Back to North Wales

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Thursday 23rd July
Back to North Wales
As expected the truck’s came and went with some regularity throughout the night making sleep an on and off affair.We will next time ask for a room on the other side of the hotel if we pick up that a road passes by a front room we are allocated.
Todays drive was going to be a bit of an unknown factor as the roads in Britain seem to be easy to work out when you want to drive north or south.Going east or west however tends to mean more changes of the roads you take to get to your destination.
With another fine day in prospect we left on the A57(a road we won’t easily forget after yesterdays trial in finding the hotel)towards the curiously named town of Worksop and immediately fell foul of getting out the other side of this working class town and further on the journey.So we doubled back to where we entered the town and took another route and this time we were on our way again.
We took the A619 south to avoid the major town of Sheffield and after crossing the busy M1 arrived into Staveley.The road was part rural and part residential housing and from what we could see there were a large number of manufacturing businesses and distribution centres in this part of England.
Morrisons is a great supermarket and to us has a bit more class about it than Tescos and in some ways,Sainsburys.And the quality of the fruit and vege has been better when we have shopped there.
The mix of semi rural and urban countryside continued as we drove further east through Chesterfield on the A619.
Some the properties in the semi rural areas were large with grand houses behind walls with serious looking gates keeping out the general public.
The countryside then started to change as we reached the Peak district and things changed back to a more rural sight with farmland and animals.
Arrival into the pretty,martket town of Bakewell is across a small river with arched bridge.The local church dominates the town on the hill behind the shopping precinct.
Parking was at a premium anywhere near the high street and we had to motor away from the centre to get to a car park area.It didn’t seem to be a pay and display area as other cars around us didn’t have stickers in their windows.We walked to the town and joined the throngs of visitors milling in the shopping area.Bakewell was certainly a popular town to come and stroll amongst the shops and have lunch by the river.
We climbed the hill to take a look at the church which had been built in three stages with the original part of the building dating from around 1100AD.It was more like a small cathedral than a church with a very tall ceiling giving a feeling that the building was bigger than it actually was.
Gretchen thought we should try one of the famous Bakewell tarts the town was named after.There were a number of bakeries in the town so it was easy to find the delicacy.We also bought a Peak Pastie and a beef pie for dinner tonight.
The car park wasn’t a great place to have lunch so we headed off further into the Peak District thinking that Buxton might have a park or something similar to stop at.
Like Bakewell,Buxton,was a market town and looked like it was worth a stop but we couldn’t find a car park and so drove on further up a hill that took us to a plateau that resembled the moors of Yorkshire.On the top and before the road headed back down a long hill,we found the Cat and Fiddle Pub,in the middle of basically nowhere.
We had lunch here where at least there was a view to enjoy while we ate our bread rolls.The pub looked inviting but we resisted and headed down the winding hill road to Macclesfield.
The A537 took us to Knutsford and then a series of roads to the outskirts of Chester where we joined the A55 until we noticed the sign directing us to Queensferry.This was the place we were looking for when we came back from Ireland several weeks ago and became horribly lost.
This time the A548 was the only road in front of us and we travelled along heading for our overnight stay in Prestatyn.
Finding our hotel was easy and our instructions for once proved correct to a tee.

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Comments

[Rin]

Photo...
It's like a 'Where's Wally' photo of Dad there! :-)