Days Out – mercuryvapour.co.uk

Another few days away – King’s Lynn Day 1!

When you read this, I shall be home from a few days away in the pleasant town of King’s Lynn. As I type this, I’m getting ready to leave the hotel room for the final time. I’m sat with my tablet and wireless keyboard looking around the room for things to comment on. It’s a little dated, with crusty bits hanging from the top, but that’s enough about me, more about the time away.

Myself and Chris, my usual travelling partner for these days away, had originally planned to do this as part of my “stick a pin in a map and just bloody go somewhere” initiative last year, but as luck would have it, I got indescribably sick, and Chris had the sniffles, so it was postponed several months until this week..

I initially thought the whole trip was doomed to failure again, as we’d barely left Hartlepool when we ended u[ stuck in traffic. Some complete loser lost his trailer on the Tees flyover. I;d normally complain, but while this did add a whole 20 minutes to the journey, it gave me the first opportunity for a photo. You should all know by now how much I like my “grim graf”, this one was a winner.

You might have to click the original image for that one. Thankfully, as far as I can recall, the rest of the journey was plain sailing. I fired up my “trip away” playlist on Spotify. Unfortunately, I think I’d only managed to add about 6 songs to it, so that didn’t last the whole three days as intended. Instead we endured local radio. I was saddened to find that my favourite local radio station, Lincs FM, 102.2 had bitten the dust.

A quick blast down the A1, and our first stop was, coincidentially, Lincoln. A lovely little city where I’ve been before, but not for a very long time. There was also large portions of it I’d never seen before, such as the cathedral.

Of course, the most important part for me were… yes, you guessed it, the charity shops. And streetlights. I’ve not mentioned those on here for a very long time. Sadly, the LED onslaught has taken the entire fun out of everything, so you’ll have to forgive me for almost creaming my pantaloons at the sight of a Thorn Alpha 3, on original Thorn column and its almost makeshift-looking outreach arm. Phwoar. they don’t make them like that anymore.

Anyway, there was one thing I thought I’d learned about Lincolnshire. It was flat. Let me tell you, that it is not. If you want to visit certain places like the cathedral and the castle, it’s certainly an uphill walk. In fact, the route we took takes you to a place named Steep Hill. Annoyingly, I did take some photos of the ascent, but my phone thought it’d be a great laugh to convert these photos to black. You’ll have to make do with a photo at the top of Steep Hill.

Halfway up was a local beer shop. they still remain in their bag, so I’ve yet to comment on how nice they are. Of course, at the top of the hill is the cathedral, and it would be the first of several cathedral stops on this tour.

We made a quick pit-stop at a place called the Duke William Hotel. Amusingly, the guy behind the counter had relatives from Hartlepool. Us monkey hangers get everywhere.

Time was getting on, so we headed down the slightly less steep version of Steep Hill, which still gave me some good photo opportunities.

We went back to the car and headed onto our final destination, King’s Lynn, which would be our home for the next three nights.

There was, however, a moment that almost put the entire week in jeopardy. Somewhere along the A17. An amusing turn of events. We passed a service station and Chris took a wrong turning, heading towards Boston. It just so happened that I needed to do a toilet, so we attempted to pull into the service station, making a wrong turning on the way. Chris parked up, and on my way to the afore-mentioned defecation station, I stepped off the kerb… It wasn’t a normal kerb, it was one of those foot-high kerbs. My right ankle almost gave way. Thankfully, it didn’t, but I bet the bog in Starbucks wishes it had. Hoho. No photos.

That was it now. No more stops until our final destination. One thing I had never seen before, however, are fields and fields of daffodils. It’s funny, you see them in the shops this time of year, but I never thought that they’d be grown over here. Certainly, in the north-east we never have anything close to this. At least, not that I’ve seen anyway.

Anyhoo. Normally before we go away somewhere, I do a deep scan of the places on Google Maps / Street view, in order to get an idea of the ‘facilities’ that are worth visiting, namely the pubs, Indian restaurants and charity shops. For the first time in all of the times we’ve done these trips, I didn’t do that. I wanted it to be a surprise, especially seeing how long I’d waited to get here. The sat-nav eventually put us on the right road, and after only a few minutes after arriving in King’s Lynn it seemed like we were in the centre. A large market place, seemingly something that must have been around since for hundreds of years. The Duke’s Head hotel was to be our residence until Friday.

Of course, the first thing to do was to arrange parking. £15 per day, and if you left, you weren’t guaranteed a parking space back in. Still, it seemed cheaper than stayin in the market square, and probably more secure. The next job was to actually find the bloody car park. It’s not well signposted at all, and the location just throws Google Maps into a spasm. At one point, it announced we’d reached our destination, when this was clearly a council ran car park. Little did we know, that if we’d just walked down a side street, we’d have found it, and I’d have saved £2.50 for about 38 seconds parking. Hey-ho.

We headed into the hotel entrance at the back. Decorator’s sheets littered the floor. A smell of wet paint filled the air. Temporary LED lights hung from the ceiling. This looked like a hotel, but in the process of being regenerated. A workman pointed us to the right entrance around the corner. Remember that side-street? Yup, that’s when we discovered it.

Eventually we got through the right door. The reception and foyer area was very nicely decorated, with leather chairs and chandeliers everywhere. Very nice indeed. The receptionist was friendly, and after the correct parking charge was settled, we headed up to the room. It was. compact, but dated. The bathroom was spot on, but the room itself was flaking paint, along with chipped veneer on the desk. It’s also the first hotel room I’ve ever been in that doesn’t have plug sockets next to the bed. It’s 2025. People need to charge devices during the night! The only plug sockets were the other side of the room.

The view out of the window was quite nice, the view of a distant church, the name of which escapes me. Let’s just call it St. Jocky’s. There’s also some big silos behind too. I didn’t realise King’s Lynn had a port, but apparently that’s where they’re from.

As much as I liked staring out of the window, we weren’t going to spend much time in the hotel room. It’s all about the curry, beer, and charity shops. I fired up the tablet. Google recommended one called “The Curry Shop”. We got there, and it looked very closed. Thank you very much, bloody Google Maps. Fortunately, there was an Indian restaurant right next door that was open, named ‘Voujon’. Well, that’s what Google Maps tells me anyway. We were the only people in there apart from the staff. Just like the hotel room, it was also small and compact. the food was acceptable, but I’m sure we’d find better. It went on the “might revisit” pile.

Food was consumed, and it was time to actually find somewhere to drink. The first stop was “the Eagle”. Wow. If King’s Lynn has a chav centre, I would think this was it. The beer was awful, and I only had a Carling. I think we spent the entire time looking around just thinking “Yeah, probably should have picked somewhere else”. Think we ran out of there.

Next stop was the pub next to the hotel, the Maid’s Head. The footy was on, so we watched that. Can’t tell you who was playing or what the score was, as I was too busy shitting my brains out. Dunno if it was the curry, or that dodgy pint in The Eagle, but…. wow.

We headed out of there and went to the Wetherspoons for one, planning to have one at the hotel as well. The Wetherspoons was absolutely dead. More staff than punters. Mind you, it was a Tuesday night. We went back to the hotel bar for one, only to find it was closed, and it must have only been 11. Gosh darn it. Oh well, back to the hotel room, and after a couple of episodes of Family Guy, it was time to embark on Day 2…

The weekend starts here…

Well, actually, it started over 24 hours ago. At the time of typing, it’s 22:34 on Saturday night. I’ve had a great day, in fact one of the best days I’ve had charity shopping for a long time. It started off at 10:30ish, maybe a bit earlier. Chris and I had arranged to go to Stanley. I did have a box of CDs that I had to donate, Turns out that the Walkers multipack crisp boxes are the perfect size to fit CDs. I know, I was shocked too. Crisps. Is there anything they CAN’T do?

We arrived in Stanley, after a particularly uneventful journey. In fact, I don’t even think I put the radio on the entire time. I was feeling particularly lazy, so I didn’t take the box of CDs. We hit the usual suspects. Scope fist, always expensive, sometimes some good ones in. Didn’t pick up anything in there. Second was the Sally Army. this is usually a goody too. 25p per disk. I think I picked up 8, though nothing really stood out as been exceptional. Mainly just more CDs I’ve never heard of, seeing as I have pretty much everything I’ve heard of now. Now that I think of it, and the shop I got them from, these are all going to be religious ones aren’t they? Oh well, the cases will do.

Of course, the shop of the day is always Farplace. Always an eclectic mashup of randomness. Sometimes good, sometimes garbage, sometimes… just OK. I think I picked up 15 at 3 for £1, and a copy of Blaggers ITA ‘Oxygen’ on 12″. I, of course, have the 7 inch pressing on green vinyl, but I thought the 12 inch version might have better sound quality. Dunno yet.

While in there, some guy started talking to me about the films he was picking up, asking if I remembered it, and basically if I’d known whether he’d seen it or not. Er, no. Anyway, he mentioned Consett. a place I’d never been to in anger, and certainly never in the form of charity shop shopping. I mentioned it to Chris. I wasn’t sure if he was reluctant or not, but he seemed to warm to the idea when I mentioned it was only 15 minutes in the car.

We arrived. It seemed like a small town centre. I wasn’t quite sure how good it would be for charity shops. Had I just wasted the fuel that Id just paid for? I needn’t have worried.

We left the car, and walked through a small shopping precinct. Nothing much in there. A paper shop. Maybe a grocers and there’s probably a barbers thrown in there, there always is. The light at the end of the tunnel appeared, and it was canary yellow. That can only mean one thing. YES! FARPLACE! Most people get excited over brands of cars, or expensive shoes. It’s charity shops for me. I ran towards the shop at a rate of knots, my little heart beating faster with every excited step, my pupils widening at the thought of shiny plastic discs.

I gleefully skipped over to the “media section”. A little room dedicated to books, records, DVDs, and of course, CDs. My smile, resembling a badly worn zebra crossing, grew wider as I looked at the prices. The CDs were indeed 20 for £1. This was the lowest price I’d ever paid for CDs in a shop. I came out with 40, for the princely sum of £2. At the time of typing, I’m not too sure what I’ve got. For that price, the whole lot could be used for spare CD cases and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

My pink carrier bag was bulging, and no, that’s not a euphemism, they really did give me the CDs in a rose-tinted bag. It can just be seen in the bottom right of this photo.

Over the road from the Farplace was another charity shop. Delta North.

While the DVD section was overly excessive, with shelves and shelves of them, the CDs weren’t quite as dense. I still managed to pick up a 5-cd set of “Sisters Of Mercy” albums, and two other random CDs for £1.

There were a couple of other charity shops dotted around the place, and I picked up a few more CDs. Little did I know that the highlight of the day was yet to come.

If these little towns do anything well, it’s a discount store. It’s where all of the surplus stock from the big supermarkets and warehouses get one last chance of getting sold. I’m not sure if thye other parts of the world have an equivalent, but imagine, a big building, full of food, for near enough pennies, and this place is huge. I was slightly gutted. I had to limit my spending. I can’t remember if I mentioned anywhere thought this marathon ramble that I’d broken my bank card the day before, so I was literally having to go by whatever money I had in my wallet. Oh, yes, and what I could carry too. I was also lumbering around 55-60 CDs at this point too. Oh, and I stupidly didn’t get a basket. Duh.

without doubt, the purchase from in there, was this….

Mmmm. I can already taste the peaness.

Actually, that line was just an excuse to crack a dirty joke, I can’t stand the bloody things! Chris actually bought them for the princely sum of £2, and when wrapped up in a shiny box with a bow on top, they made a lovely raffle prize for the little organisation I go to on a weekly basis!

The last stop was to FINALLY drop off the CDs. The ladies at the Willow Burn hospice shop were only too delighted to take them off my hands, so I hope they sell well.

And, that was it for Consett. I was pleasantly surprised about the place, and I’d happily go back any time, even if it’s just to visit Barry’s Bargain Warehouse again… or whatever it was called.

There was just enough time to hit the pleasant, cobbled streets of Peterlee. A town with less culture than a pot of yoghurt. thankfully, there was one last Farplace there. I’ve been there that often, I think I’ve worn the carpet out. Another 16 CDs for £3. You’ll do for me.

And, that was that. I headed home, laden with more CDs than I actually needed, but when is that different from any other weekend?

Derby Day 3

The 3rd day started a lot earlier for me than the previous day. As I mentioned, I intended to visit BPM records frlom when they opened, which means i was up and about for about 9:30. Chris was,of course, sound asleep still.

Off I went, to the short walk to the rcord shop. I was there so early, I even turned the lights on for them. That’s not bad going. Here’s a few more photos of the inside, and of course, what I describe as my little heaven. I’m never more happier than when I’m knee deep in records and CDs.

I found some classics, and ones that are a little more… shall we say… obscure.

My time in BPM Records came to an end when an old guy, who was also flicking through the vinyl, let out the most gut-curdling fart you’ve ever heard. The room isn’t particularly big, as it probably comes across on the photos, and if I didn’t get out of there right now, there would be no escape from having to breathe his gut-guff, so I held my breath, grabbed my stash, and headed downstairs. Honestly, he’s probably still scraping that one off the inside of his trousers. Unpleasant.

I headed back to the hotel, trying to get the sound of that out of my head, failing miserably. It’s something that I’ll probably suffer PTSD over.

Anyhoo, Nottingham was to be the entertainment of the day. A place I’ve been to many times, and I have a vague recollection of where the charity and rexord shops are. I was aware of two shops in this little arcade type place. Unfortunately, it seems that one of them has gone, and the other one was just closed…. Grim. Just like the car park.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo, so you’ll have to make do with a Google screenshot. This was the NCP car park on Maid Marian Way, and it’s one of the worst car parks I think I’ve ever had the misfortune to stay in. There’s development going on all the way around it, and it looks like part of it has already been demolished I don’t think it’ll be too long until it’s ripped down. If the passage of time doesn’t rot the concrete, the gallons of urine in the stairwells certainly will.

For charity and record shops, Nottingham was a bust. A shame, as I remember in the first few times we went, there were lots of good ones but they seemed to have dried up or closed down. Overall, not many CDs, but I did come away with this…

A tub of curry.

I’d heard good things about this from someone at work, so I grabbed some. I’ve yet to try it out, but I’ll post my findings when I do. “Bring to the boil, stir and simmer… It’s that easy!” We’ll see about that. I can burn cornflakes, me.

One other thing we did, was to take an updated look at the Grand Central railway that once ran through Nottingham , mainly through a series of tunnels. There’s one section of it that’s still visible, although a car park now stands on part of it. I look a photo of it when I first went to Nottingham in…. whatever year it was, so here’s the two photos however many years later.

For future reference, I was stood on Cairns St when I took this photo, though I’m unlikely to forget that name any time soon. Only difference seems to be that the bushes coming out of the wall have grown, and the lights in the car park have been replaced with LEDs.

We returned from Nottingham, and there was just enough time to have a look around the museum that was next door to the hotel. This was a great place. The star of the attraction has to be the huge airplane engine that they have there. I believe it would have been manufactured local to the area.

Oh yes, and then there’s this guy…

As this would be our last night in Derby, we said goodbye to the establishments that had became our regular spots over the last 3 days. We had one last drink in the Taproom….

And of course, we couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to the Ye Olde Dolphin. Now, I was going to type out the history of the place from this photo, but bugger it, you can just read it yourselves.

For some reason, the one-atmed bandit had been turned off, so that made the place seem ven more olde-wurlde.

They had the Screeching Owl back on, so I enjoyed a pint of that. Not pictured is a creepy guy that came in just sat there, staring out of the window with his bag of crisps. Thankfully, we survived, and our attention turned to food. Now, there was a nice looking place next to the Spice Lounce, the place we’d frequented on the first night, named Okra. (There’s a tilde in there somewhere, but I’m using my bluetooth keyboard amd I don’t know how to type that) . Chris suggested we give that a go, and off we jolly well popped.

I can confirm that the food was absolutely wonderful here too. Can’t believe we’d hit the three-for-three. All places we’d tried, we really liked, and it’s not very often you can say that.

We said one last goodbye to the Old Silk Mill on our way back. Once again, you can read the spiel about the place here…

While our time in Derby was coming to an end, we still had the rest of the day to do stuff… Onto the fourth and final day!

Viva Darbados Day 2: Some Loughborough Steamers

So, day 2 commenced with me waking up as “fresh” as a “daisy”. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the curry, but I felt like I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. I suspect the beer. I decided to just lay in bed for a few hours staring at my phone. You may recall that I mentioned that the room windows didn’t open. I suspect that I actually partially cooked in my own juices during the night. It was extremely warm, and it turned out the air conditioning didn’t work either.

It got to 10:30 and I decided I wanted to do some exploring, so I nipped out for an hour.

As I mentioned in “yesterday’s” post, there’s a river near the taproom, with a nice little path going down the side of it, so I thought I’d have a leisurely stroll down there. And very nice it was too. Nice to see a bit of greenery in a city.

I also just have to post this for posterity. I was stood under a road bridge that went over the river, and I mentioned there was a distinct lack of amusing cartoon graffiti. Not even so much as a badly drawn set of male genitalia. Seconds after I thought that, I spied this beautiful sticker stuck to a lamp post.

I don’t know if there’s a story behind it. I don’t really care. I just know this was the greatest thing I’d seen in my current time down there.

After my merry jaunt along the water, I had a bit of a wander around near the hotel, and found a couple of charity shops. I picked up a couple of things. Not really anything I’d heard of, but that’s half the fun. There was also a Greggs, where I picked up a sausage roll. The way my stomach felt would confirm if I was hungover, or hungry. I can confirm I was hungover. Somehow, I forced it down, rather like that scene on the Vicar Of Dibley where Geraldine has to eat all those sprouts and had to physically force them in there. That’s what I was like with that sausage roll.

By this time, Chris was ready, so I headed back to the hotel. Today’s plan was to go to Loughborough. For once, there was something there for both of us. Chris wanted to see the trains that are there, and I… well, of course, had the charity shops. Beforehand, we had another small walk around the Derby City Centre. Chris wanted some brekky, and I settled for a bottle of coke. The slice of lemon that came with it would be enough to keep me going all day.

We had enough time for a brief walk around Derby city centre before we went. We had became aware of the Derby Computer Museum, so tried to find it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t. It was on the 2nd floor of another building and Google Maps didn’t appear to signpost it very well, but it turns out it would have cost £7 to get in, and you had to book in advance. Oh well. To be honest, it looked to have been geared more towards kids and school groups anyway, so I’m not sure if there’d have been anything interesting for me. One thing that I happened to see out of the corner of my eye, that was even better than a computer museum, was a sign for a record shop, namely BPM Records. I go in and… Oh my. The new / sealed vinyl was downstairs, which didn’t really spark much interest for me, but upstairs… wow. Boxes and boxes of singles, an entire room dedicated to CDs, and even a couple of boxes of CD singles dotted about.

It was getting on at this point, so I grabbed a couple of CD Singles, the best one being “Flavor of the Month” by The Posies, a single that I’d bought back in 1993 on purple vinyl.

I vowed to come back the following day, so confirmed the opening times, and off we went to Loughborough. The first stop would be to get a photo of a building…

Apparently, they used to make parts of locomotives, or something, Chris did tell me, but seeing as it’s been a few weeks since the trip, I’ve entirely forgotten. I’m sure he’ll help out in the comments! The building is used for something else.

Next stop was to the Great Central Railway. I genuinely think we spent more time trying to get parked than actually being there. Considering this was a well-established tourist attraction (a lot of people apparently still like steam trains), there’s very little parking available, except for residential streets. I guess the locals must love that.

So, trains, then…

I took up most of my phone’s memory trying to get a decent photo of the station cat, who was happily wandering about, gathering atention from myself and other people hanging about. Of course, I don’t know if it was the station cat or not, but I liked to think he was employed as head mouse catcher, and to his credit, I didn’t see a single rodent.

We waved goodbye to the trains, and headed into Loughborough town centre. I’m happy to say I really liked it. We stopped off for a drink, and I was happy to see an old US streetlight still in use..

They were originally made by General Electric in the US, but the ‘moulds’ were bought by Phosco in the early 2000s so they could be manufactured over here. If you ever get close to one, you can see where the GE badge used to be…. cough, erm.

And so, off onto the major part of the day, for me at least… the charity shops. I’m happy to report that Loughborough does have its fair share of them, most of which are located in Biggin Street. One Age UK shop had a large amount of CD singles in there, so I filled my boots. I picked up other bits along the way too. I might elaborate on this if I can be bothered. It did have its fair share of nice old buildings, all appear to still be well maintained. Overall, yes, I can happily say, looking back, I liked Loughborough a lot.

Unfortunately, Chris got lost on the way back. It did give me a photo of what I’d consider to be the worst street I’ve seen. A passing interest of mine is to go around Google Maps and look at streets that have the worst possible view from the residents’ front window. This one is certainly up there….

I wonder what the going rate for lung / bronchial conditions is there..

We got back to the hotel dropped off our things, and then headed out. Of course, we wanted to see if that taproom was actually going to be open. Success! it was! We had a couple in there, and then went back to Ye Olde Dolphin inne. We got chatting to a couple of regulars while we were in there, who wondered what we were doing in Derby… I think they were more surprised than anything. I don’t think they get many tourists around those parts.

We got chatting about food, as you do, and where the best Indians were. A place called ‘Himalayan’ was highly recommended to us.

It was a Gurkha restaurant, admittedly not something I’d tried before. Always the ambitious type of guy, I went for something completely different on the menu… This time, I went for the…. chicken vindaloo.

It goes without saying that the food was incredibly nice, and the beer was also excellent too… again.

Not a brand I’d seen before, but I’d definitely get it again. On the way back, we nipped back to the Old Silk Mill for one more, and then back to the hotel. Great beer, great food. Now, ono the 2nd half of the trip! and because they didn’t really fit in anywhere, he’s a couple of arty shots of the cathedral…

Viva Darbados – Day 1

As both of my readers may know, I have just got back (well, last week) from a trip to the city of Derby. This follows the previous years’ excursion to Macclesfield, and the year before that, to Skegness, both of which have been with my mate Chris, and this year was to be no exception.

Chris picked me up at 11AM sharp. The weather in Partypool was a little overcast, but dry. As we headed south, the weather changed and it would stay that way for the entire journey there.

Unlike previous years, we didn’t stop anywhere on the way down, as we had an extra day, so it was straight to Derby. To describe the journey as uneventful would have been an understatement. We arrived just before 3PM, and managed to get a parking space next to the hotel. the prices were very reasonable. £15.00 for 48 hours.

It was, of course, raining when we got there, and it wasn’t time to check in yet, so we headed to the first place to grab a drink, in this case it was a bottle of boke in the ‘Slug & Lettuce’.

So, a bottle of the ‘ard stuff later, the rain has stopped, so we had our first wander around. One thing became clear, Derby likes its abandoned buildings. Large swathes of the city centre appeared to be abandoned, or about to be demolished, and some of the shops that were opened were of a… shall we say… questionable nature.

As this was the first day of 4, we did a cursory glance around the charity shops. The first one happened to be a “Cats Protection”. Upon previous experiences, I know these are quite expensive, but at 50p a CD, it was acceptable. Nobody apparently wanted to serve me. Hmmm. Can’t be that used to havng customers. Eventually, a lady did servce me, and I left the establishment clutching a Nigel Kennedy Greatest Hits CD. No, I don’t know why either. I just felt like I had to start the trip somewhere.

We found what appeared to be the main shopping centre, namely “The Derbion”. This was a clean and spacious shopping centre. Your usual array of shops, and of course, there was the usual shopping centre collection of charity shops such as British Heart Foundation and Age UK.

The rain was continuing to fall lightly, so we headed back to the hotel to check in. The room was your standard Premier Inn affair, with the exception that the window didn’t open. Strange. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in any hotel where this was the case.

By now, it’s an unwritten tradition what we watch Tipping Point. It just always happens to be on the telly when we get to wherever we’re going.

We spent about an hour or so in here while my phone battery charged. It’s reaching that age where it’s getting needier for a dose of electricity, and no, I’m not going to buy a new one until this one dies.

The rain had stopped, so it was time to explore the area in the search of… liquid refreshment. everal days earlier, I’d been exploring on Google Maps, and found a taproom just over the river from the hotel.

We walked in, only to be greeted with the sight of a laptop and papers strewn everywhere. Well, it didn’t look very open, and the guy behind the laptop had to check if they were actually serving today…. indeed they were closed. Apparently one of the contractors must have left the door open, as they were planning for a refurb. Gutted. The guy said that they’d be open at 3 the following day, so a return trip was planned. Instead, we went to “The Old Silk Mill”.

I liked this place. Pretty cosy, though it did seem to have an aroma of cooked fish about it. I can’t believe I got a pint of Madri when there were so many other exotic beers available. I didn’t see that they had Citra on draft until it was too late.

We had one or two in there, and then headed to “Ye Olde Dolphin Inne”. I really liked this place. It’s one of those places that were built when people were a lot shorter. Low ceilings, all the beers were pumped from a cask. the only thing out of place was the games machine. Sadly, I can’t remember the name of the beer I had (something like Screeching Owl), but it was exceptional. this was to become a regular for the next few days.

Two pints later, and we’d just excaped the rain. It was time to look for some food. There were a number of highly rated Indian Restaurants that appeared, so we picked one, seemingly at random…. The Spice Lounge.

This was certainly a good choice, as the food was excellent. Of course, I had the chicken vindaloo, and I enjoyed it immensely. If I had one critiscism about it, is that you don’t really get enough dips to go with your poppadoms. I think we’d finished 3 of the 4 dips between us, leaving only the white one, because nobody ever eats that stuff.

Overall, a very nice place, and I don’t think the prices were too bad either.

After we left The Spuice Lounge, we headed up the same road to see if we could find a nice pub to settle into for the rest of the night. We ended up in one called The Greyhound. Chris and I both agreed that this part of the city felt very much like York. and this place was no exception, it definitely felt like something you’d see there. The place was really nicely done out…. except for the toilets.

In the first draft of the blog, I put in a detailed description about them. Bog was, quite literally the operative word here Let’s just say some careful hovering was needed, and the rest I’ll leave up to your imagination. Instead, I’ll include a photo of the place itself.

The Greyhound had its last orders at half 10, so we drank up and completed the short walk to the hotel. One bottle of Peroni later, and that was me ready for bed. What excitement would await us the following day? One thing’s for sure, there won’t be as many photos of the inside of pubs as this one…

A weekend in York (Day 1)

You know, it seems sometimes all I post about on here is Amiga stuff and charity shops. It’s pretty much what my life has became recently. Sometimes I do leave the house, and this time it was for a mooch around York. Well, yes, there were charity shops involved, but there was other stuff too.

In early July, Martlepool hosted a leg of the Tall Ships race. It’s something that has happened before, way back in 2010. Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend much of those festivities thanks to work commitments. this time, 13 years later, I avoided it through coice. This time, it promised absolute carnage for the lovely little fishing village of Hartlepool. Chris, who you may remember from many blogs previously, lives in an area of the ‘village’ affected by the traffic measures, so he decided to get out of the way for a few days, and head to Leeds and York, instead of having to fight the council for a parking permit. Plans were made for me to join him half way through this trip. I said I’d get the train down on the Saturday, meet up with him and stay overnight, and come back with him on the Sunday. Of course, there was possible “industrial action” on the train to worry about. Would I actually make it down?

I booked the ticket the week previously. I was surprised just how easy it was. I’ve never actually ordered tickets on my phone before. Despite my technical knowledge, I can’t help but think that paper tickets, or having some physical representation of a ticket is the best way to go. Anyway, no sooner had I paid, it got put into my “online wallet”, and I was all set. I was genuinely amazed at how simple it went.

Anyway, as mentioned. There were train strikes, and that was my worry. This particular train company didn’t have the greatest reputation when it comes to reliability. I’d have thought that any excuse to cancel a train, they’d be all over it. Anyway, I awoke early on the Saturday, still expecting to read my phone and find that the train had been cancelled. Amazingly, this never happened. I arrived at the station to find the board was still showing it was turning up. While in the waiting room, the guy next to me ran out without his phone charger. Amusingly, I’ve known the person who I spoke to for about 30 years, I’d totally forgotten he’s worked there, and to complete the circle of life, he still has some Amiga disks with my handwriting on. If only Elton John and Tim Rice were in the vacinity. I do wonder if this guy ever collected his phone charger.

This particular train company was even a guy walking up and down the platform showing people where to stand to get onto the right carriage. Never had that service before, so this was my position while I waited…

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that the other platorm (which was supposed to be ready in time for the Tall Ships) is still out of bounds. There’s now a bridge connecting both platforms, but it’s not ready yet, and there’s no canopies or lighting installed on that side.

Anyway, I successfully boarded the train, and took in the sights of Teesside and Yorkshire, as the bone rattler wound its way through many little villages and towns.

An hour or so later, I was in York., and I was taking in the sights and sounds… of a place I’d been to about 60 times before, but I still can’t help busting the camera out.

That last one is of “Grape Lane”. A street that has had a slightly different name in times of yore. I’ll leave you, the viewer to find out what that is.

As menitoned previously, I hit the charity shops. And by golly, did I find some classic tat in there…

At some point during the “Wayne King” record, and the Metrocentre postcard, Chris met up with me. Of course, we had a mooch around a few more shops (many of them may, or may not have been of the charity variety), before the weather started to turn. It was raining. Not much, but enough to think “Oh, there’s a microbrewery. Let’s have a sneaky pint”. And so, that’s exactly what we did.

I love that little ornament of the eagle, and his little hat made out of beermats. Sadly, I doubt he was for sale, so that photo will have to do.

Sadly, the rain kept up, so I didn’t get many more photos. Instead we headed off to Drake’s for some chips. Seems everyone had that same idea, because it seemed like the world’s longest wait for two portions of curry and chips. They weren’t bad, I guess, but could have done without the wait!

With the charity shops plundered and time getting on, we headed off to the B+B. And what a nice little place it was, about half a mile away from the city centre.

Sadly, I didn’t really get a decent photo of the size of the room, but Chris had that big bed, and I had my own bed, right next to the open window. This would become beneficial later on.

Shortly after, we went out to the first of the pubs we’d passed on the way.

A nice little place. I think I had a pint of something called “White Rat”. It was nice whatever it was. We stopped at another place. The “Royal Oak”. I think we had one or two in there, and then decided to go for the most predictable part of the night… an Indian! I’m guessing it must have only been about 6PM at that point. Turns out this was the best decision of the day. We entered, asked for a table, the guy shuffled his papers for what seemed like an age, and then ushered us to a table. It was right near the door. this meant that we could hear everyone that came in. “Sorry, we’re fully booked until 9:30”. Ha! We’d just got the last table, and it was lovely. Not quite as nice as the one in Macclesfield, but it was certainly enjoyable, and the fact we were the last ones to get an unbooked table just added that little extra spice to it all.

No trip to York is complete without a stop in the “Three Legged Mare”. One of my favourite haunts in York Something interesting always happens.

We’d grabbed a seat right at the front. Little did we know that there was going to be a band/duo on, until they turned up with all of their equipment.

I must admit, I wish I could remember their names, because they were bloody good.

I’m bound to find out, and I’ll update when I do.

We began to head back relatively early. Chris wasn’t sure what time the B+B closed its doors, so we were back by 10.

About 10 minutes after getting back, we opened the window and found out that our timing was, once again, impeccable. We looked out, and there was a thunderstorm going on outside. I think we spent the next two hours or so discussing which presenter was at the centre of the latest BBC shenannegans. Turns out my guess was completely wrong.

Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, with the sound of the rain and thunder being a perfect white noise generator. Day 2, the journey home, should be fun.

Day 3… Ta-Ta Treacletown

So, as mentioned in the last ramble, I managed to get a decent night’s sleep in the hotel, and finally surfaced about 9. We had already had a recommendation for food. I didn’t mention in the previous days’ blog, that Chris had stopped off at a chothes shop to pick up a cap, as he didn’t want to get any of his dozen hairs wet. We got chatting to the shop owners who had instantly picked up on our accents. I explained about our pin-on-a-map charity shop excursions, and he gave us a recommendation of an old cinema that had been converted into a large eatery place with lots of individual stalls to buy food from.

We went on the search for it, and also stumbled on an untapped vein of 5 or 6 independent charity shops. That was an unexpected bonus.

Thankfully, I did pick up a few CDs this time. I don’t think there was anything amazing in them, but I’ve yet to listen to them at the time of typing.

We found the eatery which called itself “Picturedrome”, and it was indeed large, and plenty of places to eat… It did seem a bit “hipsterish”, with plenty of laptops and beards flying about. It wasn’t exactly cheap either. Ihad a chuckle at a noodle bar called “Send Noods”.

So, it was time for the final hurrah. Naturally, one last trek around any charity shops I might have missed. My first concern was… had they restocked the Age UK I’d visited previously?

Yes. Yes, they had. the shelves were full. Of course, my next question was, could I still get the CDs for 50p? I was feeling confident. I was definitely going to get away with it two days in a row. I took my 11 CDs to the counter.

“That’ll be £11 please”. Gosh darn it. Never mind. It’s all for charidee, innit? As the weather was still nice, and we still had a little bit of time before we could set off, we had a walk around the surrounding area. I found a mural dedicated to those 108 steps, stuck to the side of a bridge.

It’s also the first time I can recall where I’ve walked over a bridge, but also been under a bridge at the same time…

Fascinating stuff. I also don’t know what it is with me seeing faces in things… first there was “Coke Bloke”, secondly, there was this one…

I’m not quite sure which one amuses me more. I feel that second one might be a little more intentional though.

And, doing things slightly out of order, because I can, and there was no other place for it, I also photographed these classy old fluorescent streetlights in the grounds of Macclesfield sorting office…

So, that was it for good old Macc. It’s a nice place. Plenty going for it. The next stop was Stockport. Again, this was more of a pin-in-the-map type thing. It was on the way home, and I have no recollection of where the idea came from. We probably passed it on the way down. I’d like to call this place ‘varied’. It’s bigger than I imagined it to be. There were a few charity shops we’d passed on the way down. I expected that to be it, but it turned out we were a good few miles from the town centre. Leaving Macclesfield and getting to Stockport town centre seemed an age, but in reality it only took 30 minutes, and that included an aborted stop in an Asda to get to the afore-mentioned charity shops.

First impressions were… not amazing. There was confusion on how to pay for parking – it looks like the shopping centre we were in was in the process of going “app only” for parking. A genuinely disgusting turn of events. If that’s the future, no wonder town centres are dying.

Anyway, rant over, thankfully, we found possibly the only pay machine tucked away in the corner. I deposited the cound, and we had two hours to explore the delights of Stockport.

Peering over the wall didn’t look promising.

Oh, would you look at that! It’s taken my collection of shopping centres during demolition up to three. Two in three days. Aren’t I lucky?

It took a while for things to get good when it came to shops. It seemed like you have that rank old precinct, but walk a couple of streets away, and it’a much nicer affair. Modern shops, a decent number of charity shops, and of course, a market hall.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of the market hall, but it was much nicer than the one in Huddersfield. There was even a guy selling local bottles of beer. Reasonably priced too. I think I picked 4 up. I have, of course, drank them in the intervening time between me getting home and typing this, so I can’t remember what they were called, but they were very nice.

We even stumbled across a record shop. I knew we were limited on time, so I couldn’t spend much time as I wanted in there, but I almost jizzed my pantaloons at the sight of a “Loading Bay Records” copy of Ankie Bagger’s “Where Were You Last Night”, until it was pointed out that I already have it. A quick check of the databse, and it is, indeed in there. I certainly didn’t pay £2 for it though. Bugger. Or should that be Bagger? A-hahahaaaaa. Sorry, it’s getting late.

That pretty much would be the final stop. I nipped into the “Pound Bakery” for a sausage roll. It was not amazing. I also nipped into Holland and Barrett for some cough sweets that I liked, but it seems they don’t stock them anymore. Another thing discontinued is “Green Cola”, something released a few years back. It was not amazing. Either way, I picked a can of that up for 59p. I’ve yet to have it, it’s chilling in the fridge.

And that, as they say, is that.

The rainbow, pointing towards the pot of gold that is Teesside, assuming you don’t check the GPS location embeeded in the photo. Overall, an enjoyable few days away. The food was superb. the charity shops could have been better, but I was still happy with the little haul. the weather certainly could have been improved on. Unfortunately, the week after we went, the sun was cracking the pavements. At least it was back in sunny ol’ Hartlepool. Still, a little rain never hurt anybody.

Hopefully, I won’t leave it six months until I have something worth blogging about!