Shyster Holiday Inn

23 March 2015

I packed this morning. There is one outfit I have not worn, but everything has gone well so far. I had eggs Benedict for breakfast and Bob had porridge. Lewis the guy who is the chef looks like he's about 16 but he is 29 and has a four year old daughter. He says he's been a chef for 14 years.

Coddy's van

I convinced Bob that we should get rid of the English change, so we left it in the room for Lewis as he does the breakfast and cleans the rooms.

We don't have to be in Manchester until this afternoon, so I had found a few cemeteries to visit. We went first to Holy Trinity in Hepworth

Holy Trinity

and took a few photos.

Laura Battye's grave

This was where Glenda and Barry were married in Last of the Summer Wine. Like St. John the Evangalist in Upperthong, they also had a lynch gate which was a memorial to the war dead.

Holy Trinity in Hepworth Lynch Gate

We retraced our steps from yesterday and we saw this horse again, but this time he was facing us.

Piebald Draft horse with his back to us

Piebald horse looking at us

We went to St. Davids in Holmbridge (which I had seen from the road as we drove in the first day)

St Davids

Bob got out the scooter and I was taking photos on one side and he was on the other.

Gate to St. David's cemetery

St David's cemetery

WWI memorial

The sexton asked me if I would like to come in and look at the church inside, so I did. We talked and he gave me a booklet about the church

St David's inside

Newer stained glass window

They had this amazing Lecturn. But there was nothing in the booklet about it except who donated it.

Lecturn

Closeup of the lecturn

Needlepoint knellers

There were also a lot of nice needlepoint kneelers. During the big flood the church was fairly new, but it withstood the flood. The hedges and stuff around it were swept away and when the water receded, in the church there was a coffin with an adult male (unidentified) and a dead goat.

Bob wanted to use the bathroom and it was also about time for lunch, but the Bridge Pub across the street was closed on Monday.

The Bridge

I could not find anywhere to eat without going back to Holmfirth or else back to Coddy's Farm. So we went to back to Holmfirth. Now we had to pay for parking - Bob parked in the bus station lot but providentially, someone broke the place to pay, so we didn't need change as we had left all our change for Lewis. We used the public toilets and went to the famous Sid's Cafe for lunch. Incidentally, in the show, this is not pronounced Caf-ayy. It is pronounced CAFF. This may be the British pronunciation like they pronounce "garage" not as ga-rah-ge but as “garridge”

Sid's Cafe

This is the Cafe where the three old reprobates - usually Compo (Bill Owen), Cleggy (Peter Sallis) and either Foggy or Truly would meet and have tea either before or after their wanderings in the area.

Cleggy, Foggy and Bill Owen as Compo on the right

Originally this was called Sid's Cafe and was run by Sid (John Comer) and his wife Ivy. John Comer died in 1984, and the Cafe was then run by Ivy (Jane Freeman) for the following 26 years of the show.

Photos of Ivy and Sid on the wall

Ivy was the only main character other than Cleggy who was present throughout the course of the series

Front of the menu

In the show, the cafe has a counter and a hatch through which Ivy will talk to the customers. In real life, that wall is a stone wall adjacent to an alleyway, so all those scenes inside the Cafe were filmed in the studio.

Bob ordering - the hatch in the show would be in the wall on the left

It was crowded, but not as much as it was on Sunday when it was full of cyclists. I had tea and what was essentially a grilled cheese sandwich with caramelized onions (which was on the specials board for £3.30.

My sandwich £3.30

When I ate the second half, I picked out the onion. Not so much a fan of carmelised onion. Bob had a tuna sandwich and a chocolate milk shake. They asked him if he wanted ice cream and he didn't understand that they meant in the chocolate milk and he said No. So he got a shaken chocolate milk.

Milk shake with no ice cream

We started out again.

Along Brownhill Resevoir

Sheep crossing sign

I was unable to get the car GPS to recognize the Holiday Inn, but it was on my own GPS so I told the car to take us to the airport. I have finally figured out how to stop the car GPS from talking if she is taking us to some other place than I want to go. We got diesal fuel on the way

Gas station

We got all the way to the roundabout where we were to go across to the Holiday Inn and Bob did exactly the same as the first time and turned too soon. So we did the same as the last time and went all the way around the next roundabout.

Bob parked in the handicapped place and unloaded stuff but they told us that the airport driver was not on duty until 5 pm. So we went up to our room. Bob went down to ask about when the van driver would be available in the morning and found that it would be £3 each for the shuttle so he decided just to return the car in the morning. We are going to be leaving too early for breakfast so I will eat the banana I took from dinner last night and when we got dinner tonight I brought my bread up for Bob to eat in the morning. He had chicken wings

Bob's chicken wings

and cheesecake and ice cream for dinner and I had mac and cheese

Somewhat lame mac and cheese

Bob has the alarm set for 5:30 so I'd better get to bed.

24 March 2015

We got up at 5:30 and I ate my banana. We made this reservation directly and not through Booking.com and this time we were charged $184.48 (£125) for the room and dinner. The man who checked us in deliberately folded the paper over when I signed so that I would not see that the room rate was now £86 instead of £59. When I asked, the hotel would not acknowledge the first charge for £39 at all and their excuse for an additional £27 charge for the room was "The rate at the hotel change on a day to day basis depending on the day and how many rooms we have left or if there is something going on in Manchester, the rate is always higher at the beginning of the week and cheaper towards the end." This is opposite to what I have always found with hotel rates. And even if it is more expensive during the week, it is usually $10 more a night- not 1/3rd more. Also the second time we stayed there, the wi-fi kept cutting me off after 20 minutes until finally it refused to let me log on as it said the free time had expired. They had to send a guy up to the room to fix the problem. He gave me a different password to fix the problem. So I conclude that not only did they overcharge me deliberately, but also deliberately gave me a wrong password and I don't have a recourse because I didn't make the reservation through Booking.com. Although this time they keyed in the credit card properly.