We recently enjoyed a great visit to Bury (named after the Saxon word for “a stronghold”) in Greater Manchester. Here’s a brief history of the town.
We stayed at Burrs Country Park Caravan Club Site on a serviced pitch (No. 89), and were pretty impressed with every aspect of our stay from the location, site facilities and pitch size to the numerous activities, things to do and eateries/pubs in the area. There’s a Cluster Sculpture Trail to explore, and the River Irwell passes the entrance to the Country Park.
We had pre-booked our stay some time ago, having bought tickets to attend a ‘Rail Ale Journey’ – a guided day trip on a steam train along the East Lancashire Railway from Bury. We thoroughly enjoyed this fun, friendly and sociable day out and can definitely recommend. We even travelled the return journey in the comfort of an old first class carriage which ended the day beautifully.
It was a good job we’d booked our camping stay in advance because the site was fully booked due to it being the weekend of a visit from the much-loved and most famous steam engine of all – The Flying Scotsman 
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As further luck would have it, we managed to bag a pitch backing directly up to the railway line allowing us to watch The Flying Scotsman, the Witherslack Hall and the City of Wells steam locomotives as they chugged past Jolly 
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There’s a railway station at the site, making the railway easily accessible right from your doorstep.
There’s something mesmerising about the sight and sound of steam locomotives and it was a treat to see them up close. These 2 videos were taken from our pitch:-
We’ll let the photos tell the story of the rest of our weekend.
For food and drink we visited the onsite pub, The Brown Cow, which was busy, buzzing, and great for a pint but we didn’t eat here so can’t comment. Just a little further out from the site on the road towards town is another pub called The Garsdale Country Inn. This was also good for a drink but the food was just ok, nothing special at all so we probably wouldn’t bother eating there again.
We found a lovely Indian Restaurant in town and can recommend it. Excellent food and very good value too – The Jewel in the Crown.
We hadn’t actually realised just how much there is to do in Bury, and will definitely be re-visiting in the future. Next time we’ll probably take the bikes and explore further afield.
ONWARD!
Suzie & Bri
THE JOLLY MAJESTIC 