Philobiblon

Whitehaven to Silloth: theoretically 28 miles…

That was the theory. Unfortunately, I woke about 2am with a raging sore throat, and by morning had a nasty cold. I entirely blame Richard Branson. I’d been thinking on the Virgin train that it seemed airless and dry, in a very airplane-ish way, and several people around me were sniffling…

I considered giving up, which would probably have been the sensible thing to do, but … also seemed a bit lame. Then the organiser of the trip, who was coming anyway to pick up my bags, offered to take me on to Silloth, so I collapsed into his mother’s Nissan Micra, bike stuffed in the back, and tried to pretend it was a Roman legion’s pack mule and I was an ill soldier offered a ride for a day to recover…

I was told, and the map seemed to confirm, that the day I was missing was the least interesting, and most industrial. The only thing I really regretted missing was the Senhouse museum at Maryport, said to have the largest single collection of Roman altars in Britain.

Silloth itself is one of those funny little British seaside towns that hardly seems to have emerged from the Fifties – except of course that the hotel food staff were all Eastern European. And it has a surprising amount of industry – a still working mill, and port, hidden away to one side of the green.

It reminded me of when I was a small child the family would take elderly relatives for a “drive to the seaside”, which involved a hot uncomfortable hour or two, folllowed by a brief gaze at the sea, an unpleasant picnic lunch, then an uncomfortable drive home. That was what most visitors seemed to be doing.