Blackpool and The Lakes District

Blackpool Tower

This past weekend, we went to visit Susan's friend Jo, who lives near Lancaster in a town called Caton. Jo invited two other friends, Sonia and Hilary, to her place for the weekend as well. We went to Blackpool -- it was fun, though quite cheesy. Blackpool is a seaside resort town, somewhat like a gigantic Coney Island, complete with a gazillion streetlights, a huge lookout tower (which looks a bit like a mini Eiffel Tower), various amusement parks, casinos, horse and buggy rides, trolley cars, donkey rides on the beach, wax museum, Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum, etc. etc.

We took the train to Blackpool North, which we later discovered was really on the wrong end of town, because Jo bought us tickets to the amusement park called Pleasure Beach. It was a lovely, warm (for UK), sunny day and it was a rather nice stroll to the park. However, the plan was for us to go to an ice show in the park, so as we strolled along the beachfront promenade (which, unfortunately, was also under reconstruction), we suddenly found ourselves in a rush to get to the park and to the ice show on time!

Jo, Suze, Hilary & Sonia

Amazingly, after much confusion at the park entrance, we managed to get into the show (there wasn't really a cutoff for audience arrival anyway), running past some skaters about to take to the ice backstage and finding some seats. Really, there weren't any bad seats in the house. Although, the costumes for the ice show were a bit hideous and Susan and I were having fun laughing about the paltry budget the costume designer must've had.

Pepsi Max Big One!

After the show, we ventured off into the park to find some expectedly bad fast food and then went off to hit some rides. Jo's friend Hilary, explained to us that Blackpool is "famous" for it's "rock", by which we learned was actually rock candy, not mineral deposits found on the ground. We went to ride the Space Invaders 2 ride (like Space Mountain at Disney World) and while we were in line, Hilary and Jo went off to buy us all some rock. I was even more surprised to find out that the rock candy is really peppermint sticks with an outer coating of colored candy (my definition of "rock candy" is clumps of colored hard candy that looks like rocks). Some of them had "Pleasure Island" emblazoned into the middle of the peppermint stick. It was a nice treat, some of which I saved for an "after dinner mint" (to settle my tummy after my dinner of fish & chips that I ate while walking back to the train station that evening). Later, we enjoyed a couple rollercoasters, especially the Pepsi Max (TM) Big One, which sports a 235 ft. high hill and speeds up to 87 MPH! We rode the Big One at sunset so we had a lovely view of the sunset over the ocean from an extraordinary height! (although, it was a bit frightening, I admit).


Sunday, we went to Jo's family's farm in the village of Witherslack, which is in the Lakes District, for a huge Sunday roast dinner prepared by Jo's mother. The dinner was quintessentially British, complete with plenty of Yorkshire pudding, Brussels sprouts, potatoes and a custard pudding for dessert. Mind you, the word "pudding" is synonymous with "dessert" in England, unless it's Yorkshire pudding, blood pudding or probably a dozen other non-dessert puddings which I'm not yet privy to. A bit confusing to my American sensibilities, although the Kiwi finds it perfectly normal (mind you, her mother IS British).

Grooming Mr. Chips

Before dinner, we met Mr. Chips, Jo's horse and Jo employed me and Susan to help with grooming his mane and tail. After dinner, we took him out for a ride, along with two bikes they had at the farm which were, of course, both too big for my short little legs. Unfortunately, the one with the smaller frame had a rusted seat post that required a wrench to adjust, so I had to ride the bigger one with the adjustable seat. It was a bit excruciating after a huge Sunday roast dinner that Jo's mom cooked for us, since I had to double myself in half over my very full belly to reach the handle bars. Going up hills threatened to prompt a revisit with dinner, but luckily I managed to keep it all under control.

After a short while, Jo, gave up the reins to Susan and then later to me. I was a bit concerned about being able to ride Mr. Chips with my short little legs, and it's true that Jo put the stirrups on the shortest setting and they were just barely short enough.
Thankfully, Mr. Chips was very gracious about his new human riders and he heeded our inexpert commands very nicely. At one point, while Susan was riding, a car had come rather quickly around a blind curve and Mr. Chips stopped and remained quite calm when faced with the vehicle suddenly in his face. Thankfully, horse and car driver were quick to brake and there was no accident!


Soon, it was time to head back to the train station and to make a rather confusing journey back to Liverpool (trains weren't running in parts, so we had to take a bus instead). All in all, it was a good weekend.

More pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/BlackpoolLakesDistrict