Steam to Howarth with John and Betty

This blog is completely out of sequence. John and Betty visited us ages ago. I'm not really sure why this visit wasn't blogged three weeks ago. I had a great time ... trains are very big and I can see them easily  ... they also move in a very predictable way around their world.

 Never mind what Betty and Chris were interested in, John and I wanted to go on the old K&WVR.

 In Keighley we ought to have gone to the Timothy Taylor's pub up that ramp and turn left, but there were lots of railway things to look at in the visitor centres (note the plural).

 And to my utter astonishment in one of the visitor centres I see a station sign for the grubbiest little nonentity of a station to stink of town gas - Oldham Central. Though perhaps it was slightly better than the other Oldham competitor stations, like the one named after a disease, Mumps Bridge FGS.

 Now don't let it be said we boys did not think of the literary interests of our partners. We did visit Howarth, by car as there is no way I was walking up that bloody hill from Howarth not-central to the top of the town (it's obligatory now to hum Dvorak's New World Symphony whilst thinking of processed bread as you toil up the incline). Pub quiz question: which are the other two sites used in the ad. series? In fact back in the 1960s I was on Belmont St. Oldham and a smart young woman (a bit of a rarity in Oldham in any event) asked me if there were any other steep hills with roads metalled in sets around the place, and as it happens I mentioned a few.
So we did visit the newly refurbished parsonage, outside of which Chris and I first met on a sunny July Sunday in 1995. She was solving the Guardian crossword, sat on a grassy knoll of the car park.
I've visited the parsonage a few times and find it an un-nerving place. Too much of death and unfulfilled promise.
John is, I think, pointing out how many rather nice pubs there are at the top of the town, because, dear reader, opposite the station he had the misfortune to step into the Royal Oak Inn. What a dive of a pub. I knew it would be bad as I stepped over last night's broken glasses outside. A great dog lunged at John from out of the 'kitchen' as the publican bellowed "We don't do food". Very Wuthering Heights.