Just me and Freya again today. Quite bored of sticking to our neighbourhood, I decided I wanted to show Freya a bit more of our town. We plopped into the car and headed off to town, not quite sure where we'd end up. I thought about just walking her through the town centre, but it's a bit weird at night when nothing's open and there's no one else around. We ended up at Williamson's Park. I wasn't sure if it would be open, but the huge gates hadn't been closed, so we risked it. I was slightly concerned that someone might close the gates while we were inside and we'd be stuck there until the morning, but perhaps the gates are never closed. No idea.
This is the view from the car park. Cool.
As you walk over towards the Ashton Memorial and the Butterfly House, you pass the cafe, which looks like this at night. It was a bit tricky to get Freya away from here because, even though it's been closed for ages, it obviously still smells delicious.
And then you round the corner to see this. Oooooooooh, ohhhhhhhh, my goodness! Most of Lancaster, Morecambe and Heysham. And also Barrow, Grange and a bit in between that I can't remember the name of. Maybe Ulverston. I suppose this could be any place that's surrounded by hills – most towns look the same at night, don't you reckon? Doesn't diminish its prettiness though. Ahh, lovely light pollution.
Ah, I took my photos out of order. Here's the Butterfly House. You won't catch me in there, ever. And that's not because dogs are not allowed in. It's because I'm not going any place where there's a high chance of massive insects landing on me. Butterflies in the garden, fine, I can avoid them but admire their prettiness and value their pollinating wonderfulness. Giant butterflies in a big greenhouse, though – nope, absolutely not. Evil. I'm having judders down my spine just writing about them. I've had to pause in my writing to put a scarf on so that nothing can drop down the back of my neck and get stuck in my jumper. And I'm in my house.
Anyway, we wandered down the hill. I wasn't sure if we should because it was very dark down at the bottom – the lights in the park are not very bright. But I did feel pretty safe – it's very open here, and I had no intention of wandering off alone into the foresty bits. Also, I knew we weren't actually alone in the park because I could hear other people calling their dogs, and there were some kids hanging out in the memorial – that was possibly where the weed smell was emanating from. Well, what else are you gonna do on a Thursday evening, eh?
Here's the memorial. You've seen it a bunch of times from various other vantage points, but this is what it looks like close up. Smashing. And look, there are a couple of the kids I mentioned. Sweet.
We wandered around just a very little bit at the bottom of the hill, but I didn't feel totally comfortable down there because it really was very dark and I couldn't see anything at all. This was not how dark it was:
It was actually this dark:
Even Freya seemed a bit nervous, and she's not really been scared of anything much so far. She stopped jumping up at me long enough to let me take another photo, but that was it.
So we went back up the hill, and I briefly marvelled at how I used to push a double pram up it – I'd like to say that I did it without breaking a sweat or getting out of breath, but that would be a lie. I was quite proud today though when I realised that I'd made it to the top with no difficulty at all.
As we'd been walking probably only for ten minutes, fifteen at the most, I thought we'd go past the car park the other way for a little bit. You can't drive all the way up here and only stay for quarter of an hour. Freya did seem calmer up here, but I wasn't! This was where I got spooked. No one was calling their dog, and there were no kids smoking weed, so I did feel very alone. In the woods, alone is good if you definitely are alone – it's not so good if you only think you're alone but you're really not. It looks well lit, I know, but that's just my phone drinking in too much light again.
But we went a little further. You'll recall that I like to set myself just a small challenge of going further than I really want to. We made it to this little shelter, which was my goal. But hell's bells, it looked scary as owt! Proper gave me the willies! So we did an about-face and marched back to the car. We'd only been out twenty minutes by this time, but that was enough for me – I think adrenaline burns off some calories though, so that's quite good.
I locked all the doors as soon as we were in the car, but then I immediately decided that I'd enjoyed this short walk and that I'd like to do it again soon. The view really is very pretty – probably worth just a tiny bit of terror.
Until tomorrow, spooks.
WQ+F
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