Friends of the Glen gathered under a blue sky we walked and halted in sunny spots cool spots and midge infested spots, we met William a man who had been lifted out of the Glen River as a boy by the hand of God, the river was wider and deeper then and the North Bank was lower, there were no trees and there were steps built into the wall, near ‘The Hatch’. As a boy from Blackpool he came to Goulding’s Glen to hang out by the river, they had to cross the railway tracks to arrive and there were mysterious underground cellars where they played. This was in the 1950s when he was a youngster who didn’t swim. The river swelled and took him from the bank, he saw the steps and he saw some fishermen on the far side and he went under, believing he would drown when suddenly he was lifted and placed on the wall, no one was near by, as a child he thought nothing of it, only now in the retelling he imagines a supernatural force. He has only recently spoken about this incident, I felt privileged to hear the tale.
There were no trees here then, and the wall has since been rebuilt without steps. Today it is a favourite spot for gatherings and we picked up a few cans and a bottle with a miniature mossy world growing inside it.
We walked some more and met friends and familiar faces, dogs greeted us and Rhonda the basset hound in our posse, whose ears dangled in the puddles as she drank, and who became skittish as the morning progressed…..