The best day of the year, so far.

Yes,it makes you instantly feel better doesn't it.

Shall get out and do some Winter pruning, and top-up my vitamin D.

Just got well wrapped up and had a lovely walk over the fields from Dobb Brow here in Howfen.
A crisp Winters day with the sun shining, makes you feel good.
Having a brew now sat in my favourite armchair with my lappy.
Mrs RMJ is making us sirloin steak with roast potatoes, peas and grilled tomatoes for ‘tea’, a perfect start to the new year.
Best Wishes for a Happy, Peaceful and Prosperous New Year to all the Wigan Worlders.

Dobb Brow Eh, I was born at 134 and lived there for over twenty years till I emigrated to Oz. Been back a few times but like everything in time it has changed out of all recognition and I prefer to remember as it was fifty years ago. Used to go to school at the Parochial School opposite St Bartholomews church and walk over 'the fields' morning dinner and afternoon, then there was no new houses when you got to the top of the brow after the bridge, just fields till you got to Bowlands Hey.
It was exactly a mile loop from our house over the fields to the church and back on the road to the golf club, then turn left down 'the pingot' and past the 'Duckies pond on the left and the 'birch pit on your right.
That was our race track on bikes.....HAPPY DAYS indeed.

Nice post PB, it’s good that you have Westhoughton as-it-was rather than as-it-is in your head.

I am originally from Higher Ince, but moved to Howfen in 1972 when we got married and where we have lived since.
We live on the lane that connects Dobb Brow with Hindley Rd.
The area has changed massively since we arrived, we had fields at the back of our house, which is now a big estate of hundreds of houses, and that applies to other parts of Howfen, it has been overdeveloped.
They are currently building between St Bart’s Church and Westhoughton golf club, hundreds of homes, with no new roads being built, so the existing infrastructure has to try and cope.
There is a massive estate planned for on the Hulton Estate at Four Lane Ends and also at the old dog track near Hart Common/Marsh Brook, it will be an absolute nightmare.
We are going to monitor things for the near future and see how things pan out.
Being in our early seventies it might be a good time to move and downsize.

On the beach at St Annes this afternoon...cool but bootiful.

We lived in the end terrace at Marsh Brook for a few months before emigrating and the things we saw going on in the side lane with greyhounds on race nights I don't think it was winalot they were feeding them.

"I don't think it was winalot they were feeding them"

LOL

Nice piccy PB, I LOVE the seaside, especially walking on a beach

It's a buyers market on the housing scene in Blackpool right now, but as always it's location location location that is important.

It is ALWAYS a sunny day.
just
that sometimes.

we are on the wrong side of the clouds!

Priscus, LOL I like

Crackin' piccy priscus

British engineering (and a little bit of French LOL) at its finest.

In the pic, it is actually travelling at MACH2. The Tornado from which photograph was taken could not keep up with it!

A plane build in 1960's, carrying passengers commercially, having an in-service speed much greater than the maximum speed attainable by the jet fighters which we are currently purchasing from the US.

How Bizarre is that then!


"Although the Tornado could match (and even exceed) Concorde's cruising speed it could only do so for a matter of minutes due to the enormous rate of fuel consumption. After racing to catch Concorde and struggling to keep up, the Tornado broke off the rendezvous after just four minutes, while Concorde cruised serenely on to JFK"

It's a lovely sunny day here in sunny Florida, even though the bird baths were frozen over this morning, car windshields iced over.. 30 F when I got up.. 34 F now.. Lovely weather for a nice walk.. Though I'm probably one of only a very few here, thinks that way.. I've seen some neighbours walking past and you would think they were at the North Pole, the way they are bundled up...

We weren't metric back then and the bits in Britain were made in imperial measurements, and the French made em in metric, that's why we could only fit four engines instead of five.