Wombwell

Yesterday an old friend let me down. We were planning to meet up for coffee and endless conversation but something cropped up and he needed to drive back to Devon with his wife as soon as possible. "Next time", we agreed. There was uncharacteristic panic in his voice

Anyway, so there I was at loose ends. Promptly, I decide to catch a train to the very heart of South Yorkshire and quickly printed off a map to assist a hastily planned walk. I was off to Wombwell... or "Wonderful Wombwell" from my imagined advertising campaign for the little town.

A special monument in Wombwell Cemetery

Wombwell is often thought of as a post-industrial community now that the coal mines have all gone. Once it was at the very heart of the South Yorkshire coalfield. It is not the kind of place that receives holidaymakers or day visitors like me. Labels like "gritty", "functional" and "deprivation" are commonly and often unfairly stuck to such places. After all, stereotypes are easier to grasp than real life complexity.

I arrived in Wombwell at two fifteen and caught the four twenty seven  train back to Sheffield so I had just over two hours of walking and exploring. And I am so pleased that I bothered. It more than made up for two hours of chinwagging in "The Greystones" public house.

Art in the underpass - below Dearne Valley Parkway

On the path to Hemingfield

New housing near Wombwell Station

Golfers waiting their turn at Hillies Golf Course



from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/yv0rDKX

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Easter

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Stewart prepared a special Easter Sunday dinner. The Lamb of God was on the menu with roasted potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, leeks, carrots, parsnips and peas. For dessert, Shirley had followed the vegan sticky toffee pudding recipe in the first "Bosh!" cook book  and all was good. Earlier there had been an Easter egg hunt for the little ones and then we all went off to a Sheffield museum that I had not visited in many years - The Emergency Services Museum at West Bar. Greatly improved and still run by volunteers, it was a perfect excursion for all of us and we finished up in the museum's little cafe enjoying a light lunch. We had seen police cars, ambulances, fire engines and even a redundant lifeboat called "City of Sheffield". We all enjoyed the visit. As you might imagine, I will be coming back to this museum in a future post. On the way there,  the roads had been blocked off near Sheffield Children's Hospital as 750 motorcyclists arrived at Weston P...
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Today

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The view from Simon's back yard. It takes an hour and a half to travel to the village where I was born and raised. Today, Shirley came with me and saw my brother Simon for the first time since August 2019. As a nurse for more than forty years, she was not daunted by his changed appearance. With the cancer and everything he has become a bag of bones. So painfully thin - like a malnourished prisoner working on the Burma railway under Japanese supervision.  Wasting away. We stayed all afternoon.  Shirley had his washing machine on and we changed his bedding. I had bought a new fitted sheet, duvet cover and pillowcases from Tesco. Shirley said that his old bedding was "disgusting".  We brought tins of mushroom soup and cans of "Fanta" and "Coke" and some pots of chocolate mousse plus a couple of pints of milk. They were received with zero gratitude. In fact, he insisted that six cans of soup was far too many. I encouraged him to have a bath while...
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