to the 1950s when immigrants were invited as workers to work in the mills and factories.

Dan wanted to show us another part of the town: upper Batley; the part of the town where the well-heeled live. We were driven to the entrance of the Bagshaw museum.  It seemed that Mary had been mistaken: not only was there the cellar bar (and the ale trail), but there was also a museum. It was situated in a grand villa, situated on the top of a hill. Dan then drove down a residential street that gave us a view of the town and the surrounding areas. I wouldn’t say it looked pretty, but it was very green. I decided I quite liked Batley.

It was time to go. On the way back to our hotel Dan gave us a tip: if we went to the Fox’s biscuit factory before 2pm, we could get some broken biscuits from the shop. It sounded like a great tip, but we didn’t think we would be able to make it in time.

Back at the hotel, we decided what to do; Dan’s tour had opened our eyes to new possibilities; a new network of roads, and sides of the town we wouldn’t have seen without him. We decided to explore a local park and try to make it to the Bagshaw museum, and then we would cross town to go to The Cellar Bar.

Our walk took us past the Fox’s factory and towards a mill that appeared to be in the process of being redeveloped and past a garage that occupied the crumbling innards of another mill. We took a slight diversion to investigate a massive building that resembled an old hospital, before finding a path that led towards Wilton Park. It started to rain, but it wasn’t Manchester rain; we walked close to trees to try to escape the worst of it, then followed a path towards the museum.

The Bagshaw museum tells visitors the story of Batley and its immigrant population. One of the signs offers a key historical fact: “in the early nineteenth century a local man, Benjamin Law, developed a process to recycle woollen rags”. It continued: “Batley: it was a town that had sprung up … owing to the development of the rag grinding machine”. Woollen rags were ground up to create a material called shoddy.

I caught one of the museum attendants yawning expansively.

“Busy day?”

“We’ve had seven hundred people in today, it’s been really busy” He was called Steve, and a proud resident of Batley. He began to tell me about the museum, telling me that it once belonged to George Sheard, a mill owner. The house had been built on the top of the hill for a very good reason: to escape the soot, smoke and dirt that emanated from the mills below.

“I’ll take you in here…” Steve unlocked a room that was marked ‘staff only’. “Bagshaw died in this room” gesturing for us to look around. “Look up there!” Steven pointed towards the ceiling. “Copper. A copper ceiling! Can you believe that? Sheard didn’t spare any expense. In today’s money, this house would have cost him millions. He had that ceiling made just because he could”.

In 1909, the house that had cost millions was sold to the local authority for five pounds. A museum leaflet explained that Walter Bagshaw, a local businessman, asked to open one of the rooms as a museum. By the time the museum opened in 1911, three rooms were open to the public. I joined Sarah in the Bagshaw Gallery. Walls were adorned with paintings and the room contained exhibits that referenced rivalries between Batley, Birstall and nearby Dewsbury. One exhibit was about Joseph Priestley who discovered oxygen and invented soda water. Priestly had a life that began in Birstall and ended in Pennsylvania; it was an exhibit that made me realise how little I knew about the history of science.

As I wandered around, peering at black and white images, I thought about my own industrial heritage. Whilst my roots do not lie in Yorkshire, I started to question how they might be connected to the industrial revolution.

It was time to go. Steve came looking for us. He discovered us playing with Punch and Judy puppets on the first floor. We put the puppets down, wandered through the final galleries and back on the street.

“Where you going to now?” We told him that we were going to The Cellar Bar. “You be careful! The beer up here is stronger than the beer down south!”

The Cellar bar was different to how I had imagined it. James’s talk of it being a ‘real ale’ pub had generated images of barrels of beer stocked behind the bar. Instead, there were six or so beers on draught. To add to a deadening feeling, loud rock music was pumping from speakers in every corner. Despite a challenging ambiance and the fact that it was nowhere near the town centre, it appeared to be relatively popular; there was a constant stream of visitors.

A young couple, Mark and Nicole, who were on a night out, sat down next to us. I asked them what there is to do in Batley.

“I would go to Leeds if I were you; there’s more to do there. There is this thing called the ale trail…”

Mark’s job was delivering Fox’s biscuits in a van. They were visiting Batley for the night because there was nothing to do in Dewsbury. We asked them about places to eat: there was an Indian restaurant called LaLa’s, or Zucchini’s, the Italian that Dan had spoken about. I called Zucchini’s, but it was all booked up. Nicole had another suggestion: a club called Legends; a club dedicated to tribute acts.

Two pints later, we staggered down the hill, took a couple of left turns and found our way into LaLa’s. LaLa’s restaurant had a dark interior, some unfathomable monochrome abstract art work and the biggest chandelier I had ever seen in my life, all housed in a building that architecturally resembled a used car show room. The service was dramatic; naan breads were dangled vertically from naan bread dangling devices, and waiters were immaculately dressed and faultlessly polite. The food was excellent.

“Do you want to go to Legends?” asked Sarah, offering me a challenge.

“Would you like to go to Legends?”

We didn’t go to Legends.

For the second night in a row, I felt old. Fresh air, novelty, hills, rain, beer and food had all taken their toll. It was time to find our way through slightly familiar streets to the Healey House Hotel.

After I returned home, I gave my Dad a ring. He asked me what I had been getting up to. I told him I had been to Batley.

“You’ve been to Batley?” he replied, sounding confused, since I had no good reason to go to Batley.
I asked him whether he knows that part of the UK. It turned out he did. “We had a night out there once. “Me and your mum, and Jenny and Albert”. Albert and Jenny were a couple that my parents used to know when they were younger. I couldn’t quite believe that my Dad had been on a double date to Batley with Jenny and Albert, and I never knew about this. But then why would I? The opportunity to discuss either double dating or Batley had never arisen.

“We went to this club, a variety club to see a band. It was really famous, back in the day. Morecombe and Wise, and Shirley Bassey played there. I can’t remember who we went to see.” I asked him whether he had been drinking. “Yes, I might have had a few, and that’s why I can’t remember. Your mum was there, she might know, but I don’t think she does. I remember Albert dancing and this woman coming up to me; it was quite funny. She was drunk, and she said to me ‘I’ve got a man! I’ve got a man!’ I think it was a bus trip from Scunthorpe. Yes, that was it; it was a bus trip.”

I later realised that my Dad had been to the Frontier Club; the club that had become a gym; the club next to Zucchini’s.

Batley was full of surprises. I now know where my biscuits are made. I also know where to go to in Yorkshire if I need either a bed or a used car.