Just some pics from the day….and more pics here.
A grand day out Grommit!
My adventures with walking, backpacking, running (hobbling?), cycling, amateur radio, traditional folk music and song...and loads of other stuff.
An email from the Long Suffering Rick gently hinted that a Curry Walk was overdue. I fired off emails to those well known Curry Walk aficionados, Martin & Alan. Alan was predictably enthusiastic, Martin was willing but the flesh it was weak – a particularly painful back problem meant he was virtually immobile. The decision was taken: we’d do the walk and eat Martin’s curry for him. Oh, and drink his beer at the end.
My old friend John had been cajoled into joining us. He’s not that old really, but he does enjoy a curry. And a walk. He’s quite partial to a few decent beers too.
Rick planned the route, it was his fault turn. A tram ride from Timperley whisked us up to our rendezvous point with Alan: Prestwich on the north side of Manchester.
The Plan (Ho-ho!) was to follow the banks of the River Irwell into the centre of Manchester. To get to the river from our start point meant wandering down a short section of the busy A56 Chester to Broughton (North Yorkshire) road. You can often turn up some real gems if you keep your eyes open when walking through built-up areas, like the delightfully named ‘Railway & Naturalist’ pub:
Most people think that the course that rivers follow as they wend their merry way into busy city centres as being dreary at best. The route the River Irwell took was anything but – it was quite delightful.
The path was very pleasant indeed although there were constant reminders of our close proximity to central Manchester:
The Manchester skyline, the 550’ 47 storey Beetham Tower on the RHS
I think this building may have some connection with the old trolley-bus system that was in use in Manchester until 1966.
Alan reckoned we walked 13.3km, that’s around 8.3 miles in English. It was downhill. I know this ‘cos that’s the way that rivers flow.
A grand day out in excellent company. Oh, and we all thoroughly enjoyed Martin’s curry and beer. Thanks Martin, I’ll be down for a coffee in a bit.
You can read Alan’s report here, it has much nicer pics and a map.
More of my pics are here. No photos of the curries or the beer, we were too hungry and thirsty to be mithered.
My mate Mike is dropping his drawers and risking freezing his wotsits off in a damned good cause – MIND.
MIND’s mission is to “provide advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem. We campaign to improve services, raise awareness and promote understanding.”
The NHS regards the Mental Health Service as very much a poor relation, it’s a Cinderella service.
Fortunately the Mental Health professionals working in the NHS are just that, very professional. And devoted to their work. They get the urine extracted from them with abandon.
It’s a bloody shame that they get shat on from a great height when it comes to funding, staffing levels and so on. Oh, and the amount of paperwork that CPNs (Community Psychiatric Nurses – the ones at the sharp end) have to deal with is just disgraceful.
These dedicated folks are working their nuts off (the ones that have nuts) trying to care for the mental health of their sometimes suicidal patients….and then have hours of paperwork to complete – very often in their own, unpaid time. And they don’t get paid that much.
Believe me, I know these things.
You may think that I feel more than a little strongly about this. You would be quite right.
Now I’m not particularly mithered about providing extra funding for the NT – I pay them enough in membership fees, but I’m keen to support MIND….although I draw the line at flashing my rude bits around in the North Sea.
So go and visit Mike’s blog and see what the daft bugger gets up to. If you feel you can, please donate a little….or a lot. And if you can, select ‘Gift Aid’, it doesn’t cost you anything more but it increases the amount the charity gets from your donation.
The photo up top isn’t Mike and his mates by the way, it an image I found at http://assets5.tribesports.com
A text message from my mate Vinny suggested we might go for a bit of a walk, he quite fancied Lyme Park to Buxton. It promised to be a ...