This page gets off to a start that reflects Charlie’s Socialist leanings, but well put I suggest. We know from much of Charlie’s work that he certainly carried a large chip on his shoulder with regard to the class system as he found it in life, mixed with his frequent spells of unemployment, working as a moulder in a foundry. He certainly enjoyed the occasional rant !
But the weather today is just so perfect that he soon settles down to concentrating on his cycling pleasures again, partly because the area around Beeston Castle is his most favourite place to visit. And he knows how to soak up history as well.
A lovely entry. Those Cheshire lanes still make a fine day’s ride, as my wife and I discovered last year when our carefully plotted long-distance trip was diverted by bridge repairs. We ended up meandering around for several hours, and didn’t regret a minute of it. (Next time we cycle through Cheshire we’ll plan to spend more time with less purpose.)
I was surprised to see that Charlie’s description of the grim northern factory towns was written in the twenties — having grown up in North America I tend to think the the hard times of the ‘Dirty Thirties’ as starting with the stock market crash of 1929.
I’m gleaning a lot of social history from Charlie’s journals; the more I read the more I feel I’ve missed by not knowing the man.
Charlie doesn’t _always_ get his fact right, though: he’s out by a hundred years on the construction date of the anachronistic Peckforton Castle, which was built in the middle of the 19th century, not the 18th.