Sunday 2 October - Melmerby - Lydgate

I thought my day of long drives were over but I’ve still driven more than 200 miles to get down to Manchester. At the risk of offending my Mancunian friends, Manchester is quite a long way south. It’s really the end of the Midlands rather than the north. Since travelling the country I’ve realised that the north:south division is an English view, not a British view. Scotland is a long, tall country and seems to be beyond the mental geography of many Brits, where ‘north’ starts early (even, or perhaps especially for those who describe themselves as ‘northerners’).

Whatever your geographic boundaries I continue to head south (for a meeting in Cambridge on Tuesday). I tend to avoid motorways because they are so insulated from the world around them (although the M6 north of Preston has to be excluded from this – it has some of the best views around and if travelling north a sense of freedom as the traffic density suddenly drops and it feels like freedom. And the farm shop at Tebay services transforms motorway services). But I am heading south and choose the old A6 over Shap – a slower but very beautiful drive. The blocking high and fine weather have disappeared but even with clouds looming the views are spectacular. I’ve tried taking photographs of these huge landscape but they never capture how it feels. The sense of knowing that you are a small speck in the landscape is lost, the photographs don’t capture the scale or the sense of ….it’s not quite awe, but something close. Certainly a sense that the world does not revolve around people.

I visit Blackpool – never at its best in daytime, it’s a city for the night time. It’s still pulling in crowds of people despite being out of season and a dull day threatening rain. The centre is buzzing but the rest of the town seems rather more forlorn. There are streets of empty shops here too. Shops that seemed abandoned rather than closed. As Blackpool becomes Lytham St Anne’s the mood shifts. More solidity and Edwardian grandeur in the buildings, far fewer people and those that are there seem to be predominantly elderly. Many former hotels have become residential nursing homes. But there is a sense of affluence and comfort.

I want to re-visit Anthony Gormley’s Another Place as Crosby and so take the coast road. I hadn’t realised how rural places like Formby are – good farming country, the soil is rich and dark and looks like the Fenlands. But there is a flaw in my plan to see the Gormley – the tide. Last time I was here it was obviously low tide and I could wander among the 100 cast iron figures on the beach. Today I arrive at high tide, there are a few heads above the water but most are submerged. Not waving but drowning? Certainly struggling to keep their heads above water.

From here I go on to Manchester. I had forgotten the Tory part conference was starting. I wanted to visit Manchester City Art gallery and see Grayson Perry and Ford Madox Brown. Apparently there has been a big demonstration and there are lots of police, lots of young people with banners (I assume marchers) and lots of slightly lost Tory party delegates. They stand out a lot – and reinforces the richness of the South. Their clothes, their accents, the way they make themselves noticed mark them out as non-city dwellers and ‘not from around here’. They seem oblivious to this, but also slightly freaked out by the unfamiliarity of their surroundings. But I’m out of the city, I assume there won’t be any rooms left here and head out through Oldham (looking very battered by downturn) and up towards the moors. From my room I can see the orange glow of Oldham and Manchester, but up here all seems rural delight