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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.143.133.40
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - 12:47 pm:   

I've just had three days here -
http://www.northumberland-cam.com/goswick-sands/
I've been before lots of times and it's most odd. The beach is like a desert (the sea only comes in a couple of times a year) and at dusk it has the strangest atmosphere. It was used for military testing in the forties and there's a tower there the army watched the bombs from. This week we found another tower further along - it had a deep cellar that was hard to get into, but peering inside we saw on the wall last week's date had been written in charcoal, and the name Olly.
Time stands still in the whole place, and it's one of the few places I know to feel thoroughly lost in, that the last time you were there is still happening and that you continue it when you revisit it.
I suppose I don't have to add that it's a massive boost to the imagination every time I go there.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.24.131
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - 12:49 pm:   

Very Jamesian.

I was walking the Sandsend Way yesterday: very spooky. Old quarry mines and a disused railway.

The north east is rich for our fiction!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.143.133.40
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - 01:00 pm:   

It is!
And last week we went to the lakes, on the last night camping at Ulverston, arriving too late to do anything but notice a strange cliff like a plateau rising up over the bushes in the distance. Next day we had to get away sharp and so I got up soon to explore the place.
I couldn't reach the cliff. The sun was behind it making it look pitch black, and there was a narrow river running along the bottom. There were the spires of factories and the black mouth of a canal tunnel in a shadowy bank. I walked through a field and a farm then found a house opposite a wood. It was quite large and about 70-80 years old I'd say. It had antlers above the door and had the name 'Paradise House.' I have to say it made my mind go doolally with ideas and I stared at it for ages (the owners asleep inside, I presumed). At the end of the road was just an edge, and brightness, and when I reached it I found what the plateau had been hiding - Morecambe bay, nothing but silver and whiteness, almost painful to look at. It felt almost like some religious experience, to be honest.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.143.133.40
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - 01:03 pm:   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/features/curious_cumbria/curious_cumbria_ulverston_ man.shtml
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.143.133.40
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - 01:20 pm:   

Sigh - Ulverston was one of the more magical places I've ever visited, and yet if you look on the net it has all the interest of a supermarket petrol station.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.68
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - 03:21 pm:   

Nowhere lived in by both Stan Laurel and Bob Shaw can be bad!
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.68
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - 03:23 pm:   

"This week we found another tower further along - it had a deep cellar that was hard to get into, but peering inside we saw on the wall last week's date had been written in charcoal, and the name Olly."

Maybe he wanted you to give Stan a message in Ulverston...
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.183.221
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 - 06:14 pm:   

Both times I've been to Ulverston I wasn't overly impressed, but it's in a nice area and worth a visit, particularly now they've moved the Laurel & Hardy museum to the theatre.

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