Today Rohan came over to take us into Barnsley and show us around. Rohan worked here as a barman at the Walkabout Pub for twelve months and is now giving a helping hand in Maureen’s café, where Kerry works. So Rohan has met lots of people and everything that seems new and different to us, is quite familiar to him.Some things that struck us were the use of imperial measurements with signs saying that a turn off is sixty yards away, the rows of terrace houses, a pub called ‘The Prince of Wales’, allotments for town dwellers to grow fruit and vegetables, street names straight out of monopoly, old buildings, the most enormous bumble bees and the £1 shop where the currency is different but the wares are much the same as in the Australian $2 shops.
Barnsley was busy with shoppers. Corner groups of different age groups stood about chatting, with the hairstyles for teenage boys and girls having taken ages to achieve. This is definitely the town of the baby, with so many prams being pushed about. This may be a comment that I could make about my home city of Geelong if I were in town at the right time of day, but in many of the cities we have visited, babies have been carried about and we didn’t really see that many.A coal mining area, Barnsley was heavily hit with the closure of the mines by the Thatcher government in the 1980s. It has a branch of a University and a College, as well as many primary and secondary schools. It is in the centre of the Trans-Pennine trail, which has both footpaths and bike tracks. In addition, it has many interesting historic buildings, museums, lakes and walks not too far away, so it is a well placed centre for the area. We hope to see some of them but our greater priorities are to spend some time with Rohan and to get to know Kerry and her family.
We called in at the Walkabout Pub and met some of Rohan’s workmates and friends. The atmosphere was very relaxed and everyone was welcoming and easy to get along with.
After a drink there, we went to the post office to send off a couple of post cards and we discovered that they would change our Bulgarian money but, like everyone else, the Bosnian currency was not on their list. We looked for a skirt and a hat for me as we strolled around the Alhambra shopping centre, but mostly it was just window shopping and a chance to see the prices and the range of goods. Some clothes were very cheap compared to France.By the time we took the bus home it was 4 pm so we had a fairly late lunch. When Maureen came home she brought her friend Steff, a lovely person with a bright and bubbly personality who went out of her way to be friendly to us. Her daughter is a very good competitive swimmer and when we were chatting about that, she offered to lend me a biography of Ian Thorpe. I snapped up the offer, since I am out of books at the moment and I know little about Ian or swimming.
We were beginning to get our bearings in Barnsley and tomorrow we will get some experience of the train system, with a visit to Sheffield with Kerry and Rohan.
More views of the streets in and around Barnsley
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