30/10/25 Hanging Out in Huddersfield, Part Two.

- November 02, 2025

We didn't do as much exploring in Huddersfield as we would have liked, what with family working and Roger's limited tolerance of sitting. That didn't stop me getting out to run errands around town though. Town was a little dreary (possibly due to the weather) but had some fine old buildings around the place.

Downtown Huddersfield.

Early one afternoon I took myself into a restaurant and enquired of the young lady at the counter if she could provide a gift voucher for the purposes of thank-yous to our delightful hosts.

"Of course!" she said, in a delightful Huddersfield accent that strained my listening skills to their limits. "But we don't have any vouchers left so I'll do you a bit of paper instead."

She snipped a corner off a notepad and signed it with a flourish. "There you go, love! How much do you want to put on it?"

I was a little unsure of the effectiveness of this voucher. "How will the restaurant know it's legitimate if you're not at the counter when the customer uses it?" I asked.

She was nonchalent and supremely confident. "I'll just email all the staff so they know to look out for it."

Fantasies filled my mind: my loved ones coming to the restaurat in 6 months time, presenting a tatty bit of paper with a scrawled signature and confidently expecting it to be honoured to the tune of two grand dinners and a substantial payment of British Pounds. "Let me think about it," said I, with no intention of thinking about it at all. "I'll get back to you." Which was a fib.

I gave up on surprising my loved ones and just asked them point blank what would be a suitable Christmas gift, which was probably what I should have done in the first place.

While I was out and about on my restaurant expedition I dropped in to the Huddersfield Train Station to book seat reservations for our return trip to London.

Huddersfield's claim to fame: born in Huddersfield and twice Prime Minister. He stands outside the railway station, looking as though he's in a hurry to be somewhere else.

We've been all over the place using a Eurail Pass which made things very easy in Europe and makes things kind-of easy in the UK, with a distinctly British flavour and a few extra steps.

Railway building, now a restaurant.

I had booked our tickets with the Eurail pass but I had to book the seat reservations directly with the rail company, and the UK had a confusing number of rail companies each providing services on different pieces of railway. In theory I could book the seat reservations with any of them but in practice this had been a little... complicated so far. I'll spare you the details of my long conversation at the Huddersfield station ticket office, but I came away with my precious seat reservations in the end and I suspect the ticket oficer rolled their eyes and complained about stupid Australian tourists who couldn't understand a single word that was said to them.

The Lion Chambers lay opposite the railway station, sporting a grand statue of a lion.

The building was constructed in 1852 with some squabbling about the design. The statue was dropped while being hoisted into place in 1853, causing damage to the "royal brute." After 120 years the royal brute was a little the worse for wear, so in 1978 it was replaced with the fibreglass replica we see today. Why did Huddersfield go to all that trouble to have a lion on the building? No idea.

Evening came early to the north of England. By the time I got myself home and organised for my afternoon walk it was quite dark and raining a little bit so I had to walk twice as fast to outpace the dark and the raindrops. Just up the road a little concrete path took me behind rows of terrace houses to Middlemont Pond.

I don't thing Middlemont Pond will be overrun by tourists any time soon.

Beyond the pond I found another pathway to the Grimescar Dike, which looked for all the world like a creek to me.

It was all the things that made exploring fun: damp, leafy, dark, and a little bit muddy. Little paths went every which way, inviting further exploration. Birds tweeted goodnights to each other as they settled in for the night and raindrops pattered gently on the leaves.