Link to photo album here
Fat Lamb 2025
This year the annual Area 15 tour based at the Fat Lamb Country Inn, took place over the weekend starting Friday 20th June. Members arrived at the hotel during the afternoon and took advantage of the good weather to have tea and a chat together on the patio.
The usual discussion about the advantages of the A1 or M6 route to Cumbria delivered a clear winner, for once, as the A1 was suffering more roadworks.
After dinner and a very pleasant evening together members drifted off to their rooms in anticipation of our drive to Skipton in the morning.
The sun shone on Saturday morning, as planned, and after our groups sophisticated and sparing breakfast choices had been consumed, we assembled in front of the hotel with the cars for our group photo.
Miraculously, even though there had been little activity around the cars, they had all been fitted with their Castles and Canals Tour rally plates and everyone had their route guides.
Paul, the hotel owner, takes photographs along the route which means he must pass us to get to the next photo point before us. He reminded us that when he caught us up it was not a challenge, and we should let him through. As we now have hundreds of pictures of our cars on the drive this briefing must have worked.
We all arrived at the 900-year-old Castle safely but slightly behind schedule. Our extremely helpful Castle Guide took all of this in his stride and pointed us in the right direction for coffee. The tour of the castle was enhanced by our guides enthusiasm and knowledge, coupled with the reenactors at the Castle that day. The highlight, for me, was probably the demonstration of firing, if that’s what it’s called, the model Trebuchets to see how the younger medieval model was an improvement on its
predecessor when you had castle walls to breach.
After our castle visit, we split up to do our own thing. As the castle is only a few hundred meters from the town centre, most members walked into town and visited the unique outdoor market, which dates back to medieval times, as well as the independent shops and catering facilities. I';m not aware that anyone made it to the museum.
We departed the castle car park independently to follow our route to The Coniston Hotel Country Estate and Spa for afternoon tea. From there we followed a route back to the Fat Lamb which took us past Ribble Head viaduct. Most of us now have apicture of our Aston, on the move, in front of the viaduct. We had a very enjoyable dinner and evening back at the Fat Lamb and the days photographs were available on screen.
On Sunday morning our planned 9.30 am departure allowed for a more leisurely breakfast, and we departed for Bilsborrow on time. Bilsborrow is a village on the Lancaster Canal and our route there passed through the Forest of Bowland National Landscape.
Quite a few of our twelve cars stopped off at the Jubilee Tower and were surprised at the fantastic views across Morecambe Bay and the lakes, we were told that Blackpool was visible, on a good day. At Bilsborrow we had organised coffee and parking at Guys Thatched Hamlet, it has its own wharf, so our converted traditional canal barge picked us up there. We had really good light lunch onboard
and a thoroughly enjoyable two-hour cruise through very tranquil and picturesque
countryside.
On the way back to the Fat Lamb we stopped off for tea and cakes at The Red Well Inn which is a very welcoming and well-run inn at Arkholme. It started to rain while we were there, and it continued to rain for most of our journey back to the Fat Lamb.
On reflection the weekend had gone well and as far as I know, none of the cars had damaged a tyre, broken down or had difficulties of any kind. Brian had a relaxing weekend, and we all have pictures to prove it.
When Chris Stening arranged our first visit to the Fat Lamb in 2017, I doubt that he would have thought it would be still going today. It has evolved from a 2-night event with drive outs on the Saturday into a weekend event where most people stay for 3 nights and there are optional events and drive outs on both Saturday and Sunday.
I have organised the last four of these events and am now passing this over to Pat and Derek Bradnam, who have very kindly offered to take it on. It has been a pleasure to organise these events, partly because you can rely on the hotel and the support provided by Paul on the planning and routeing side, but also because of the kindness and friendship of our members.
Apart from one major cock up at the Black Horse Beamish last year it’s all gone pretty well. Sue and I are looking forward to joining the group at the Fat Lamb next year.