MORECAMBE
We hit a brick wall in Morecombe bay: somewhere, we felt, it had been preordained that you should eat fish and chips on the seafront of Morecambe Bay, formally Poulton-le-sands. But there seems to be a distinct lack of fish and chip shops along the sea front - a total lack. And there we are- we've got our faces pressed up against the proverbial brick wall, and the idea of ever driving anywhere else is horrific, and chips and mushy peas are now the only thing that will make it at all possible. There are plenty of Chinese restaurants and we note that up and down the length and breadth of England, and probably the UK in general, every town and village, every hamlet and dell including those with no local shop would seem to have a Chinese take-away- why's that? Is the food our favourite? Are the proprietors just very industrious? Eh?

Morecambe has a sad recent history in terms of Chinese inhabitants, if you remember, with 21 illegal immigrant Chinese cockle pickers a couple of years back (2004) perishing on the flats when they were encouraged out there at entirely the wrong time, in terms of the fast turning Morecambe tides, by their kindly gang-masters. Morecambe Bay is notorious for its quicksand and they say the tide can come in 'as fast as a horse can run'. Employment laws are there for a very good reason, kids, don't forget that history is littered with many such woeful tales of exploitation, unscrupulousness and tragedy and certainly not just for Victorians.

But presently we're talking chips, fish and chip shop chips- rather than Chinese take-away chips- which, actually, are arguably the tastiest and trustiest kind. And which, we should have probably chosen on this occasion ... or rice. But hindsight is another thing.

We headed off the sea front on a local's advice and found Sam's Fish bar. We really don't want to give bad press on our lovely road trip around lovely visitor attractions and on our lovely encounters with charming folk who dwell in our country. But Sam's Fish Bar sold us the worst fish and chips we have ever had, ever. Along with some monstrous grey mushy pea goo. They were served wrapped, but we wanted them open so we asked the lovely Brummy guys, that ran the place, to re-wrap them- if they wouldn't mind so awfully. This is not a request they receive very often, perhaps, for they were handed back to us unfathomably wrapped up like babies in swaddling clothes. It was like pass the parcel, trying to get in. Never has such a disappointing bundle had quite such a convoluted build-up. So, best not to ask for 'open', probably... that's if you go there. Best, really, to.. er... possibly not go at all.

We ate them on the seafront in an Arctic wind and ran back to the car, both still embedded in our brick walls and now considering not leaving at all tonight.

What else should we be doing in Morecombe? - BINGO! It's a fiver for a 'free book' which seems like a bit of a contradiction in terms, but it starts at 7.30pm. All the assistants had to do was to find some lodgings and return at 7.15pm. We'd not actually found lodgings by 7.15 though- like Mary and Joseph, and their Bump and their Donkey and their left over grey mushy pea-stuff, there were no vacancies signs up in every window that we drove past. We did return to the Bingo, however, and the car park was packed with every shade of blue rinse on God's earth. But we still had a lot of brick-dust around our faces and couldn't be arsed to put on our 1950s 'new-look' frocks and go in, with still no idea where our bed was for the night.

But if you get it together we'll reward you handsomely with points.

No vacancies No vacancies.....it was full of people going to the Bingo but everything else was like a ghost town and there were no vacancies.

HOTEL BROADWAY, MORECAMBE
...Hotel Broadway, the first hotel you hit on arriving in the Bay. We commented, on our initial arrival in the town, that it looked like The Heyday Hotel. Its heyday having been a good 50 years ago. How wrong we were.

Morecombe and Mistletoe was being hosted there, and quite visibly so in the windows of its Finnigans restaurant, actually. It took a while for us to piece it all together. The restaurant was chock-full of ladies and gents of an age all wearing Christmas party hats and deely boppers. Whilst checking in, we bumped into Mrs Santa- a lovely bountiful lady dressed in a sexy Santa outfit- who informed us (when we happened to comment that it looked like Christmas had come very early to Morecambe) that Christmas had, infact, already been going for a month.
Morecombe and Mistletoe is a version of Turkey and Tinsel - if you happen to be the other few people in the whole country who, like us, hadn't heard of this marvellous British holiday experience, then here's the coup:apparently, ladies and gents of a certain age travel away for 3 or 4 days or a week- ish to experience Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing day and New Years Eve all in one go. And they start to do this from early October. How brilliant is that? There was an organist playing that night and Ricky was due to sing on Wednesday in the ballroom. Contemplating joining our fellow guests for a turn on the dancefloor, we retired to our over heated room to find an outfit. We promptly fell asleep!

The plan was to get up at the crack of dawn, eat our especially laid-on early, early- bird breakfast and drive to the Lake district as the sun rose. We woke at 7 ish, normal Morecambe and Mistletoe Boxing Day breakfast time, we ran about the overheated room trying to pack, ran to the beach for a photo-op, breakfasted and got into the rush hour traffic.