Summer Holiday - The last days

August 4 – Pickering 

The last few days seemed to rush by and for the last of them here, we simply walked around Pickering once more.

Walking down the alleyway on our way back from the shops, I suddenly saw a railway engine go past along the road. It must have been going to the NYMR rail yard to be added to their collection and by the time my camera was ready it was obvious it was on the back of a lorry and not going along by itself. This reminded me of the old movie The Titfield Thunderbolt, which I loved as a boy.

 In the movie, a couple of drunks attempt to steal a railway engine and manage to drive it off the end of the tracks and it carries on straight through the centre of the town before it crashes, much to the amazement of the local copper who cannot believe his eyes.

 If you look closely at the still from the movie, you can see the lorry wheels behind the train wheels, but in the movie it is hard to see as it rushes past.

Apart from that and a great view of the real trains in Pickering, we spent a lot of the day packing up ready to leave.

 August 5 - Leeds and Liverpool 

The next and last day, whilst the Cumbrian members of the family said their farewells and headed back to their home, we drove our two cars back across the Pennines to Liverpool Airport taking the US contingent. 

 On the way we stopped off in Leeds and visited another football stadium, this time for TS, who happens to be a Leeds fan. There we were able to take some pictures of him outside the grounds and we then went into the store to look at the merchandising that football fans desire. 

 After a browse and some purchases, we then went for lunch in Billy’s Bar, the Leeds ground restaurant.  Whilst we were there, one of the staff let us into the VIP stand and we were able to take a few pictures and look at the stadium.

Finally we returned to the hotel at the John Lennon Airport and booked in for the night. 

 We still had some time to kill, so we took a taxi to visit Liverpool One, the big shopping mall in the centre of Liverpool. After a preamble around the shops, including all the easily located sports ware and book shops, we decided to return to the hotel and started to look for a taxi rank but could not find one. On a small map we had it showed there was one near the docks, so we made our way there only to find the map was wrong. 

Still looking for the taxi rank, we came right down to the Albert Docks but had no time to explore further. What we saw suggests another trip is in order at another time.

We then made our way back into the shopping area and hailed a cab which took us back to the hotel. 

On the way I managed to snap the Anglican Cathedral, but we did not see the other one with the glass roof.

That evening we had our last meal of the holiday in the hotel and then made our way to our rooms for the night. We needed to get to bed early, because the flight was early enough to require that we arose around 5.00am in order to make quite sure we were there in time. 

Next morning, groggy and irritable we had breakfast and made our way to the airport departures lounge, only to find that the connecting flight had been cancelled. A harassed official told us that a taxi was waiting to take passengers to Manchester where they could catch another connecting flight to take them to Dublin. So after some brief farewells, they were driven off. We then headed home, negotiating the considerable roadworks between us and the M6. 

So that was the end of our holiday, but not everything finished there. The trip home for the US contingent did not go well. On arriving at Manchester they arrived too late for the connecting flight they were supposed to catch and had to reschedule. This eventually got them home several hours later than planned and so they had less time to un-jet lag before the normal routine of life began once more.