Blogtober 2024 : Day 25

Hello to you, here we are at the end of another week and I hope it’s been a good one for you!

Yesterday, I told you about my knitting and crochet friend Lynne Rowe and that we had met up for lunch in a small town called Knutsford.  Today, I thought I’d show you some of my photos from that day as the sun shone and it was lovely to be out!

Knutsford is a small town in Cheshire, not far from Manchester.  I used to work here a long time ago and I have a lot of affection for this little town.  Supposedly originally named for King Canute (he of the commanding the waves story), it’s got a long and quirky historical past, although nowadays I think it might be thought of more as a place where professional footballers choose to live, and some of the enormous houses on the drive in have to be seen to be believed!  Footballer or not, Knutsford is quite an expensive place to live and there are a mix of high-end kitchen design, interior design, independent clothing and gift shops alongside the usual restaurants, hairdressers, pubs and charity shops that you see in most places these days.

The town is built across a few main streets but connected by other narrow streets and entrances … this is the entrance to the cafe that Lynne and I go to …

and this is the view to one end of King Street …

That white tower is the Gaskell Memorial Tower dedicated to the 19th Century novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell.  Knutsford was the setting for her famous book, Cranford, and she lived nearby in Manchester.

King Street is a one way street and it’s often quite a squeeze for larger vans and cars to get by, and you have to keep right in if you’re not walking along the pavement on the left.

Remember I mentioned the high end kitchen shops?  This is one of them and we stopped for a while to admire the rows of pottery guinea hens in the window, created by a local artist.

They are for sale and I could imagine that if you have a large kitchen with space to display such pieces, they would look right at home with the Aga and the open worktop spaces – but our kitchen, although a decent size, has cats that jump up and down from the units via the window sill with no respect for pottery guinea fowl or indeed, anything else that might be in their way, and I would worry for the continued health of such a handsome bird.

Not so these birds – they look very healthy and would probably take no messing from our cats!  I don’t often get this close to swans – the ones that the dog and I see out on our walks are certainly never this friendly – but I think these ones may be used to visitors with bags of tasty treats so as soon as we made our way down to the large park at the bottom of the hill and stopped by the lake, the swans were straight over!

Aren’t they beautiful?  I love how they manage to stay so very white!

The last time that Lynne and I were in Knutsford, we saw these birds by the lake …

I’ve never seen these before, but according to Google, they are black-bellied whistling ducks (also known as black-bellied tree ducks) and they are native to the US but not Knutsford, so I think they must have been on their holidays.

It was a much brighter day than when I took the photos of the black-bellied ducks – look at that glorious blue sky!  It’s quite a big duck pond or lake (I’m not quite sure what it’s known as locally) and there always plenty of ducks on there.

There are also plenty of planes in the sky!

Knutsford is on the flight path for Manchester airport and you can’t really tell from the photo, but when we were standing by that building, the plane looked almost close enough to touch!   I don’t know if it’s still the same, but when I used to work there, some days the flights would come in right over the town (I think they used to move the flight paths depending on the day and the weather) and you could see the landing gear on the planes ready to land.  On those days, I would have to stop speaking while the planes went overhead because the noise was so loud, and on a busy day, it could be very regularly!

You can walk right round the park and back to the car park, and some of my favourite Knutsford houses are on that path.  This one, which looks like a tower …

and these cottages with their own little bridges across the stream …

Lynne and I wondered how many visitors have got wet feet over the years! 🙂  I also wonder whether the houses get damp, being so close to the water.  Years ago, it probably would only have been in the winter that the stream would be full but nowadays, it’s probably full most of the time.  You can see from the plants in the garden that there’s good selection that like soil that’s quite damp, but hopefully that stops at that end of the garden!

And then we were back at the car park, and looking back across the park, there was a burst of sunlight that light up the trees as the sky was beginning to cloud over.

Such a lovely afternoon – I’m looking forward to next month’s catch up with Lynne already!

I hope you’ve enjoyed visiting Knutsford with me – I’ll see you tomorrow! xx