Day 59: More rain, more temples and Laurel and Hardy

Sorry to say goodbye to Conrad. The room was so comfortable I could happily have stayed another couple of nights but then my blog name would have had to be changed to Around the Coast in 86 days. Not quite the same vibe to it somehow.

He sent me off with a must see must do list....interestingly all well outside Barrow-in-Furness.

First stop was Walney Island. To get to it you cross a bridge from the docks and go through a 1940’s housing  development. Walney is a 10 mile long island reputedly the windiest in Britain. I can believe it, as it is like being on a sandbank with sea to the right of the road and a vast marsh flat to the left. Its famous for sea birds, Natterjack toads and grey seals. I saw birds and grey skies but no toads or seals.

I stood in the nature Reserve car park and could just see Piel Island with its Piel castle remains. It was originally built by the monks of Furness Abbey to protect their harbour from those pesky Scots. There were very few houses on the South part of the island as it was mostly agricultural and nature reserve. I saw lots of horses and this intriguing sign just off the road.

The road ended in the reserve, so Gloria and I wended our way back in the rain towards our next suggested stop Rampside lighthouse also known as The Needle. It’s in the little village of Rampside. It’s the only surviving of 13 such towers originally built around Barrow in the late 19^th century to guide ships into the town’s port. Its 66 foot tall.

Close by is this house with 12 chimneys. According to Google its Rampside Hall built in the 17^th century and the twelve chimneys have given it the nickname the Twelve Apostles.

The village Hall was advertising a market, so I went in expecting a kind of farmers market. Instead it was a regular weekly gathering of the residents for coffee and chat. There were a couple of stalls, one selling cards and one vegetables. The village community policewoman was there. Masses of locals were sitting at a long trestle table as someone was regaling them all with what was going on in the village over the next week or so, including a great idea – the whole street garage sale! 

No tea for me sadly but again another example of positive community spirit.

Taking the coast road again towards Ulverston I could not even see the sea – it was so far out.

Even in the driving rain what I could see was lovely. It would be a wonderful route in fine weather.

But by now the rain was so heavy I could hardly see in front of me.

Suddenly – about two miles from Ulverston a flash of gold at tree top level to the left. I had to investigate and found myself in yet another scared site – and it was another Buddhist one at that.

There are certain themes that seem to bump up against each other on this trip. Soldiers, writers and now temples.

This time, what a relief. Everything I had expected to experience at Samye Ling and sadly did not, I did feel here. The difference? I felt warmly welcome here. The Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Centre was about a modern expression of Buddhism that I could identify with.

The community were keen to engage with the random visitors, there was a shop and a cafe that was open and serving homemade soup and cakes and light meals.

Photos

The temple was open and you were allowed to take photos

I was invited to stay for a 15 minute meditation and I did and it was lovely. One of the women monks there was happy to answer all my curious questions about the community, what her robes represented and how the place and the residents functioned.

When the Buddhist community moved into Conishead Priory it had been empty for 4 years and was derelict. Now it is an international education centre for Buddhist studies. Today there are teachers here from all over the world including Brighton, doing in service training to take back to their own centres. The spiritual director here is a woman. I loved it.

Ulveston was a delightful little market town nearby with great individual shops and cobbled streets. 

And another kind of shrine...

Ulverston is home to the world famous Laurel and Hardy Museum.

This is Mark Greenhow whose granddad had an obsession – Laurel and Hardy memorabilia.

In 1960 a biography was published that stated the Stan Laurel had been born in Ulverston and the resulting tourists came flocking to the town searching for signs of their film hero. The locals said “Go and see Bill...”

Eventually all the hundreds of artifacts were housed in the old 1930’s cinema where it is today. It was opened by the comedy actor Jeffrey Holland who is touring the country with his one man show playing Stan Laurel.

What better place could Mark have found to run his grandfather’s museum? He has a shop, a cafe in front of which he shows black and white films on screen. The museum is a quirky little gem. People were loving it.

It’s been such a lovely day so far despite the awful weather. Thank you Conrad.

Last stop on your list

So why am I here?

a)     to visit an abbey?

b)     to see a rare breed farm?

c)     to eat sticky toffee pudding?

d)     for a loo stop?

e)     to check out another National Trust property?

D and C in that order.

Cartmel looks like a stage set village.

It has its own small but perfectly formed race course.

A priory ...

But most important of all...it is foodie heaven

Cheese...

A micro brewery...

And the world famous Sticky Toffee Pudding from the village shop cafe.

The pud was devised in Cartmel and sold in front of the shop more than 20 years ago. For fans they also make:

• Sticky ginger pudding
• Sticky chocolate pudding
• Sticky banana pudding
• Christmas pudding and 
• (for Beloved number one daughter) – Sticky toffee apple and rhubarb Crumble!

After that I didn’t need any supper when I rolled into Morecombe to stay with Susan in Bare. She tells me Bare is a village on the edge of Morecombe. I can’t see the join personally. Her house in a street of same looking 1950 houses is very different.

It looks as though it has been constructed of leftovers from all the ruined castles in Lancashire. It kind of has.

There was once a mansion at Rawtenstall that was wrecked by fire and auctioned off in the 1920’s. Two decorators from Morecombe bought a job lot and built this house using the original yellow sandstone, original windowsills and carved heads at the windows and doors. Fortunately inside it is modern and has 21^st century plumbing!

It had been raining all day. I am very damp. This lovely lady Susan has put a hot water bottle in my bed.

Night all.

Day 58: Eskerdalemuir, Lockabie and Barrow-in-Furness

Guess where I am?

 

Looks like Tibet doesn’t it?
Close. It’s Kagyu Samye Ling the Tibetan Monastery and Buddhist centre at Eskerdale in Dumfries. Brian told me about it as I left this morning. My friend Vin Rendle at Horne Farm spiritual Centre in Tunbridge Wells, has a connection to it too. It’s only about 25 miles from Dumfries so I went to see it for myself.

Unfortunately I could not go inside the temple as it was occupied by a private group on retreat, but normally visitors are welcome to visit and can walk round the peace garden at any time. There is also a small cafe and a shop. Again both the cafe and the shop were closed when I was visiting. So was reception and administration.

There are 45 prayer wheels containing millions of prayers that are gently turning day and night so that the prayers go out into the world 24/7 365 days of the year.

Set up in 1967 Samye Ling was the first Tibetan Buddhist centre to be established in the West. It' s currently under the guidance of Abbot Yeshe. They offer retreats and seminars, meditation and training in the Karma Kagya lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. It is also a centre for the preservation of Tibetan medicine, art and architecture.

 

I walked round the gardens and then since everything was closed went just down the road to the tiny village of Eskerdalemuir where there is The Old School Hub.

Housed in the Old School building and totally modernised, the building comprises a great community space including very good cafe where I had a roasted vegetable lasagne.

It can seat 80 for films, plays lectures or family parties, it can offer consulting rooms for complementary therapists and its open 52 weeks of the year.

Shame some of the other derelict buildings I have seen on my travels don’t take a leaf out of Eskerdalemuir’s book and get together, attract some lottery funding and do something similar. It must be a boom to local people when their nearest town is fifty miles away as it so often is in Scotland.

On the subject of nearby towns Lockerbie is on the way back to Dumfries so I drove there to get petrol but also to briefly visit the Memorial.

On December 21^st 1988 a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to Detroit was blown up by a terrorist bomb killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew. It came down over the town of Lockerbie killing 11 residents on the ground. Although Colonel Gaddafi of Libya claimed responsibility for the attack, only one man was ever imprisoned – Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. He died of cancer in May 2012 still protesting his innocence.

What to see and do in Dumfries?

The camera Obscura...

According to the website this was closed on Mondays. The website was partially right. The museum was open but the obscurer was not available because of poor weather conditions! That was a shame as it is the world’s oldest working Camera Obscura on the top floor of this windmill tower at Dumfries Museum.

So what is a camera obscurer? I think it uses mirrors to offer a complete 360 degree view of the surrounding landscape – in this case Dumfries – by projecting the images onto a focussing table. Its probably not dissimilar to using your ipad to project a photographic image onto your canvas so you can paint it accurately.

Talking of cameras, artists and accuracy, meet Stewart Morrison.

I met him on the bridge at Dumfries. I was scattering some of my mum’s ashes there as she loved having a go at painting and loved painting willow trees in particular. Stewart and I chatted about art and murals and painting in the rain,  and about the public who come up and chat to you about painting and art, and offering their often uninvited opinion on your work when you are working outside. I have painted lots of murals on the sides of buildings and stage sets. Neither of us has so far used a camera obscura or an ipad to create art.

If you are going to use a camera perhaps you should be a photographer rather than an artist? But that’s just my uninvited opinion. Lots of photos are art in their own right. 

Robert Burns has not quite finished with me it seems – nor JM Barrie whose birthplace I visited in Kirriemuir weeks ago near Falkirk. Both men are linked by having mothers who sang to them and told them stories throughout their childhoods in front of the fire in tiny cottages.

Both men lived in Dumfries.

This is the house where Robert Burns wrote some of his most famous works and eventually where he died at the young age of just 37, three days after drinking the waters in Brow Well in the hopes of curing his illness. He seems to have died of some kind of rheumatic heart condition unlikely to have been cured by “taking the water” no matter from where it came.

He left a widow and six children. Robert and his wife Jean are buried in Dumfries in a mausoleum St. Michael’s churchyard nearby.

How very odd that I knew absolutely nothing about Burns except that he was a Scottish writer until yesterday, and now I have seen where he was born, where he learnt to dance and speak and drink, where he lived, and where he died. In 24 hours I know enough about him to write a short book about the man or deliver a 90 minute lecture.

I did know a bit more about JM Barrie. The quote that has reverberated in my mind since visiting his birthplace, and hearing the story of his brother’s death from drowning as a young teenager, was when just after his brother had died, his mother grieving in her bedroom heard James coming past her door.

“Is that you?” she asked hopefully.

“No mother” replied James sorrowfully thinking she was referring to his dead brother. “It’s only me.”

How very sad.

His house Moat Brae is in George Street and it is suggested that the garden behind the house inspired his story of Peter Pan – not discounting the death of his brother – the boy who lived in Never Never land and would therefore never have to grow up.

There are ambitious plans afoot to turn Moat Brae into a magical house of children's’ literature. The trust involved has already raised £5.3 million of the £5.8 million they need to make the project a reality. You can read about it if you are interested on www.peterpanmoatbrae.org

Freya, beloved number two daughter, you need to get in touch with them for your ‘you know what’ in time for their opening celebrations! Look them up. Maybe you can work with Joanna Lumley as the number two. It would be ‘absolutely fab darling.’

Running out of time to get to Barrow in Furness which is another hundred miles away – and that’s on the motorway. So this is one time I have got it wrong and will have to come off the coast for a bit. The scenery through the Lake district was very similar to Scotland except that the white washed towns were now muted unadorned stone in grey and taupe.

At Kendal I stopped for a break and found Low Sizergh Barn, a farm shop complex that has got itself well sorted for visitors young and old. There are farm trails and  produce gardens . There is a raw milk machine

The owners have turned a wonderful three story barn into a marvellous delicatessen shop with food and gifts and a cafe with a whole wall viewing window into the milking shed so you can watch the cows being milked. They may be a part of nearby Sizergh Castle.

Even the seats in the cafe have cow cushions

When I eventually reached Barrow in Furness I was a little jarred as the red sandstone houses there were assertively red in comparison to those I have been looking at for the past fifteen days.

Some are Victorian and quite impressive.

Barrow has been a heavily industrial town, the centre of the ship building industry and iron and steel in the past. Today it is the home of BAE systems, a massive company that build nuclear submarines. 

My host Conrad was a delightful man who has converted a disused community centre into a really lovely contemporary single storey house. 

After a G and T and a heated debate about Brexit we were as comfortable as old friends.