I must say, I’m surprised so many of today’s photos are in focus — sorry, there are lots! — considering that I was wearing my contacts for a change and they always tend to go funny when I’m outside and haven’t worn them for a while. Consequently, for most of this walk, everything was blurry to me and I had to guess whether the iPhone had focused.
We went south today, the other way down the cycle track. I snapped Matthew, and he kindly allowed me to share this one with you because it’s from a little distance and you can’t see him properly. We don’t usually walk this far apart, as though we’re practising our own form of extreme social distancing. No, it was just that I scaled a fence to get onto the track, but Matthew thought that might be illegal, so he walked round the proper way instead, in order to feel superior. He’s a bit like that is Matthew.
This way down the cycle track brings us to this marvellous structure, which is actually part of the ugly blue train bridge. It’s also where I got drunk with my first boyfriend a bunch of times when we were 17 — ahh, warm snakebite and black in plastic cups. Fun times.
We didn’t cross the ugly blue train bridge at this point as I wanted to go the way we used to when my boys were weeny and we’d walk to town at least once a week. (Man, I was fit then! Pushing three children in a double pram with a buggy board attached. Good times.)
I remembered the wonky house on the quay today. How cool is that?! I think it’s probably one of the ways into the wizarding world, like the Leaky Cauldron.
Back over the Millennium Bridge today, as it’s part of the cycle track and we were aiming to keep to the track for the whole walk. Incidentally, the bit in the picture was where an old friend once climbed down for a contemplative sit at 2am after an especially good night out. Idiot.
Also here, we get an especially nice view of my grandad Stephen’s railing welding.
Just as a treat, another photo of the bridge for you because I know it’s a favourite.
From this side, you can see how silted up the river has become over the centuries. It’s proper muddy!
From here, the cycle track takes a couple of twists and turns, and I’d imagine it’s quite easy to lose it if you don’t know the area. This underpass — which is clearly the perfect spot for a dementor attack — is still part of the track. We’ve spent lots of time screeching and hooting and playing with the echoes in here. Lancaster is a bit short on entertainment, so you have to make your fun wherever you can.
Just beyond the underpass, and the very tiny skate park that’s fenced off at the moment, you get back onto the cycle track proper. All leafy and green again. Our plan was to see how far along the track we could get before our legs started to protest and we had to turn back.
Turned out we couldn’t get very far at all. Flood defence management scheme, or something. Ah well.
We didn’t feel as though we’d been out very long — shows how much fitter we are, because this was already twice as far as we walked on Day 1 — so we decided to take a tentative walk round town, agreeing that, if there were a lot of people out for their exercise, we’d duck back out and just go home.
As you can see, empty. In the whole of town, I think we saw possibly five people.
This is, we think, the biggest building in Lancaster now. It was finished last year. I’m not sure if it’s flats or student accommodation. I thought it was for students when it was being built, but it looks a bit too posh. Then again, it seemed to be mostly empty, which it would be if all of the students have gone home. (International readers, if you didn’t know, Lancaster is a university town.)
Anywaaaaaay, off into town we skipped. We did actually skip. I’ve also taken to dancing in the supermarket. At first, this was because I just felt like dancing; now, I do it because it makes other shoppers smile — I can’t tell if it’s a smile of amusement or pity, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m yet to see anyone else join in, but I feel it will happen before this lockdown is over.
This wren was having a great time, singing its little head off. It was definitely a wren — I could tell because it was absolutely titchy, but very loud of voice.
In fact, it sounded like this, but actually much more enthusiastic:
We gave up skipping when we reached a bit of an incline up towards Dalton Square. The square was a good place to stop for our tea and a biscuit.
I would like to show you Queen Victoria and her unfortunately positioned sceptre. Poor Vicky. I wonder if she’d have been mortified or amused. She did have quite a tinkerish sense of humour, mind you.
She faces the town hall. Queen Victoria and the town hall are by far the fanciest things in town. I can’t think of anything more ostentatious than these. I like them both. I don’t really know what goes on in the town hall, but there’s a beer festival there every year, and that’s great.
As I said, town was almost completely empty. Just as we’d expect and hope. Very good. Well done, citizens. This is Market Square. That fancy and illuminated building there is the museum, which used to be the town hall. My grandad Wilf has told me a few times that he used to climb up onto the rooftops here and run all over town like some sort of northern Dick Van Dyke early parkour pioneer. Amazing. ‘Yeh don’t believe me, do yeh?’ he said. ‘I do, yes, definitely,’ I said. ‘Aye, well, yeh wou’n’t think it ter look at me, but I did — all ovver’t rooftops, me and Bill,’ he said. I don’t think he said Bill, but there’s probably a Bill in one of his stories.
As invigorating as it was to be in town again, it was also quite sad and we were acutely aware, Matthew and I, of exactly why it was empty and why we shouldn’t hang around for too long. While we hadn’t seen many other people, and we’d been careful not to touch anything, we had been out for a good couple of hours. It was feeling very apocalyptic.
So off we skipped again (skipping, now, to keep our spirits up), pausing now and then to take photos for myself of empty streets.
And back to the river. A blurry one here because I could barely see at all by this point, and Matthew had to offer me an arm so I didn’t accidentally tip over the railings and into the mud.
Back up here, dear ugly blue train bridge.
Pausing to get a quick shot of this, even though we have approximately 1,750 of these now. Sorry, but it just never fails to impress me, and I always have to stop and go, ‘Matthew, look, isn’t it pretty?’ And he has now perfected his ‘oh yeah’ to humour me.
We were on the bridge when the train whizzed past tonight, which I thought was thrilling, but which made Matthew seriously consider jumping in the river even though he’s fairly severely acrophobic.
Not so severe as to prevent him from walking along the little island at the bottom of our road, though.
Sheesh. So it turned out to be a much longer walk than we intended, but very lovely nonetheless. It was very nice to see town properly, but we won’t venture there on purpose again until restrictions start to be lifted. It felt a bit wrong, so we’ll try to stick to the wilds.
Until tomorrow, troopers.
WQ
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