It’s been a while since I last did a summary of old blog posts that I’ve made live again – January, to be precise. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t re-imported any old blog posts since then – I’ve probably brought back 20 or so in the past few months. They’ve tended to refer to events that I’ve wanted to refer back to in new blog posts, such as previous visits to places. Overall, I’ve re-instated over 100 old blog posts so far, so about 3% of the total.
The latest batch that I’ve brought back are about Sowerby Bridge, the town where we live. I’ve chosen these partly to document us moving here 14 years ago, but also because it’s niche content that’s probably not available elsewhere. Here’s an index:
- Moving out of the City (October 2010). When I first announced that we were looking to move to Sowerby Bridge, as it was convenient for both my current job, and Christine’s (then) new job. Neither of us could drive back then.
- A year out of the city (November 2011). A retrospective of our first year of living in Sowerby Bridge. The first flat that we rented didn’t work out, but we ended up in another flat in April 2011, that we stayed in until October 2015 when we moved into our current house.
- Cinemas and Sowerby Bridge (May 2012). A little bit of local history research. Sowerby Bridge once had two cinemas – whilst both buildings are still standing, one is now a pub/venue and the other mostly vacant, having most recently been a shop.
- Rushbearing in Sowerby Bridge (September 2012). Sowerby Bridge’s most well-known annual festival, which takes place over the first weekend in September. Imagine a cart, filled with rushes, being trailed by morris dancers and calling at every church and pub in the town. It’s still going strong, although we had other commitments this year.
- Britain’s best high streets (November 2012). Sowerby Bridge was included in a list of Britain’s best high streets, and I suppose the main street is still pretty good. However, we’ve since lost the two banks mentioned in the article.
- The Sowerby Bridge Geese (September 2013). For years, there was a large gaggle of geese in Sowerby Bridge, that would happily stop traffic to cross the road, or sit in parking spaces. Unfortunately they haven’t had any goslings for a few years now, and I think there’s only three of them left now.
- My first BuzzFeed Listicle (April 2014). Oh wow, remember BuzzFeed? It still seems to be going, but my first listicle, 9 Surprising Facts About Sowerby Bridge, also turned out to be my last one.
- Happy Valley (June 2014). The BBC’s gritty award-winning drama was partly set in Sowerby Bridge, and saw two further series.
- The Brontë Garden at Sowerby Bridge station (September 2014). This is the small garden at the railway station, maintained by volunteers and still looking nice ten years on.
Since starting blogging again in 2022, my only new post of note about Sowerby Bridge was a brief one about ghost signs.