🎶 Bring Me Sunshine In Your Smile 🎶

After we had our breakfast in the hotel with our friends on the Friday morning, we wished them farewell and a safe journey back to their home in Scotland. Although we do frequently keep in touch, via text and video chats, we had not physically seen them for some time, so it had been nice to meet up with them once again and have a proper ‘Face Time’ catch up.

As I mentioned in my last ramble, we had decided for our last full day to drive the short distance, all of ten minutes from Lancaster, to the small seaside resort of Morecombe, which is famous for being the birth place of one part of the legendary comedy double act that was ‘Morecombe and Wise’.

I do not know how famous, Internationally speaking, that the comedians ‘Morecombe and Wise’ were, but in the UK, especially with people from a certain era, myself included, they were truly comedy legends. Their real names were Eric Bartholomew and Ernest Wiseman, but after a less than successful start to their comedy act using their real names, they changed the name of their act, Eric took the name of his home town of ‘Morecombe’ and Ernest, from Leeds, shortened his first and last name and for some reason it worked 🤷‍♂️ However, sadly, they have now both passed away.

The ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecast another chilly but sunny start to the day, with temperatures once again warming up nicely as the day went on. I have to say once again that so far we had been really lucky with the warm weather on this trip, on some days it had been hotter here in the UK than across in Spain, but we also knew how blustery coastal locations can get, so we took our lightweight rain jackets, more for protection from the wind than from any prospect of seeing any of the wet stuff. I guess I should also just mention here that we had also been lucky for another reason, now whether it was the responsibility of our own ‘Dark Forces’ that tend to stalk us quite regularly, or some other dark and sinister force, but it seems that we had timed our trip well, as back in Spain, as well as some parts of Portugal and Southern France, their had been a major power outage bringing all of Spain to a virtual standstill, Transport, Banking Institutions, Retailers and, with no electrical power the water pumping stations could not function either, so no electricity and no domestic water for anyone 😲 The Spanish Government were conducting an investigation into the cause of this major outage to its critical infrastructures but had quickly issued a statement ruling out a ‘Cyber Attack’, so what were they not telling us 🤔 Within the next twenty-four hours the majority of the country had its power and water supplies restored. So how lucky where we to have been in the UK when this had happened and had managed to escape becoming victims of such a major inconvenience 🤔 I must admit, Shazza and I mused over the fact that we were still waiting for the third ambush from our own ‘Dark Forces’, but surely they couldn’t be responsible for this, could they ? If it was, then we would have outfoxed them yet again and they would not be happy, so we had better continue to remain extremely vigilant.

Anyway, we parked up in an inexpensive ‘Pay and Display’ car park, right opposite the seafront promenade but some way outside the main part of the town, around about a forty-five minute walk which would provide us with ample opportunity to get some more much needed exercise, Shazza informed me that we had done over 17,000 steps the previous day, which to be honest didn’t mean much to me, my legs had told me all I needed to know 😮‍💨 We had timed our arrival just right as the tide was in, if we hadn’t we would have required to look through binoculars to see it, as the British tides mean that when the sea recedes it goes out for miles. The beach areas outside of the town were mainly pebbles with rocky outcrops, which were always good fun for children going rock-pooling and, there was also a natural sea water swimming pool, but a bit too cold for a dip just at the moment 🥶 Not that we had brought our ‘swimmers’ with us and I certainly wasn’t going to go ‘Skinny Dipping’, we leave that sort of thing to the French 🤭 We were both quite pleasantly surprised as we got closer to the main town seafront, as we discovered a long stretch of golden sandy beach which we imagined would be full during the much warmer Summer holiday periods.

Shazza and I hadn’t known what to expect from this small seaside town on the Lancashire coast. It certainly didn’t have much of the glitz that its much more famous neighbour commanded, but actually we found ourselves rather liking it. We found the seafront very clean and tidy, their were a handful of hotels and traditional ‘Bed & Breakfast’ establishments, Ice cream parlours, fish ‘n’ chip shops, Cafe’s, Tourist Tat shops, but they were not ‘in your face’, as in many of the larger more popular seaside resorts, no, Morecombe had a sort of rustic olde worldly sort of charm to it. The public garden areas that lined parts of the promenade were kept immaculate, very neat and tidy with flower beds strewn with colourful shrubs and flowers, which enhanced the sort of yester-year feel about it. After our longish walk into the main area of the town’s seafront we found a small ‘Costa Coffee’ and went in and grabbed a couple of medium sized Latte’s, although we soon discovered that there was nothing yester-year about the prices here 😲

Behind the charming seafront though it was a very different story, apart from a very large and modern ‘Morrisons Supermarket’, there was a lot of empty shops, with graffiti now scrawled all over them, the town had certainly seen better days but now looked impoverished and a bit sad, but that said, the people that we spoke to were friendly enough and engaged in the usual pleasantries, when prompted of course. We had been a bit mischievous, greeting people we met with a smile and, “Buenas Dias”, but they all responded with a smile in return and said “Hello” back to us, we were the one’s who were quite amazed, we hadn’t anticipated people in this Northern English town understanding Spanish, although it may have been because it had a Yorkshire accentuation to it 😂

Shazza and I quite liked the feel of the place, of course there was the sea, that always got a deserved a tick in the box from us, although it was more of a muddy brown colour rather than our more normal Mediterranean Blue, but it sounded just the same as it washed over the beach and pebbles and so, if we shut our eyes, with the warm sunshine on our faces, well we could have been on any beach in any part of the world really 🤷‍♂️ Across the estuary were the lush green mountains of the nearby Lake District, and it had a long promenade so a good source of daily exercise potential if you wanted it. Morecombe may not have had much in the way of retail therapy opportunities, but certainly more than enough to suffice for one’s daily needs and, with Lancaster being a short car journey, bus ride or even train journey away, and yes it did have it’s own rail station, so it was not difficult to get to a full range of retail therapy outlets. We both concluded that Morecombe could actually be an ideal location for those of a fit, mobile and otherwise healthy disposition, people of say a certain age, to while away one’s senior year’s 🤭 But, for now at least, we were not looking for an alternative retirement location to the one we were currently enjoying, no, we were just exploring yet another one of the many places that we had never visited before and subsequently ticking it off our ‘To Do List’, albeit, until now, Morecombe had never appeared on any such list 😂

Now of course, as mentioned earlier in this ramble, the town had a famous son, and so it was only right and proper that it would have erected an appropriate statue in his honour,and so, no visit to Morecombe would be complete without seeking it out.

As I am sure you can imagine, there must be hundreds of locals, and visitor’s alike, who have stood next to this brass iconic statue and had their photographs taken, many simulating the now famous pose. To be honest, personally speaking, I think it would have been a little ‘cheesy’ and lacking of any personal finesse to have had a photograph taken in such a manner myself, ………………….but hey, you have read my rambles for long enough by now, to know that I don’t possess any personal finesse and actually, I do ‘cheesy’ poses next to bronze statues very well I will have you know 😂

As we wandered back along the promenade we both found ourselves singing the famous song, sung at the end of each one of the duo’s weekly comedy TV programmes and strangely enough, it was one of the songs that I used to sing regularly, come rain or shine, when I was sat on the tractor doing my daily morning ‘bin emptying runs’ when we both used to work as Campsite Wardens, fortunately I was wearing ear defenders so most of the time I pretended that I couldn’t hear the abuse from the camper’s as I drove past their caravan pitches. “What did you do with the money ?” One camper had shouted out to me, “What money ?” I responded, “The money your mother gave you for singing lessons”, ‘cheeky blighter I thought to myself, so I drove on, singing even louder over the noise of the tractor engine 😂😂

🎶 Bring me sunshine in your smile, Bring me laughter all the while,

In this world where we live there should be more happiness,

So much joy you can give to each brand new bright tomorrow.

Make me happy, through the year’s, Never bring me any tears,

Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above,

Bring me fun,

Bring me sunshine,

Bring me Love 🎶

The tide had already started to recede, so our view from the promenade back to the car was of just mud and marshland, “We have just completed 10,000 steps”, Shazza announced as we arrived back at the car, “Just another 7,001 then, to beat yesterdays tally” I said with a smile and a wink, her response was not suitable to put in print in this ramble 😂

We went for breakfast on our final morning before checking out of the hotel and then we commenced our journey back to Shazza’s mums in South Yorkshire, it was another sunny morning and, although another chilly start, at least we had the warmth from the car heater until the sun shining through the windows warmed it up enough to turn it off. Shazza had elected to drive yet again, although I had assured her that my eye issue appeared to be a lot better now and I was happy to take a stint behind the wheel. Whatever had caused the inflammation seemed to have been cleared up with the eye-drops that I had been religiously administering since leaving home, however, she said that she was happy to drive. I was more than happy as it meant that I could once again enjoy looking out of the windows at the wonderfully scenic views and, although it was the same route back, the views from the other side of the road were different.

So, in our first two weeks of being back here in the UK, all of our family and friend’s visitations had been completed, except of course the return visit to our Grandaughter’s on our way back to the ferry in a little over a week’s time. However, before then we still had a few things left to do, but I will leave them for a future ramble 😉

Our journey continues………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena