First entry for lonnings exhibition

I AM grateful to Egremont historian and poet E Alan Read for contributing the first 'exhibit' for the lonnings exhibition planned for Florence Mine next year. It's a poem based on Lovers' Lonning which can be found in St Bees..

Lovers Lonning, St Bees

Lovers' Lonning

It was in Lovers' Lonning,

A place of tranquillity, peace and calm,

Where the pathway is so narrow,

Only two could walk together

Preferably arm in arm,

An ideal lonning for sweethearts,

To overcome shyness, it is so benign.

Tall hedgerows on either side,

Where in sunshine or in shower,

A perfectly wonderful trysting lane,

Where any twosome can stroll with grace,

In moonlight or 'neath a star-filled sky,

Couples find the joy of Lovers' Lonning,

Where closeness is never out of place.

It was on a balmy summer evening,

In the month of June he met them,

Three lovely buxom young maidens,

All decked out in pretty summer dress,

A blond, a brunette and a raven-haired

Brown-eyed beauty, who immediately

Caught his roving eyes.

They introduced themselves without shyness,

As Madeline, Rosemary and Charlotte,

All such lovely well-befitting names,

So in return he told them he was Ronald,

Known to all his friends as Bing,

From that informal unexpected meeting,

Everything went with a swing.

It was here in this chance meeting of equanimity,

Ron and the raven-haired Charlotte became enamoured,

A word that before that first meeting,

Had never entered their vocabulary,

On a daily basis, tho' now it did,

At every opportunity and always would,

Lovers' Lonning now meant all it should.

Lovers' Lonning from then reached out to them,

It became their special trysting lane,

Walking there regularly entwined,

In each other's arms, they have blest it,

Where they are beyond all others' reach.

E Alan Read