dear diary ~ an unexpected adventure

I am all for an adventure, unexpected or planned.

On Wednesday, I found myself unexpectedly on a bus to Burnley 45 miles away from home.

DH has had many issues with his car recently, he is trying to keep it going longer, one repair after another. He will grieve for this car when it finally has to go, but as long as it keeps moving it will have a reprieve.

Recently, it had a major breakdown when the clutch went. (with a bang). Considering it is 12 years old and has done 175,000 miles he is, we are told by those that know, very light on the clutch and it should have normally required replacing around the 100,000 mark.

The clutch was replaced and this week it went back to the same garage for a service and MOT (passed, thankfully) and all should have been well.

Well, not really….’well’ is not how I would describe the car after having been ‘worked on’ now since the February half term school holidays, when it broke down. The issue now was with the suspension (as it usually is). It is a Citroen that has the special suspension quite similar to a Rolls Royce without the price tag. Not all Citroen cars have this – I don’t think they make new ones in the same way, but it is an older model and rather than shock absorbers it has spheres.

These spheres are quite a mystery to anyone other than a Citroen specialist and one that knows these older cars. The suspension had not been adjusted by the garage who fitted the clutch, and it had left the car completely unbalanced and going clunk over the slightest bump and with the front end up in the air. Citroens rest when you turn the engine off and look like they are deflating, a bit like a rise and fall lamp.

So you may have guessed already that our trusty Citroen sphere specialist is away over the hill in Hapton, near Burnley, but he is an absolute magician and sorts it all out for us and once again we are able to glide over speed bumps, manholes and potholes.

Whilst the mechanic attended to our car, we went off to explore. Hapton is no more than a village with only a corner shop and a chinese takeaway, so we decided to go into Burnley about 2 miles away as the crow flies. We tried the local train station first, but the ticket machine and timetable on the platform were in some strange language that we could not master and being an unmanned station, we gave up on that idea.

‘Let’s try the bus’ I suggested.

We popped into the only local shop and asked about a bus. They directed us to the bus stop and luckily there were a few people waiting who couldn’t have been more helpful about the journey and the ticket price. It was the journey from hell though for me, I get very travel sick on buses and often have to get off, wait awhile, then get on the next one. Thankfully, I managed to complete the 30 minute journey in one go. For most of it, the bus route was trundling around local outlying estates en route to Burnley, which felt like we were in a bit of a maze.

I sent my daughter’s a picture of us on the bus and a message saying ‘we are on a bus to Burnley’….they thought it was an hilarious April Fool’s day joke!

Burnley is a lovely clean town and although the population is only 94,000 against Huddersfield’s 162,000 it has far more shops in the town centre. They still have a Marks and Sparks – so we dived in there for a much needed drink and a slice of toast. I wandered around the clothes for a while. DH bought himself one of those flexible woven belts and a lovely eau-de-nil tee-shirt. I need trousers, but I am not overkeen on these new look wide leg ones – all that fabric flapping about my legs. I am not convinced they are a style that suits everyone, I have long legs but even I would find some of them over the top, and I don’t think they would make good gardening trousers afterwards. The fashion world like to change things about to generate more sales and by changing a shape from slim to wide, long to short, frilly to plain and tailored is the best way to do it.

We had a mooch around the centre and then before we knew it the car was done and we had to catch the bus back to collect it.

We had packed up a flask of soup and looked on Google maps for somewhere nearby to eat our picnic lunch and found that Gawthorpe Hall was only in Padiham, in fact we had passed it on the bus. It is run by both the National Trust and the local council and is well worth a visit. I have one or two photos of interest below. The history for anyone wanting more information can be found on Wikepedia. Being developed from a former tower around 1600 in the Elizabethan era, it is very old but well cared for with beautifully ornate ceilings and wooden panelling. The guides in the rooms are well worth talking to for their knowledge of both the house and its contents.

Everything is catalogued with these simple little tickets.

We were very tired by the time we came away at teatime and managed to get caught up in the M62 crush on the way home so it was a quick meal of baked potatoes, cheese and beans for our evening meal, and an early night after our adventurous day.

Have a lovely day, thank you for reading. x