YOU'RE STAYING WHERE??

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It was time to move again. We were booked onto a site in Ashbourne Derbyshire in a few days so needed to find somewhere in between Ripon and Ashbourne. Now I’m not sure if many of you have studied the area on the map between Ripon and Derbyshire, but lets just say that spoilt for choice are not the words I would use to describe it. Leeds, Bradford, Doncaster and Rotherham were just a few of the many delightful choices we had. We settled on a site just a few miles from Barnsley. Now I know what you’re probably thinking, but the site was tucked away in the middle of the countryside on a farm. If you didn’t have to leave the site then you would never guess where you were. Once we were set up we soon found that we had no TV signal, no mobile signal, no internet and neighbours who tripped our electricity out every time they switched their water heater on. We decided that we had better leave the site for a few hours to get some wine to get us through the next couple of days!

When we drove out we found that entire streets had been boarded up and many local pubs were also derelict. There were still more open pubs per square mile that any other place we have visited, but unfortunately none of them looked in any way inviting. As for the rest of Barnsley…. well if you want to MOT your car then there is plenty of choice. Every other business is a garage offering it for 50p cheaper than the last. Also there must be an awful lot of gyms in Barnsley because everyone seems to own a tracksuit. Apart from that there are a couple of really good farm shops and a shopping centre which for some reason is called The Alhambra? Lastly, so as not to break with tradition, we had some really noisy neighbours who decided that they would invite 5 car loads of their friends over for a night of drinking around a fire pit. And that concludes or stay in Barnsley.

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