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| Sally, Sue (friends from Primary School), me and Birthday Boy, Brian - Mad Hatters all! |
Our good friend, Brian, had a special birthday recently – a fine excuse to return to one of my favourite hotels – The Midland in Morecambe. With its backdrop of wide horizons across the bay to the Lake District. With its ever-changing skies with scudding clouds, sudden acres of blue and plentiful “god rays” revealing sea spouts and turbulent weather in the distance. We didn’t get rained on which was a blessing and we could marvel at the cry of the gulls, the salty spray and the great pleasures of spending time with amici sympatici (sympathetic friends.)
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| Blowing away the cobwebs and putting the world to rights.... |
I’ve blogged about this place before (here and here) but it has never failed to impress with its art deco features, Eric Gill sculptures inside and out and atmospheric setting, perfect for film companies to exploit (as indeed they have, often for mystery thrillers – Poirot and The Bay both filmed here.)
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| The Midland Hotel in Morecambe |
Over dinner, breakfast (and tea in Heysham at the Mad Hatter’s Café!) we put the world to rights talking about our lives, the universe and everything in between. Needless to say the quality of the food at The Midland is very high with sea food an obvious speciality, given the location.
Walking along the wide promenade to Heysham is a must on visits to The Midland where St Peter’s Church and St Patrick’s chapel are dramatically sited to inspire a sense of History and awe. St Peter’s was consecrated in 967 CE but there is archaeological evidence of an earlier wooden church. My favourite item inside the church is a Viking hogback stone portraying the legends of Sigmund and Sigurd.
St Patrick’s chapel on the promontory above St Peter’s is well worth the extra climb. Looked after by the National Trust, its most significant feature is the presence of rock cut graves, probably ossuaries to hold bones, but historical speculation will no doubt continue about these mysterious “coffins,” particularly since further excavation in 1993 revealed over a thousand artefacts left by a hunter-gatherer group from about 1000 BCE. The area has been preserved from development for a future research dig.
The other “must-do” activity in Morecambe is to pay tribute to Eric Morecambe’s statue by Graham Ibbetson; and take the obligatory photograph before winding through the northern countryside back through Lancashire and into the North Yorkshire moors, stopping, naturally, at Ribblehead for a final treat of Victorian engineering….
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| Graham Ibbetson's statue of Eric Morecambe and the stunning Ribblehead Viaduct |
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