We went to the Official World Blackpudding Throwing Championship. I saw an announcement in the Mill, and maybe as we settle in more we'll start to be blase about this type of thing, but we're not there yet. It was in the village of Ramsbottom. I will know I've assimilated when I can say things like that without smirking.*

I would guess that 80% of the people the Ramsbottom-boundbus from central Manchester were going to this event. We passed the Aldeh. We got off the bus, followed the crowd with some direction as to the orientation of the various lines, and after a brief wait paid our £2 to a guy hooked up to an oxygen tank for three black squishy balls and commemorative certificate. The goal was to stand with your foot on a piece of gold spray-painted grating (significance unknown), throw your fake black puddings underhand, and knock as many Yorkshire puddings as possible off the scaffold (the Yorkshire puddings, at least, were real). The announcer said we were the first Americans of the day.

We were about as successful as you'd think. The winner, I learned later, knocked off six Yorkshires.

After we made our tosses we ate our £4 Meal Deal lunches on the train platform (which I later realized we should have bought platform tickets to do, whoops) and watched the restored steam trains carrying rail buffs. Other than the toss, where a crowd was steadily building despite the drizzle, there wasn't a ton to do besides browse. A few small carnival booths and rides that I heartlessly nixed. The perfectly utilitarian yarn store: well-stocked enough that I found the supplies I needed for an upcoming class, but was not seriously tempted beyond that. The two stores selling equistrian gear and the caliber of items in the five charity shops we inspected suggested a well-heeled population. There was a large antique store with such a dense and varied array of stuff that I was too overwhelmed to buy anything but N got a £1 grab bag of plastic junk including some small toys in varying states of usability and what Google image search revealed to be half of an epilator.

My hazy goal had been to spend roughly the same amount of time in Ramsbottom as we had spent getting there (15 min walk, ~25 min tram, 30 min bus), and after a hot beverage everyone was ready to head home. It felt like a trek for a very short activity-maybe if it hadn't been so blech out we would have lingered and watched other people making their throws a little longer? But the alternative could have been rattling around in our sparsely furnished but already impressively dirty house, or trying to figure out what is open on Sunday (hint: nothing), so I'd call our first outing beyond Manchester proper a net positive. N asked if we can come back in a future year and try again, so we'll have to practice our underhand toss.

*Thank God we didn't end up taking the apartment T saw in Chorlton-cum-Hardy