Kampong Blackpool revisited

Salam semua.

Weekend ni saya agak sibuk sikit. Petang ni nak kena pergi keroje la pulak. Hai...ingatkan dah makin tuan ni bolehlah rileks sikit. Tapi nampaknya...

Jadi untuk habuan kawan-kawan semua, minggu ni saya ambil jalan mudah. Saya nak jemput (kalau sudi la) tuan/puan untuk tengok  suatu catatan lama di blog saya sahaja.

Ianya berkenaan pengalaman "balik kampong" saya ke Blackpool pada Disember lepas.

Sila klik di sini untuk membacanya. TQ.
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The Blackpool beach

Beautiful sunset at Blackpool beach near the North Pier. Photo taken during recent visit to Blackpool last December

One of my favourite places in Blackpool is without a doubt the beach. Blackpool boasts a long beach and beautiful beach.

Nothing like our Semenanjung east coast beaches, of course. More like Port Dickson, I would say, air agak keruh. Cuma it is not as muddy as PD.

When the tide is out, you have over a kilometer of flat clean sandy beach to walk to the sea. You can see seagulls swirling above, whilst shells and starfish litter the beach after a storm.

The sunset is absolutely stunning. As a budding shutterbug masa tu, it was a frequent photographic subject of mine.

But come winter, the storms that thunder in from the Irish Sea could scare the hell out of you.

I wonder if anybody else finds the beach as interesting as me. May be some of us boys would find it especially a convenient place to hang out during the summer untuk “cuci mata”?

But the sisters? Dia orang semua takut air. I bet - during their whole two-year stay in Blackpool, none of them ever set foot on the beach and got their feet wet in the cold water.

Arrival in Blackpool

The Marlowe Hotel call card which I recieved from the B&B owner 32 years ago. This is where I first put up upon arriving in Blackpool

I arrived in Blackpool by coach from London on a chilly September afternoon in 1979. We took the coach from London and stopped over at Woking to drop some other students there first before proceeding north-west to Blackpool.

If memory serves me right, there were fifteen of us. Our first stop was the College at Ashfield Road to report to the Overseas Students Coordinator. From there some of us were taken to a hotel (bed& breakfast) called the Marlowe Hotel, at No. 12, Pleasant Street.

We stayed there for a couple of nights at before we could move into our own rented flats yang dicarikan oleh the College officers.

Saya tinggal di No. 4 CheltenhamRd.  bersama Safie, Hussein dan Farouk. College pilih rumah ini kerana dari sini mudah untuk ambil bas ke college. Apparently, as I discovered during the recent gathering, some of our super-seniors pun tinggal di Shafstbury Ave. juga.

Jalan kaki pergi sekolah

Yours truly, Khalid dan Majid on the way balik ke rumah di Nobreck dari Kolej

Masa di Blackpool saya tinggal di Norbreck bersama Ghani, Hamidin, dan Shaari. Sebelumtu some seniors were there: Rashid, Majid, dan ??

Bagi sesiapa yang tak tahu, tempat ini lebih atas lagi (ke utara) dari Bispham. To be exact, it is located in Thornton-Cleveleys.

Group yang tinggal di sini semuanya berfikiran praktikal dan berjimat cermat - some would say kedekut, tapi takpalah tu apa dia orang nak kata. Dengan tinggal di Norbreck ni, kami tak perlu naik bas untuk ke kolej. Cuma jalan kaki aje.

Dari rumah ke kolej hanya 15 minit by foot. Tapi time peak winter bila mana angin ribut dari Irish Sea membadai pantai Blackpool, it can take us 20 to 25 minutes! Masa tu barulah rasa menyesal pulak duduk di Nobreck ni. Perjalanan pergi-balik dari kolej ibarat macam trekking trip ke North Pole!

But all in all, it was a nice place to stay. Macam-macam jenis kedai ada berdekatan dengan rumah - fish & chips, Spar convenient stuore, grocer, post office.  Bila nak pergi town centre atau ziarah kawan-kawan di Hodgson Road atau Warbreck Hill, the tram station is just down the road.

The walking trip to and from college is also a pleasant walk (apart from winter time). So what more can you ask for?