We had decided that today would be witch day. Nearby is Pendleton, where legend has it the Witches of Pendle lived. In this very small village lives a small shop that sells Pendle witch dolls. We have been to this place over the years and today it was time to buy 6 more witches. Oh, by the way, these are good witches. And, when you see them, you will truly believe. Each one is different and has different expressions. We have two hanging in our kitchen in Florida for good luck. They guard your door.
Drop in for a spell.
A black cat across the street, just hanging out. How appropriate.
After taking care of this "must", we drove about 30 minutes over to Skipton for proper fish and chips. It took longer than I thought to get there, but it was certainly worth it. We all had fish and chips. Everyone but me had mushy peas, I had cole slaw. Along with a bitter, it was a great lunch.
The restaurant site downtown sits beside a canal with house boats and others passing by.
Back home we did some more nattering, some TV, and appetizers with Jill and I drinking vodka. She mixes hers with lime juice and English lemonade, which is close to Sprite. I prepared slices of roast beef wrapped around cornichons.
We watched a BBC documentary on English immigration. Jim immediately had a problem with it. He called it propaganda. At first Linda and I thought it was well done. They interviewed and followed four immigrants and were trying to answer the question: are immigrants a drain or a benefit to England. As we watched and talked about it, we realized that the interviewees were not a cross-section of immigrants. They were specially picked to make the immigrant picture look good. We ended up agreeing with Jill and Jim.
Thursday - Our flight today wasn't until 6:30, so we asked Jim to take us down to his fishing hole. He was thrilled to show us his place. Its about 1/4 mile down the road and through some shrubs and grasses, down a trail to the Lodge. Remember, a Lodge is a pond that was once used for the mill. This mill is long gone, and the fishing rights are owned by a fishing club. There are these concert platforms, just big enough to put a fold up chair on and some of your gear. Jim will come down about 4:00 in the afternoon and stay until dark (8:00 or 9:00). Its very solitary. And, the English catch and release, so they don't bring any messy fish back home to moma.
The Lodge is in a beautiful, peaceful setting.
This is how the fishing is done. It was midday, so not much activity.
Bait - these are different colored maggots and nuggets of something. The fisherman puts these into a feeder hooked to the line and it attracts the fish. Sometimes they throw them out like chum.
We walked around part of it and then onto a paved, walking path that used to be the train railway through Padiham, back to the house. We came upon some environmental volunteers who were clearing brush and helping restore otter homes even though Jim told us that otters kill fish but only eat the liver and heart and leave the rest to rot. Go figure.
For lunch, we drove down the road a little on the other side of Padiham, past Jill's old house where Linda first visited in 1963. Jill's didn't have a car then.
Then, onto the Roaming Rooster. They had never been to it before, but had been told it was good. So, we decided to investigate.
Sitting up above the road a bit with a view of the valley below, Jill and I had bangers and mash, Linda had lamb liver and mash, and Jim had gammon (ham) steak and eggs. Nice place with good looking waitresses. They advertised fresh ingredients, and sure enough, when we went to the rear of the restaurant to the toilets, we could see through a glass partition, a very large sow feeding a bunch of piglets. Future bangers.
Attached beside the restaurant was a food market selling eggs, produce and some canned goods.
One of Jim's flower pot. One of many.
We drove back to the house, had a short rest, said our goodbyes, and headed for Manchester airport. An Englishman and a gentleman in his garden.
We were a bit early, but had heard horror stories about traffic jams on M60. I had not put in the proper address for the airport, so Linda spent most of the time trying to get the Tom-Tom to help us. But, the English know how to put up signs and we had no trouble getting to the airport terminals. The problem was getting to the rental return village. I take back my comment about the English signs. I found a gas station right away, but after that, it was up one road and back over to another and around a round-about and around and around until I finally saw the rental return sign behind another one. I even got honked at.
Onto the bus and over to Terminal One. We had two carry-ons and our boarding passes, so we went straight to security. Now the fun started. Manchester has implemented a new computer system that uses some kind of automated scanning in addition to the human sitting at the screen. When your bag comes out of the x-ray tunnel, if the computer is not happy, a lever shoves your bag over to the side for a special looksey. Well, two of our three plastic trays got the special treatment. Linda's pink bag and her purse. My bag made it through.
So, the next step is to move down to the end and wait for one woman to hand investigate your bag after she examines the three that are in front of you. Once its our turn, she tells us that we can only have one plastic bag full of liquids or liquid-like stuff per person.
Well, we had never heard of that rule and we had several tinctures, creams, ointments, makeup, and lotions. The examiner dumps everything in our special containers out into the plastic trays and then examines our underwear. She wants me to tell her what I want to keep and what I want to discard. I say nothing. Let's just go back to the Easyjet counter and check our bags. She says, "oh, ok". We repack and get special permission to leave the area. We have to be unregistered so we will be able to get back.
When we arrive at the Easyjet counter, the young lady tells us we may have to pay. But, as it turns out, after checking, she says today is not a pay day. How that works I don't know, but I'm not complaining.
Then its back in line for security. Now, all we have are our two backpacks. The line moves along, and coming out of the tunnel, Linda's bag takes another detour while mine goes straight ahead. We had both already looked for anything else in her bag that might be trouble. We are now into about 60 minutes of this security stuff. There is a long line of diverted bags and we call attention to our bag to the same woman who searched it before. She picked it out of the line and started searching it again. One group complained that she was taking us out of order, but she told them she had worked with us before. We told them we had been there an hour and they started empathizing.
No problem, she takes the bag back to the x-ray machine and it fails for the 3rd time. Linda has been laughing up to this point, but she's not laughing anymore. A second examiner comes up to help and finds a zippered compartment with a tincture in it that we had forgotten about. That tincture has been through security at least 3 times in the past month and a half. Finally, success - in the plastic bag, through the x-ray and low and behold, it comes straight out and we say goodbye.
After all that, we still have about 40 minutes before our gate is scheduled to close. Thank goodness we didn't do our regular thing and cut our time short. A coffee, some water and just sit and wait. The gate checkin is extremely slow because there is only one staffer and many people are showing up with carry-ons and there is no space left.
We pull away from the gate about 1/2 hour late. The captain comes out into the cabin just before pulling out to tell us there was a mixup with the ground crew and please don't take out any frustrations with the plane crew. He promised to try and make up the time on our short one hour flight to Amsterdam. He actually said that he would try and take some shortcuts. Who knows what that means, but it worked.
We are sitting next to a young man who lives in Amsterdam but travels to England frequently. He gives us some pointers about going to Haarlem and the beaches since the weather is supposed to get hot in the next few days.
We arrive at Schipol just a few minutes late. I don't know how the captain did it, but I thanked him as we left the plane. He found the shortcuts. Walk, walk, walk to passport control, then pick up the bags and catch the train to Utrecht. About 15 minutes later we were on the rails. Then at Utrecht, we changed to the Soestdijk train and walked in the door just about 12:00. What a day!!
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