THE LAUREL AND HARDY MUSEUM
Ulverstone has free parking if you're not staying for too long.
We got a photo taken of us on our way in to our next spectacular destination- it took a few gos to get our passing photographer to get both our heads as well as the sign in, but we coached him through it. Shame we looked like such imbeciles really.

'For those of you that have been to the toilet, would you believe that's Stan Laurel's toilet seat'. Alan is a son of the desert and helps to run the Laurel and Hardy museum in Ulverstone. He uttered this gem of a sentence to his other visitors but he liked us the best! He couldn't guess what we were going as, dressed in our safari suits and wrong moustaches- possibly cos we'd left our pith helmets behind- so he lent us two of the collection's pith helmets to complete our look, on condition that we didn't wander off with them as some Japanese tourists had once done.

Alan told us, on the subject of some other hats 'I came in here for a couple of hats for my nephew, that were 30 year ago'. His enthusiasm for the place is totally infectious. He'd work 7 days a week if he could, but the doctor told him he needs to slow down a bit.

The Laurel and Hardy museum is a joy. It's the most incredible Aladdin's cave of a place right in the centre of town, set up the museum. It's a charming, loving, shrine to one of Ulverston's best loved offspring and Oliver Hardy does pretty well out of it too.  The Museum has got all the character, personality and peculiarity that the duo had. You have to see it to believe it, it's got a cinema showing their films, its got loads of fan mail along with Stan's charming personal responses, posters, clippings and all sorts of pictures and memorabillia over every wall and every inch of every ceiling. It does, slightly, bring to mind thoughts of celebrity stalkers, but evidently inspires love and fondness for many that visit- including us. Tragically it's moving at Christmas to the retail park by Booths, so you may be unable to catch it in its full and original 'stalkers' glory. The assistants are sure that it will be bound to lose some of its outlandish character and much of its demented ardour but the collection will probably become a good deal more accessible and there are few greater themes for a museum, in our opinion, and few more enthusiastic guides- long may Alan continue to enthuse his visitors. It currently has 33,000 visitors a year and once had 5,000 on one day on the centenary of Laurel's birth- no small feat for such a tiny little cave-like place.

The Assistants learnt too about the Sons of the Desert (everyone else seems to have heard of them- much like they've all heard of Turkey and Tinsel holidays), they have a yearly anniversary rally and a strict monthly meet- they take their name from the L&H film of the same name - where Stan and Ollie lie to their wives about a desert excursion in order to go on a  hard drinking binge (arguably their greatest film)- the 'Sons of the Desert' have got lodges all over the place - "London, Birmingham- I mean all over the world"- "from china to turkey to Timbuktu". www.sotd.org

We had to go to the factory shop to unwind after our intense L&H experience- where we bought some tat to keep the economy going.