Day 25 - Southport
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2011
1
25
58
Trip End
Oct 28, 2011
Where I stayed
The Premier Inn
Southport, England, United Kingdom
Sunday, September 25, 2011
We took a tourist drive around the northern Lakes District area. It's easy to see why this is considered one of the prettiest areas of England. There are stunning views everywhere ranging from lake views to mountain views to highland vistas to cute villages and pretty farm settings. We circled a couple of the lakes and drove through a couple of passes (One was Honnister pass and can’t remember the name of the other). Eventually we came back to Keswick and headed toward the southern part of the Lakes District via Ambleside and Windermere. More very scenic driving although the clouds did threaten for a while.
We decided we had not really seen any Tudor style houses and called in to a lovely little village called Kirby ????? which our map showed had a Tourist Information Centre. WE walked about the town for a while before finding the Visitor centre but alas, there are no Tudor buildings anywhere around here.
Oh well – we decided to head across to the coast and see if we could find somewhere to stay around Blackpool (we decided to avoid Blackpool itself as it is a major holiday destination for the Brits). We ended up in Southport which is also a beach town and although nice enough, was a little tacky around the edges..... typical down market beachside tourist place – every second shop was either an amusement parlour or an ice-cream shop or fish and chips. We took a wrong turn and ended up in what appeared to be a car park for a shopping centre and there was a chain hotel there, so we decided just to check in there for the night. It was a fairly average place – when we checked in the receptionist told us that the restaurant had a special carvery night that night so we booked a table (because it was expected to be pretty busy). When we went for dinner at about quarter to six, they told us they had run out of all the roast meat except beef and when we looked at the salad bar, that was also near empty – and there hardly any people there! We decided to give the carvery a miss and went to an Italian restaurant on the other side of the car park.
We went back to the room and when we tried connecting to their Wi-Fi, we discovered they wanted 5 pounds for 1 hours access – sounded a bit over the top so we decided against it thinking we would go across to the McDonalds in the morning and use theirs.
