Here we have a post that has been hanging around since September 2018.
Most of it is self-explanatory. I was obviously having a bad day and enthusiasm was not in great supply – a trip through North Lincolnshire will do that to you. I never did get on with the book on piers (just like I never get on with the book about anything – it’s over 50 years since I formed an ambition to write a book and I still haven’t done it. This is pitiful, I admit. However, I have learnt a lot along the way. As we started visiting piers my arthritis and walking began to get worse, we slowed down a bit and then, the next year, we had lockdown. That’s my excuse. I will now pass you over to the original text of the draft and go to see if I can find photos. If not, it will be published without photos. (I did find the photos – they were in August rather than September 2018).
Freddie Frinton’s Blue Plaque. The term “entertainer” was accurate in the 1960s but I fear it wouldn’t apply in modern times. I’ve seen “Dinner for One” and can only marvel at it’s long-running success.
The reason that I’m resurrecting this? I was reading an article on those “achievements” that keep cropping up, and, after getting annoyed at the manipulation involved, I became immersed in reading about them. Yes, it’s another rabbit hole, be warned. Anyway, it inspired me to look at my drafts, and I thought, that though I hate myself for falling for it, that if I’ve saved this for seven and a half years I really should finish it.
Since saying I was going to write a book about visiting piers I have found it increasingly difficult to actually write about visiting piers. I suspect this is what often happens. The words below this line were written in 2018 and have not been altered. You will then find some more words from 2026. How time flies.
We went to Cleethorpes a couple of months ago but I haven’t written about it yet. This is probably what writers call writer’s block, but I’m a blogger and we just call it laziness. As I’m going to visit a few more piers next week it’s probably time to get on with some work.
Julia pressing a penny – a fascinating machine.
We approached Cleethorpes through Grimsby, which is not a name that inpires confidence. It’s a throwback to Lincolnshire’s Viking past, the suffix -by is a Viking word meaning homestead. Lincolnshire is full of village names ending in -by. Grim is a name often associated with Odin, the top man in Norse mythology, so may not be a grim as it sounds.. He was also known as Woden, so when we visited Grimsby on a Wednesday we have two Odin references in one trip as Wednesday is Woden’s day. Even after a thousand years the Vikings are still present.
As Kipling said –
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
Grimsby and Cleethorpes don’t have a great reputation for affluence and the road through Grimsby, though clean and neat, didn’t look overly prosperous. It had the look of a place stuck in the 1960s with a number of more modern shops offering discount carpets and things of that nature.
Prize Winning Fish and Chips on the pier – claimed, at the time of our visit, to be the largest fish and chip restaurant in the country. It doesn’t seem to say that these days.
The docks, which we drove past, seemed full of gleaming cars. I’m not sure whether they were coming in or going out, but I assume they were coming in as there are no car factories in this area. That would suggest there’s money somewhere for new cars.
I’ve only been to Cleethorpes once before.
(At that point, on 9 September 2018, the post stopped. I now start it again for a few lines.)
The last visit was for a junior rugby match. I can’t remember the details, but several of us went to Cleethorpes afterwards. It was a bit like Shangri-la for me, if Shangri-La had shops selling buckets, spades and rock. When we lived in Lincolnshire, many years ago, Cleethorpes was always just above the area my parents would visit, so I always had to make do with Skegness and dream of the exotic delights of Cleethorpes.
A sight that is growing less common as time goes on.
In truth, there are none. It’s a decent enough place but no better than Skegness, though the remains of the pier do house an award-winning fish and chip shop. It’s just an accident of geography that It’s a lot easier to get to Skegness rather than Cleethorpes. If it were the other way round, I would be happy to visit Cleethorpes and give Skegness a miss.
The Pier