The plan for last Saturday mostly revolved around Sarah and her netball tournament she was playing in, in deepest darkest Lancashire. As I grew up round there I thought it might be nice to take "Husband with a long list of jobs" and Oliver and show them a few places I remember going to when I was little.
Off we set, complete with a spare set of clothes (Ol gets very car sick), a bag of stale bread and some corn. We dropped Sarah off in Whalley and drove onwards to a tiny village just outside Clitheroe, called Downham. It's very quaint and forms part of Lord and Lady Clitheroe's estate. They have insisted that there are no overhead cables or satelite dishes and so it's been used for filming period dramas over the years.
This is the view from Downham over to Pendle Hill which is famous for the Pendle Witches. Every year at Hallowe'en there is a Witch Hunt and people gather on the hill (including lots of burger vans too) and see if they can find a witch or see one flying over the hill on a broomstick!
Downham is lovely and somewhere I would love to live. Through the centre of the village runs a tiny river which you can cross using a humpback bridge.
This is the view of the bridge with Pendle Hill again in the background.
This the view from the other side of the bridge where you can see back up through the village. If you look closely you notice that there aren't any overhead cables, telegraph poles, satelite dishes - how quaint!
This is a lovely picture of the church in Downham.
I have lots of fond memories wearing my little red wellies and paddling through the river and under the bridge, chasing some protesting duck with a handful of bread!
Now, I'm not sure what the story was but when we arrived at the bridge, the usually well duck stocked river was empty and instead we saw a pair of mallards wandering off through a field away from us! Not wishing to disappoint Ol (as we talked up the whole duck outing all morning) off we chased with armfuls of bread and corn until they realised that their Christmases had all come at once and back they came, quack quacking for more!
It did seem a shame that all that bread and corn was going to be shared between only 2 ducks so Husband with a long list of jobs decided that he knew somewhere else and better and only a few miles away where there would be ducks by the dozen.. And you know what... he was right!
We arrived in Sawley, another tiny village further away from Clitheroe and on the way to Bolton by Bowland. As you drive into Sawley there are ancient Abbey ruins. Sawley Abbey was an Abbey of Cistercian Monks from about the 12th century until the dissolution in the 16th century during the reign of Henry VIII. The abbey was used for filming in the third series of the The Tudors.
Sawley Abbey ruins.
The sun was shining and Ollie was itching for more ducks. There they were, all basking in the sunshine, about 100 ducks! They spotted the bag of bread and corn and were after us like a shot, even H had to pick up Ollie as they were trying to excitedly peck at his little fingers!
Wow, what a duck feeding frenzy we had!
To top it off we had a lovely lunch in the Spread Eagle pub on the corner and I'm sure Ol will agree that the sausages were just first class!
