The assault - postponed

The first days was a wash out so the attempt on High Street was postponed. I decided we should drive over the other side of the fells and see what there was to see in the south west corner of the area. Normally we drove past this area in a our treks to Cockermouth or the hills proper. We went to Ravenglass first. Ravenglass is a port used by the Romans to export lead and iron ore from the Cumbrian hills. A very long time later [1875] a narrow gauge railway was built to run from the port to the foot of the hills inland at Boot. The locals call the railway "lal ratty" [Little rattler] but posh folk called the Ravenglass and Eskdale railway. It is run by volunteers. It takes you up the valley to Eskdale. A pretty run although we did not take the trip this time. We had a walk round the village of Ravenglass instead. As a Roman settlement H was excited to see a bit a roman remains. As it happens they have some large parts of walls from the Bath room. The West Coast railway chopped off a good corner of the fort site so the fort site is just a partial earthwork. Incidentally there is a full size railway station serving the Cumbrian coast so you can get off the full size train and get on the lal ratty by walking across the bridge.

Ravenglass is at the top of a protected estuary. The tide was out when we were there. It has a desolate beauty. The main street is wide and lined with well built house whose name illustrate their former uses, The Old Custom House, the Post Office etc. They are all Regency period which must have been the towns heyday. If you walk down the main street you can walk straight onto the foreshore and into the sea. It is no wonder the houses and well built, the houses on the right of the main street have no back gardens just small yards which back straight onto the foreshore.
















We sat on a bench overlooking the view and had our packed lunch. Ravenglass is so remote the adjacent dunes are used for test firing ordnance. There are big notice boards just outside the town saying not to pick anything up and to watch out for firing days indicated by the red flags. No flags when we were there just the Oyster Catchers, the rain and us.

Ravenglass did not fill our day so we picked another town we had not been to, Millom.

We trundled along the coast. Found Millom, took a stroll around the town and got back in the car. Ten minutes total. Millom was a mining town. The mines closed in the early 1900's and the town has not really recovered. There is nothing of note in the town except the sign post to the next village, Haverigg. On the way out of town we saw a sign to the air museum. I thought I knew the museums around Cumbria. We followed the signs and eventually pitched up at the back an industrial estate outside Millom. The museum could have been an air frame scrap yard. It was run by a over enthusiastic ex RAF regiment bloke and a teenage girl. It was teeming down. It looked as though it probably rained a lot in this part of the estate. The industrial unit was crammed with bits of planes and aero engines from the second world war up to the 60's. German rotary engine, Merlin engines, Russian engines, early jet engines in various states of repair from redundant jet engines to engines recovered from crash site and there a quite a few crash sites round Cumbria. It was a training area in WWII. Haverigg had an airfield hence the loose association. The airfield now houses HMP Haverigg. Having escaped the clutches of our weird host who, from the volume he spoke at, must have spent quite a bit of time too close to jet engines whilst they were running.

We got off the estate and followed the signs from Haverigg proper. That too is an odd place. It seems to exist because the prison is there and airfield was there before it. We parked a small car park by the seafront. There is no prom at Haverigg just the car park, a toilet block and a little cafe. A couple of local yoofs were hanging round the car park trying to be menacing and cool at the same time but being upstaged by a family enjoying their holiday by arguing who was to sit where in the car and the little prince [the chubby grandson] kicking up a fuss because he could not have some small sweet delicacy. We went over to the cafe and sat and watched as the three generations squeezed themselves into the car. It was like watching a flock of Geese settling down to roost. The cafe was all sticky table tops and more deaf people talking really loud about nothing. We chanced a brew, weak and warm but only 60p. You get what you pay for but the floor show was free. We went for a walk to find to high spots of Haverigg. The high spots are the sand dunes and the Duddon Estuary. Very stark and beautiful. Click HERE for a satellite view of the area. It was still low tide so square mile after square mile of sand was on show. The most exiting aspect was a couple of blokes fettling a boat beached on the foreshore and all the different colours of broken glass glinting in the sand with air suffused with aroma of dog poo baking in the sun.

With a mixture of disappointment at the area beautiful had so little going for it and so little chance of opportunity and bemusement at the surrealness what we had seen, we headed back to Deepdale.

We had diner at the White Lion in Patterdale. Portion big enough to choke a horse washed down with a few pints of Guinness then early to bed in readiness for the assault on breakfast and High Street if the weather is something like.