1903 Accrington

Having the free use of the flat in mum's retirement complex has been fantastic both in terms of being able to spend quite a bit of time with her and in terms of stretching the dollar further. Since Steve's brother, Neale, works through the week, we've tried to visit him and Gill at night.
Neale picked Steve up after he returned the hire car to Intack on Blackburn Road. This saved a lot of messing around catching a bus back to Accrington. The car we hired was a Citroen C3 which had many idiosyncracies, the most irritating of which was a loud ticking noise when the ignition was switched on. We were told this was normal which was fortunate as it sounded anything but normal.
In the afternoon, Neale took mum, Steve and I for a drive to Beacon Fell named because it was one of a series of beacons built on hills to pass on messages of important events - can't remember the examples. The hill was 266 m high so there were spectacular views including Pendle Hill, again, and Longridge Fell. Some of the lanes were the narrowest we've been on to date which, since they are shared with farmers' huge tractors and trailers, creates “interesting” situations when vehicles travelling in opposite directions meet. At least there's no risk of the driver falling asleep at the wheel out of boredom. Now this area is popular with hikers being in the forest of Bowland and there were many resting their weary bones when we were there.
We drove through village after village stopping in Chipping for an icecream. Couldn't help but notice on one of the buildings the date of 1627 but the church looked even older. Some of the churches with Norman style towers date from the 11th century. Many of the villages are built on either side of a brook or stream so the road turns across the village bridge at right angles to the road and this is repeated on the other side.
In the eveining we had Rogan Josh with Neale and Gill. Got to see Warren briefly also.