After a week of overnight roadworks within earshot of our house - at least, when the bedroom window was open, which, of course, it had to be during the hot nights of August - we were glad our holiday destination was in the middle of nowhere, with only the sound of tawny owls to disturb our sleep.
Not that we were staying in the hotel; rather, the coach house from when this place was a private residence.
And very nice it was too, apart from there being a wasps' nest in the roof when we first arrived. There were acres of land to walk in, which was lovely for our collie, Cwtch, although she had to stay on the lead because there were lots of hares and rabbits already in residence, not to mention sheep and deer.
Even the fungi was on the decorative side:
The Hall is just a stone's throw from the pretty River Wyre, which flows into the Irish Sea at Fleetwood.
One day we walked up its opposite bank to the village of Dolphinholme, but mostly we viewed it from the grounds of the Hall.
To the east of our accommodation we could see the western edge of the Forest of Bowland, the same view that was always on the horizon when I was a student. It was in part these hills that made me want to come to Lancaster to study, as they reminded me a little of Dartmoor, but having no car back then, I never got to go up there.
So we did this time. Sadly, we couldn't go for a walk, as although it's access land, dogs aren't permitted, but I drove to the viewing point at Jubilee Tower, near Quernmore, from where we were at least able to get a closer look.
The jubilee in question was the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897.
Ward's Stone
Grit Fell
Clougha Pike
The more well-known names and landmarks were off to the west:
Looking up to Morecambe Bay and the Lake District
Heysham Power station, far right, and Lancaster University in the middle distance
The Lune estuary
Blackpool Tower, left of centre
Snowdonia in the far distance
One place I didn't revisit was the University of Lancaster campus, partly because dogs aren't allowed on site, but also because some things to do with that time are much more comfortably left in the past. I did, however, think it would be good to get to the horseshoe bend in the River Lune called Crook o' Lune, which was the name of the bar in our college, Lonsdale - this being in the original college buildings, which have now apparently been subsumed into neighbouring Bowland College, with Lonsdale rebuilt elsewhere. It was also a fond nickname for the then barman, John Allan, who wasn't averse to pouring a bottle of Crème de Menthe into the juke box when he wanted some peace and quiet, and was a bit of a legend.
The famous view beloved by John Ruskin and painted by J M W Turner was obscured by mist, which was a bit ironic.
We set off on a lovely flat path up the River Lune but the Northerner's knees were being particularly cantankerous and we had to turn back, the Crook eluding us on this occasion. I did find a magnificent pheasant tail feather, though, which conjured my grandmother. I wondered if it was the pheasant that was on one of her table mats when I was really small, before the era of the tin ones with their rather more arty scenes of London, but the memory was more tactile than that. Something about her maybe having a tail feather herself at some point, brought back from Scotland by my Auntie Peggy is ringing a distant bell ... or maybe I'm making it up, I can't be sure.
And pleasingly, if unexpectedly, we encountered one of Carol Ann Duffy's Pendle Witch poems, marking a stop on the route the prisoners took from the Pendle area to Lancaster Castle, where they were tried and hanged.
A holiday Cwtch
Some holiday feathers:
magpie feather from the Wordsworths' garden, crow, jay, pheasant, kestrel, buzzard, tawny owl, mallard, curlew, oystercatcher, song thrush, mistle thrush
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