We had a walk around Jumbles Country park today, which is just a stones through from where I spent part of my childhood. Between the ages of 5 and 10 years old I lived in Bromley Cross and have fond memories of the area. It’s only the second time I’ve been to Jumbles, the first time being a couple of years ago.

During that first visit, I’d had a funny experience. Jumping back in time, as a 9 year old me and a friend managed to persuade a local newspaper shop owner to give us a job delivering newspapers, but because we were under 10 years old at the time, we could do it only if we did it together. Now I have a strong memory of a country lane me and this friend used to deliver newspapers on, because it had no street lights, and it was always dark because we did the job during the winter months after school, some of the houses were quite secluded and scary in the dark, from a 9 year old’s point of view anyway.

Now jump forwards 39 years, having walked around Jumbles country park, I was completely unaware it would bring me back on to the very same lane (at the back of the park) that I’d delivered papers on all those years before. I hadn’t actually ever seen the place during the daytime, yet I had a strong sense of deja vous as we came onto the lane from Jumbles, and I said to my wife, “I wonder if this is the lane?” I felt a need to walk further down to see if it would bring me to Turton railways station, which it surely did. A very strange experience for me at the time, but it was great to rekindle some of those old memories again.

Anyway here are a few images from our most recent visit that we took using our phone camera …