Bolton Steam Museum 29/10/17
Before our winter hibernation-December brings Christmas Dinner, and January a Gin Tasting (!) in the delightful Clitheroe Golf Club – we held our November Sunday Run in, er, October.
There was a good reason for this as the last weekend in October was also a Steaming Weekend at Bolton Steam Museum – one of the largest collection of working mill engines in Britain: Big, magnificent, delightfully retro, smoothly reciprocating and all called names like Elsie! After a night of gales and torrential rain your secretary awoke, astonished, to find a chilly bright morning of blue skies, all in all a proper hood down, MG day. Even better, after an extra hour in bed.
Leaving the Old Stone Trough with two visiting MGs in tow. Mark and Janet in their immaculate Midget and Robert, (later to join with Rhoda, the B&P MGOPC) in his equally immaculate MBG GT, we left to take the Roman Road to Downham and thence over the Nick of Pendle and to Simonstone through beautiful autumnal woods and sunshine.
A short motorway interlude took us to Edgeworth and Chapletown, Belmont and to the foot of Winter Hill over the byways of Lancashire. And so down to urban Bolton and the wonders of the steam museum, entirely voluntary – denied funding, in a display of philistine meanness both from the Lottery and Municipality – where we also had our coffee stop and enjoyed the experience of those Victorian leviathans in all their glory.
Returning to Edgeworth we collected Eric who has been poorly recently, in an MG guard of honour, and proceeded to the Toby Inn, who kindly accommodated us together on a long table, for a fine repast and sociable Sunday lunch, whence we found our separate ways home.
Geoffrey Hammonds
