Woolly says – The tipi’s had been put to bed for the winter months and the orchard returned to nature, Jo and I just had time to head back to Wales to unpack, wash clothes and repack ready for a very exciting date with some Stan’s. It had taken since 2020 to organise but finally Zoe, Jo and I had managed to coordinate dates and all we needed to do was get to the lake district.

Hour after hour passed as we zoomed along the M6 catching up on gossip and news as well as planning which Stan we were seeing first and if Ollie would be there. Arriving as my tummy started to let out loud roars of hunger we parked up, dropped our bags at the accommodation and set off to have a look round Ulverston and search for food.

Ulverston is a market town in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, it lies a few miles south of the Lake District National Park. The name Ulverston was first noted as Ulurestun in the Domesday Book of 1086 and a market charter was granted to the town in 1280 by Edward I. The town is probably best known though for its most famous son, Arthur Stanley Jefferson who was born there on the  16th June 1890 and became known as Stan Laural of the infamous double act Laural and Hardy…more about those in a bit.

It was a nice town with a large number of public houses and nice looking buildings, once it had been home to three theatres which seemed a lot for such a small place, dotted throughout were statues and memorials to the kings of comedy.

A lovely looking town clock caught our attention, erected in 1845 it stood on what had once been the towns savings bank, sadly the rest of the building was covered in scaffolding so it was impossible to see the fine building underneath.

Small, cobbled streets led us into the town square with its war memorial taking centre stage.

Tired and hungry we finally arrived at a place called the Mill which had all manner of quotes on the walls along with an incredible bowl of piping hot mussels and fries. Having filled up to the brim we headed to bed in preparation of our busy day ahead.

A quick breakfast and we wandered back through the town to the Laural and Hardy Museum.

The Museum started life as one man’s collection stemming from his lifelong love of ‘the boys’. Starting out as a few scrapbooks of photos, the collection grew over time, he opened a small museum in 1983 for the public to enjoy. In 1992 it had grown so much it required bigger premises and was moved to one of the old theatres. Bill Cubin’s collection is still growing and is now run by his grandson, Bill was also responsible for proving that Stan Laural had actually been born in the town when he came across his birth certificate in 1973.

The outside of the building was very run down and the interior wasn’t in great shape it was however crammed with pictures, photographs and well written information boards about the two men. Laurel and Hardy were a British-American comedy duo act during the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema, consisting of Englishman Stan Laurel (1890 to 1965) and American Oliver Hardy (1892 to 1957). Starting their career as a duo in the silent film era, they later successfully transitioned to “talkies”. From the late 1920s to the mid-1950s, they were internationally famous for their slapstick comedy, with Laurel playing the clumsy, childlike friend to Hardy’s pompous bully. Their signature theme song, known as “The Cuckoo Song”, “Ku-Ku”, or “The Dance of the Cuckoos” (by Hollywood composer T. Marvin Hatley) was heard over their films’ opening credits, and became as famous for them as their bowler hats.

Costumes that had been used in their films covered several walls and one area held some of the furniture from Stans house in Argyle Street, including family portraits.

Making full use of the former theatre stage we sat and watched some of the clips from there films before moving into an area with an incredible amount of memorabilia of the two men covering every spare shelf and table.

It had made for an excellent start to the day but it was time to move on to ready ourselves for the meeting with the next Stan who lived at the South Lakes Zoo. Opened in 1994 by David Gill the fifty acre site housed all manner of animals. We headed towards the first of the pens to meet up with the giraffes who were busy being fed before arriving at the rather orange looking rhino’s.

Entering a walk through area Zoe was delighted to find her second favourite animals, capybaras, wandering around and even happier to be able to hand feed and stroke them, meanwhile I sat and chatted to one of the oversized Guinea pigs who told me all about his life at the zoo.

Lemurs swung through the trees and raced across the paddock s emu’s and ostriches enjoyed pecking food pellets from the hands of the visitors.

Getting ever closer to Stanley we paused to read the sad stories of extinction that exist in the world before checking out the penguin population who entertained us with the water aerobics.

As the rain intensified we found that the sensible animals had headed inside to keep dry leaving us with empty pens, the exception being the giant tortoises who were busy racing around there enclosure.

The giant tortoises were also bunk mates with what we hoped would be the star of the day, Stanly the Sloth.

Stanley was a two toed sloth and had arrived at the zoo after he was smuggled into the country. Zoe and my level of excitement knew no bounds as we left Jo to wait in the rain and went to meet the man himself.

The keepers told us about his diet and habits, a very fussy eater he did however seem delighted with my offering of some red pepper which he directly took from the skewer. Zoe had the biggest grin ever as she oohed and arrhed over her favourite animal in the world, all to soon our time with Stan was over and we left him to nap and headed outside to the other bedraggled human who although not involved in the experience was as happy as us with the photographic evidence.

Although wet and miserable it had been an amazing day, well what isn’t amazing about meeting a sloth!