Accrington and surrounds

Tripe and Black Pudding stall in Accrington market





This travelling messes with my head. I keep having to remind myself that I'm in England although I only have to step outside the door to notice it is much cooler than life was 4 days ago. The drab colours of this working class town are also so contrasting to home. Nature is trying to get on with Spring; bulbs are bursting through the soil in splashes of white, purple, blue and, of course, yellow for daffodils. The trees, however, are still sleeping.
Accrington was a cotton and steel town built on the sides of the valley with the stream running through to turn the water wheels for the factories. Now, the mills are closed and I can't imagine what employment opportunites there are here and in many of the northern towns, since the mill closures. Chimney stacks sit idle. The market stalls are emptying out and there seems to be a majority of elderly people in the streets.
This town and its neighbouring towns are built predominantly from the same stone. The council has restored some of the rows of houses like the row Jemma Bradford lives in in Princess Street but other streets show decided neglect which possibly show a levels of dependancy on Government to provide. However, given the demise of industry, poverty or lack of paying capacity are the most likely explanations. The cleaned stone is a light yellow ochre colour and looks lovely and bright. There is a lot of demoliton and rebuilding going on.
We have our Wensleydale cheese sitting on the window sill which is as good as a fridge. Wallace and Grommit would be pleased we are sampling the wares. Getting used to the local greeting “orright?” which is a lot shorter than “g'day mate, how're ya goin'?”.
We are picking up a hire car today so we can take Nan out for three days.
0703: Yesterday the sun came out just after I'd taken some photos . It is amazing the difference a bit of sun makes to brighten things up. We had fish and chips from the local Chippy last night buying only two portions of chips for three people but we could only eat half the huge quantity of chips unlike the miserly portions at home.
Tarrar!!!