Thursday 9th July 2026, 16:34
More of what made today special.
After chatting with Penny (Coffee Avenue) I went back to my room for a cup of tea and a bit of idle web surfing.
Then I resumed wandering around Ulverston. I need the exercise but I suspect that I also do it to give myself an excuse to say to myself that I have no time for the hobbies that require concentration.
I walked to the covered market and bought one of Rev. Coles' crime novels. I've never read them before and though I have no respect for religion I do enjoy Saturday Live so I thought I'd give one a go, after all it was only a pound.
The covered market has doors on both sides so for no particular reason I went out through the door that opens onto the street that has Costa at one end and The Old Bakehouse café in the middle. As I walked past the café I saw someone animatedly waving from a seat by the window, it was Sheila. So I went in and sat down with her and Dennis (I haven't been able to work out how they are related). She asked if I'd had lunch and I said no, she recommended that I join them. I don't normally eat lunch, in fact I normally don't visit that sort of café because it concentrates on hot food rather than cakes and so on. They had already ordered. The waitress came to ask what I wanted but I needed extra time. Eventually I settled on double egg and chips and a pot of tea. The eggs were a bit more cooked than I prefer but the chips were excellent.
So we had a long chat about all sorts of things. And it turns out I had walked past Dennis on my way along the coast path from the Priory. He said he hadn't realized it was me until I'd gone some distance away. It turns out that the path used to be a railway that was intended to go all the way from Ulverston to Barrow without having to climb any hills because the hill route meant adding an extra locomotive. But it came to nothing and was only used to get to the Priory and was last used in the early 1900s.
Once we had all finished our food Dennis got up to pay and Sheila handed him her credit card saying to pay for all of it with that. So I got lunch for nothing!
Sheila and I sat and chatted for a while. We got on to the subject of clothes, charity shops, fur coats, etc. She told me that a friend of hers inherited a fine mink from her aunt when the aunt was shot dead in the street by a friend who blamed her for her health problems! The stuff of a crime novel! I said she should write it up.
We returned to the subject of rights of way and the differences between both north and south of England and both with Norway. She said Dennis is an eco warrior and gave as an example a 'temporary' footpath closure on the site of a new housing estate. The temporary closure permit had expired and Dennis noticed that the path had not been cleared of debris and notices forbidding access were still in place. So he announced on his Facebook page that he was going to walk the path. Apparently a couple of dozen people turned up to do the same. They found it all but impassable but walked it nonetheless. The developers were, of course, displeased and applied to have the footpath closure saying that it was extended but failed to convince the relevant committee in part because Dennis and his volunteers cleared it of leftover building materials.
Then it was time for Sheila to go and she asked if I'd like her email address, of course I said yes. She has her own domain name!
