Country: England
Distance travelled:
Weather: cloudy

I woke this morning at the unhealthy hour of 6.30am and, although I tried to stay abed for a while, I ended getting up to try to photograph the Grindon church and graveyard we had parked beside the night before. There was a very light mist but not enough to supply any ‘atmosphere’ to my attempts. The church itself isn’t that old, having been built in 1848 but had some rather cute gargoyles near the doors. Wikipedia tells me The Church is decorated with an interesting selection of stone carvings both inside and outside. While most of these are human heads, there are other animals, such as those climbing down the window frame on the south-west corner of the tower but unfortunately it was locked that early in the morning so I had no chance to see the inside.

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We trundled into the market town of Leek and found a service station which supplied us with LPG, diesel and water for our fresh water tank. The water was a very slow supply, it being the hose supplied for people to fill their wiper wash tanks and so forth but we managed eventually to fill our tank. We ended up having to tie the trigger handle up with a Velcro tie to keep it flowing and we spent the time sorting out a few internet issues we had and planning where we would go next.

From Leek, we went to the National Trust site of Biddulph Grange Gardens for a stroll which was quite pleasant as all their tulips were in flower. These gardens have the oldest stumpery in England which is not a garden feature I have come across before. It was strangely attractive and I can imagine all that slowly rotting wood would probably attract a serious amount of interesting fungi.

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Right at the end of our stroll around Biddulph gardens, I finally read the back page of the map we had been given and noted the reference to the sport of Geocaching the National Trust had made. When we reached the van, I fired up the geocaching app I have on my phone and found that there was several geocaches both in the gardens and the carpark, one of which was within 20m of where we had parked the van. I scrabbled around in the bushes looking for the closer one and finally found it after reading the supplied hint. Unfortunately, the other cache located in the carpark eluded me. I must try to remember to look for more when we are out.

We are parked up now beside Blithfield Reservoir. There is another motorhome here as well, the first we have seen at any of our wild camping sites. I hope this means it’s a good spot. There is the faint sounds of cars crossing the bridge not far from us and I think I heard some water birds in a quieter moment earlier. Mark has cooked dinner, I’ve washed the dishes, and I believe I won’t be long from bed.