What a wonderful time we all had during the 2008 Walking Festival.

It was a day with "Thomas" as sixteen of us left on our first walk from East lancs Railway for the four mile Sarspirilla Stroll for what we thought was going to be a rainy wet walk. I won’t lie and say the sun shone as there were many people in Rossendale that Saturday who would contradict me! It was certainly drizzling but the intrepid gang set off. All the time I have lived in Rossendale I have never once used the underpass there in Rawtenstall, I was pleasantly surprised. Whether one calls it graffiti or art the colourful collages on the underpass walls were lovely, the artists had captured very well a selection of the Rossendale attractions and I thought they looked fab.

Up through Whitakers Park (again, I’ve never walked through it before!), through the small “zoo” where they have a selection of cute ‘smaller’ animals which appeal to the young children and up through the ski-slope. Walking up by the ski-slope was the hardest part of the walk but very enjoyable and a sense of achievement was felt at the top. For those that hadn’t seen the Halo Panotoptican before the cloud didn’t dispel the enthusiasm of the group in admiring our 21^st century design. For those of us who live in Rossendale we are all aware of the beat of Cribden. Ha, ha, we met him!!!! Just when you thought he had passed over out comes his son to carry on!!!! Moira very politely thanked him as the Gordon Ramsey of Cribden (no offence Gordon), I’ll bet you can all guess at the exchanges. Oh, for country life, ha ha. Wendy Davison gave us a very informative running commentary of the quirks of Cribden as we enjoyed our walk, along narrow lanes, passed old beautiful cottages, up hills, down dales, passed horses and finally ending at Kirkpatricks for our very welcome drink of hot sarspirilla, a kind of mix between dandelion burdock meets the best part of a cough mixture. Kirkpatricks is the only Temperance Bar left in the UK, and it’s definitely worth dtaying in Rawtenstall an extra 30 minutes for. The owner kindly gave us all a hot drink and allowed a sizeable discount off anything bought which was well received by us all.

On Sunday, the clouds passed over taking the rain away and we were left with a beautifully sunny day for our 12 mile Soup Loop. Starting from Bacup Leisure Centre we walked along part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail, Mary Townley Loop and Pennine Bridleway. We had 20 walkers, one with his 18 month son in a ‘back-pack’, it was absolutely brilliant. We passed “the source of the river Irwell” in Bacup, through a working farm and farm shop, and through country lanes up the hills where grass can still grow along the lanes without being worn away by traffic. Our halfway point was at Peersclough Farm in Lumb where Chris had made three fantastic homemade soups; own grown onion soup, spicy parsnip and leek and potato. Warm buns were passed around followed by homemade flapjacks. I can tell you, after that feast we could have all taken on Everest!!!!! The second half of the walk was somewhat easier although we seemed to be forever climbing over stiles, some of them not so sturdy either. "At one with nature" we were often joined by the horses who kind f thought that joining in was fun, sorry but they may look beautiful animals in photographs but that is just where I like them, I'm terrified of horses and was glad when we moved on to the next field!!!!

I believe that all the other walks were just as enjoyable: The Fudge trudge were rewarded with a fantastic selection of free samples at the Fudge factory, tasty cheeses awaited those on the Cheese Breeze, I daren’t ask what time the wind turbine and whiskey walk came back (or in what state!!), the Black Pudding plod walkers were rewarded with the best of black pudding (an acquired taste I know, but believe me, I’ve acquired it!). If you do nothing else next year, you really must join in to the 2009 Rural Rossendale Walking Festival, already we are planning some interesting delights for our walkers.

Another reason for a late blog is that we have also had a spell in Madrid. What a truly fantastic place; the sun shone the whole time we were there with temperatures reaching 28-30 deg’s; the people are so welcoming, the metro is the cleanest/quickest/smoothest and non-threatening underground we have ever been on, the shopping is just awesome and we just had the most fantastic weekend. Highly recommended! For those of you that know Tom well you will know that when we are away from home he is only happy when he has a map; Madrid was no different!!! He always makes me laugh.

Unfortunately, we had a terrible experience with Easijet, they have got to be the worst airline ever. I accept that a budget airline offers flight only without the frills and that is just fine. But the cabin crew are so rude, and don’t even try to point out the rudeness or complain, they are just not interested, it doesn’t matter what you say in your email you just get a standard template response back, they neither accept nor reject what you say, it doesn’t matter you get the standard template response. Please, please be careful when travelling with this airline. We will never ever fly Easijet again and unless you have considerably thick skin and intend to sleep the whole of your journey then avoid Easijet. We drove all the way home from Liverpool airport totally wound up with Easijet behaviour, it certainly marred what was a lovely, lovely trip.