Monday 26th July
As it was raining (again) when we eventually surfaced this morning we decided not to go on up to Kidsgrove today. Ken read the Sunday paper, I can’t think why he didn’t read it yesterday! I was trying to finish a crossword which I was in no fit state to complete last night! Stuck, I asked Ken what he knew about Southern African desserts as I couldn’t think of one. He said ‘Do you mean Southern African deserts?’ Aaaagh, I had misread the clue and the answer was Kalahari!
After this display of intellectual brilliance on my part we took George for a nice, albeit rather soggy, walk along the Biddulph Valley Way and back through the Dane-in-Shaw Pasture. The Biddulph Valley way runs along where the Biddulph Valley railway used to bring coal from the potteries to Congleton. The Dane-in-Shaw Pasture is a SSI and the River Dane runs through it. It is all very attractive and I did take a few photos but it was raining quite hard by this time.
We returned George to the boat and had another chat with Penny, before she moved up to Kent Green. She had found a toad in her cratch. He was a lovely little thing and she let him go in the grass after he had done a wee in her washing up bowl! After we said goodbye to her we walked into town via the Biddulph Valley Way, which we discovered, takes about the same amount of time as going down the towpath and under the Dog Lane aqueduct.
As there is a Wetherspoon’s in the town it would have been churlish not to pop in for a pint of Abbott ………………… We wished we hadn’t as it was as cloudy as the sky! Ken got it changed for Pedigree which was just as bad! Next, he got it changed for Ruddles (which is cheaper although he didn’t receive the difference) and that was pretty rubbish too. We adjourned to Morrison’s for some shopping then went in the White Lion which is a nice pub despite the barmaid’s obvious lack of musical taste! And they had Abbott which was not cloudy, hurrah!
We will be off to Kidsgrove tomorrow so we can pick up our mail from the BW office at Red Bull, which just happens to be practically opposite the Red Bull pub, how convenient is that? Oh, by the way, we had a lovely pot roast for dinner tonight!
