retiredmartin

August 2023. Clitheroe.

And just to prove this blog isn’t ALL ruined abbeys and surreptitious photos of folk drinking, something a bit more genteel for my genteel reader Pauline, next, as we revisit a Clitheroe coffee shop.

Actually, it wasn’t much fun walking central Clitheroe as the rain changed its mind about falling on Mrs RM several times,

the Exchange Coffee Co. was the only possible place to linger on the way to Pub No. 2.

Visiting the Exchange was like visiting a different world in the late ’90s when we first Hit the North, and it’s both pleasing and bewildering that it hasn’t changed a jot.

Primarily a tea and coffee shop (Patronised readers get the Scratch’n’Sniff edition) with cafe at the rear, if anything it feels like they’ve gone further retro.

The upstairs room is a particular delight, with its “Eccles Cakes on a Piano” display.

In 1997, ground coffee from Mozambique served in a cafetiere was ground-breaking; it still is in Chatteris.

High quality coffee and cakes, though if all customers linger over a single cup as the table opposite I’m suspicious of the viability for another 25 years.

Clitheroe looks more appealing by the year in the same way as a Glossop or New Mills; the change is very gradual.

In the Cross Keys there’s a music festival where a cover band is playing “Freebird“.

We scuttle past, Mrs RM coos over the views to the hills, we head for the beer hall.