Steam trains and Otters 22 Sept

For those of you that have either lived or visited the UK you would know that you are never too far from a steam train and this was true of our journey thus far. Much to Ron’s disappointment we hadn’t actually stopped long enough to have a ride in a single steam train carriage. However today was different and we managed to get two treats for the price of one. The first is that Ron gets to sniff the coal and secondly I got to see my most favourite animal, the Otter.

We pulled into the town of Newby Bridge and bought a ticket on the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway. The train took us to Lakeside at the south end of Lake Windemere and here we visited an aquarium which also housed otters. No eccentric historians only a man who seemed to know a lot about sea perch.
The rest of the day was spent travelling to the outskirts of Manchester in preparation for Owen’s departure the next day. For dinner we popped down to a local pub where Ron asked the waiter if he knew how to get to Manchester Airport by train. As the waiter had only travelled to Manchester once in his life (approx. 10 miles away), he turned and asked the pub owner who was drinking at the bar. The owner told us that we would have to take the tram from Bury to Piccadilly where we could catch a train to the airport. I was a little confused, did he mean Piccadilly London? Then a patron sitting in the far corner piped up and corrected the pub owner and before we knew it, the whole pub was discussing how best to travel by train to the airport. As we were none the wiser, in the end we decided it would be best to drive.