Tuesday 29 - Leek & Biddulph

Where are Bertie & Erica? They are sitting on adjacent pitches at Leek Camping & Caravanning Club site where our five-night stay has come in at £132 and some pence, for hardstanding with electricity. 

Weather: not as good as forecast with a persistently overcast sky keeping the temperature down until late afternoon when it finally got into the 20s. 

We are on holiday! Some might consider that our entire lives are one long holiday, but I make the distinction that usually we just travel around and use Bertie as our mobile house, living pretty normal lives and not trying to pack everything in as one might on holiday. This week we have come away with both Bertie and Erica, with Bertie providing fixed accommodation whilst Erica facilitates day trips. 

The day tripping started yesterday, even though we didn't leave home until late morning and didn't arrive at the campsite until gone 1pm (that being the earliest permitted arrival time). We didn't tarry; as soon as Bertie had been settled onto a pitch and plugged into the mains, we jumped into Erica and headed the 11 miles over to Biddulph Grange Gardens. That is the very National Trust property that Mick visited without me the week before last, whilst I was out on the Staffs Way, but he'd mainly been in their cafe with just a quick look around the nearest section of the gardens. 

This time, we did the place more justice, and discovered that there was more there than just a simple garden, with the hall's original drawing room being accessible, an information display in an underbuilding (an open cellar, is how I'd describe it, if that's a thing?), a geological gallery with a fossil display (which used to be the public entrance to the gardens, back in 1850 when it first opened) and a Chinese pagoda, together with a couple of other small follies. 

I wouldn't have classed myself as an appreciator of gardens, but I was taken with this one and it was well worth the visit.  

Look at those hedges! Mick talked to one of the hedge-tending gardeners, who said that they get them that straight by eye and by long experience, not by using level-sticks or lasers. 

The quantity of trees masks what is hidden between them. Unfortunately, I failed to take any photos of those things (or maybe that's a good thing, that I was so taken with looking at the surroundings that I didn't even think to take a snap)

A very poor shot of the dahlia walk. 

The Pinetum. We later walked the Lime Avenue. 

The hall itself is privately owned. Mick tells me that there are currently two apartments therein for sale, one at £700k, the other at £1.1m. 
 

Friday 25 September - Kinver

Weather: One short, light shower. Decidedly cool compared to recent norms (but still pretty decent for the time of year). 

The reason for staying in Wolverley for two nights was that I wanted to visit the cave houses at Kinver, and they're only open Friday to Sunday. I've been told that I've been there before, but as a child, when they were still openly accessible (they're now a National Trust Property, with a couple having been restored) but I have no memory of it. 

Arriving at the same parking area where Mick picked me up on Wednesday, we didn't immediately rush to the National Trust entrance, but first walked up onto Kinver Edge, then along to where the Staffordshire/Worcestershire boundary runs across it, which I believe is the start/end point of the Staffordshire Way. 

The only indication that this is true is subtle: there's a waymarker post that only has a Staffs Way marker on one side of it, not needing one the other side as the Way doesn't continue in that direction. As start/end of routes go, it's not a reliable way of marking it, given how many other places along the route have equally haphazard waymarking, for entirely different reasons.  

I'd intended for us to do a circuit, but didn't remember that until we'd already walked half way back along the ridge. So, we continued as we were, then on past where we'd gained the edge, over the hill fort and down to the cave houses, where we walked three sides of its boundary to find the entrance. 

There's not an awful lot at the property, but I'd not expected much, so I wasn't disappointed. As is our norm, we started out in the cafe (arriving at the tail end of an organised group, giving us quite a wait to be served), before visiting the three cave houses, two of which are restored and the other is just a large open room. All interesting enough. 

And then we went home, getting ahead of Friday afternoon traffic, but it has to be said that it's a rather slow, fiddly route from Kinver, having to negotiate whole chunks of built-up areas. 

 

A good view from the edge when we first got up there, but as the rain came in, it got severely curtailed 

Start of the Staffordshire Way (because there's a waymarker)

End of the Staffs Way (because there's no waymarker). There's no county boundary markers either.
 

 

Cave houses. The last inhabitants moved out in the 1960s. 

Thursday 24 September - Wolverley

Where was Bertie? He was still at Wolverley C&CC Site 

Weather: After a cool night (5 degrees said the forecast and we wished we'd put a blanket on the bed), a fine day with a high of 19 degrees. 

Our intention to walk the 3.5k along the canal into Kidderminster for a look around and a cafe visit got modified when I picked three locations at random in the town on Google StreetView. My random picks may have been bad, but it didn't look an inviting destination, so instead we headed the other way to the village of Cookley. 

The walk was pleasant enough, with a few narrow boats on the move and with the route being pleasantly tree lined, with one section of the waterway having been hewn through the sandstone. As for the cafe: if I was to be charitable I would say that it was an interesting and memorable experience ... but the words 'Acorn Antiques' also sprang to mind - quite appropriately too as it was located in an antiques/tat shop. 

The real low-light was that my cup and saucer were filthy, and it wasn't tea-staining, but some sort of dregs of food all over them. In fact, I wondered if the saucer had been used to feed the owner's dog (which sat quietly on a chair most of the time we were there) and not washed. Did I complain and ask for a clean set? No, because apparently I'm going soft in my older age, and the two ladies running the place were trying so hard to be friendly that I worked on the basis that the hot water makes a cup of tea self-sterilising (which is the basis on which I have never washed my own mug during a multi-week backpack), and here I am a week later, still alive. 

Back at Bertie, most of the rest of the day was spent watching the cricket (ODI against Sri Lanka, with a disappointing result), with an interlude when we nipped to the pub next door for tea. The pub was far less entertaining than the cafe, which was a good thing!

 

Wednesday 23 September - Staffordshire Way (Pt 6)

Where's Bertie? He's at Wolverley Camping & Caravanning Club Site at a total cost, for 2 nights, of £40.55 for a grass pitch without electricity.

Weather: A few light showers, but otherwise sunny intervals and warm. 

I needed Mick to drive me back to the Way this morning, but I wasn't in any urgent rush to get going, so we had a moderately leisurely start. At the other end of the day I could have walked all the way to tonight's campsite, which would have added 3km onto the end of the Staffordshire Way, but with the earliest permitted arrival time at today's campsite being, 1pm and with feasible intermediate meeting points, I opted to first meet him in a cafe in Enville, then in the parking area on the fringe of Kinver Edge, with Kinver being the decision point as to whether I would stop or go on.

Mick had already had coffee and cake by the time I arrived in Enville, so I just had a pot of tea - perfectly timed to arrive at the table just as I walked through the door. With more perfect timing, it rained sharply whilst we were in there. I'd set out a couple of hours earlier in a very light mizzle that only lasted for a few minutes, and another bit of mizzle hit not long after I left Enville, but it soon passed through. 

The last four kilometres of the Way are decidedly undulating, but each little ascent was countered by a nice runnable descent. 

I didn't do the final ascent, up to the Way's end point in the middle of Kinver Edge, as Mick said he'd join me to do it as part of a circuit on Friday, when we intend to return to see the cave houses (not open today). By the time we'd had lunch in Bertie (during which time the heaviest rain of the day fell, but aside from the perfect timing of me not being out in it, it wasn't anything remarkable), it was gone 1pm so to the campsite we came.  

Over the last couple of weeks, I've covered 110km of the 158km-long Staffordshire Way. Of the bits that I've missed, I know that the 12km on the canal near/through Rugeley then across Cannock Chase are mainly good and I've no doubt that the final 1.5km onto Kinver Edge will be lovely too. That leaves 34km currently unknown, but even so my early assessment of 50/50 good and bad needs to be revised significantly upwards in favour of good. I really did wonder at one point whether this route only had merit for its first 20km, it's final few km, and across Cannock Chase in the middle, with the rest being at best mediocre stitching together of those features, but I'm pleased to say that fear seems to be unfounded. 

That said, a bit of maintenance and a scattering of new Way Markers would definitely not go amiss!

This snap isn't overly representative, but the wooded ridge of Abbot's Castle Hill was pleasant

Forest Covert was also a pleasant woodland with a myriad of paths. There were waymarks, but often not in the most helpful of places. 

After good paths all the way through, the correct exit from Forest Covert wasn't obvious. The chap who recorded the gpx file I was using detoured through the field to the left of the boundary as shown in this photo (this is looking back into the woods); I tried a different path but ended up on a road adjacent to the woods. Having walked the perimeter to see where I should have come out, I saw that the route runs along the right hand side of this field boundary. I was glad not to have taken it!

Spot the stile. It'd be easy to continue straight on along the field, but if you look carefully the path goes over a stile, through all those brambles on the left. 

Path

View

Path

With there being a lot of sandstone hereabouts, I probably shouldn't have been surprised at finding sandy tracks, akin to walking along a beach. 
  

 

Tuesday 22 September - Staffordshire Way (Pt 5)

Where's Bertie? He's at Druidswood CL at Claverley, at a cost of £20 including electricity. 

Weather: After a misty start, sunny and warm, then clouding somewhat for sunny intervals this afternoon. 

With last night's campsite being conveniently close to the Staffs Way, I was able to walk from Bertie's door this morning, leaving Mick to do necessary chores and just generally hang around for an hour or so before he set out towards our meeting point, in Upper Aston. 

As is often the case with Waymarked routes (and understandably so), they take indirect routes in towns and villages so as to go past shops/cafes/accommodation. So, rather than getting back onto the canal for the direct route, or indeed, taking one of the minor roads that would have cut off a corner, I stayed true to the route and went via the village centre. That took me past the high school that I narrowly avoided attending (their uniform involved a straw boater, which I consider as good a reason not to go there now as I did when I was 13) and also gave me the opportunity to nip into the Co-op, although it wasn't a productive detour as they didn't have a pouch of Capri Sun squash, which is what I was after (having run out of water on yesterday's outing, and not having packed an extra soft flask). 

Indirect route out of Brewood 

The first notable feature of the day was when I crossed 'Upper Avenue' a lengthy avenue of mature trees, at the end of which, albeit some distance away, I could see there was a grand hall. I'm not sure how I failed to realise at the time (and I clearly didn't look at the map) that this was Chillington Hall. Having gone to school nearby, it's a name I know well, but I don't recall having ever seen it before. 

A detour to the Co-op in Codsall netted me the extra drink that I was after, then once clear of the village I was onto a nice shady green lane over to Oaken, where I walked past the childhood home of a school friend (with whom I am still vaguely in touch). 

Once in the grounds of Wrottesley Hall (if I saw anything of the hall, I've already forgotten it), an enormous field cropped with potatoes had to be negotiated; that was unpleasant given the lack of path. Walking adjacent to the golf course a while later, I found a convenient fallen branch upon which to perch to change my socks (with a heavy dew, I'd set out in waterproof socks, but my feet were now too hot), and in doing so I semi-blocked the path. It's thus predictable, in a day in which I passed only 3 people outside of villages, that two of them came along, on bikes, just as I had a shoe off. 

I put some more thought today into why this section of the Way was so agreeable whereas the Uttoxeter and Abbots Bromley sections aren't, even thought they're all just across farmland. I think the fact that there's so much arable land hereabouts (no fields of bullocks to negotiate), giving huge fields and thus fewer field boundaries (fewer stiles, better views) helps. There were also a few bits today that went through equestrian land, where the footpath is fenced off from the fields (can't possibly go wrong and don't get chased by the horses) as well as a few old or ancient green lanes. All of that seems to be more agreeable than endless grazing fields (or worse, abandoned fields now taken over by thistles, nettles and brambles).

The person who recorded the gpx file that I'm following had clearly had a route finding issue here...

... so I was on the alert not to replicate it. Turns out I did an even worse job, but in my defence, I followed this sign...

and at the bottom of the field I got to this one...

...so there's a clear discrepancy between what's on the ground and what's on the map - and I did check the most recent versions and both 1:50k and 1:25k, just in case they were at variance.

In between Seisdon and Upper Aston, I left the Way for today and took to the roads to Chloe's Cafe Barn in Upper Aston. There, as arranged, I found Mick. He'd had coffee and cake in the cafe, but had then repaired to Bertie to read his book, having found neither phone signal nor wifi in the cafe to be able to do any work. The campsite had requested ten minutes notice that we were about to arrive, but we were unable to comply, with neither of us able to get a phone signal as we came to leave. 

It was then just a mile or so drive along a skinny lane to the campsite.  

After a late lunch, we walked into Claverley. This village is an 8-mile drive from where I grew up and I know the name, yet it completely surprised me. What an olde worlde place it is! The church was even more surprising, boasting 'the Bayeux tapestry of England' - a wholly inaccurate description of a wall painting, but said wall painting dates from the 13th century, and was uncovered during renovations in 1902. Recent signatures in the guest book included visitors from Arizona, North Carolina and New Zealand. Who knew Claverley was on the tourist trail?! 
 

Chillington Hall in the distance, at the end of the avenue of trees 

A pleasant, shaded green lane

Rather less pleasant - the 'path' on the edge of a massive field planted with potatoes

Said potato field. See that cloud of dust over there, coming off the back of a plough? "At least I'm not in that field" I thought. Turned out that's exactly where I was going, but fortunately nowhere in the vicinity of the tractor

Looking left in the next enormous field...

...and looking right...

...and where I'm headed. 

Many years ago, on one of our big walks, we walked along a lane, the verges of which were strewn with diet coke cans out of multipacks. We concluded that someone would have a can on their way to and/or from work each day and would finish it and throw it out of the window at approximately the same point in their journey. This was similar, but with red bull cans in various stages of decay, but rather than there being dozens as with the coke cans, here I would say there were hundreds.

 

Claverley. The church is just off to the right.

"The Bayeux tapestry of England". That's the church's inaccurate description, not mine!
  

Monday 21 September - Staffordshire Way (Pt 4)

Where's Bertie? He's at Anchorhold Campsite in Brewood, at a cost of £25 without electricity. 

Weather: sunny and warm (23 degrees)

Whilst we remain largely trapped at home whilst waiting for an appointment date to be set (for Mick to have an ultrasound on his eye - who even knew such things existed?), Bertie was getting itchy tyres and feeling like he was overdue a trip out - particularly as he's seen Erica galavanting off for overnight trips. We thus conceded to his wishes, and I planned to recce the Staffs Way between Cannock Chase and Kinver over the course of three days. 

I didn't need an early start, for the distances I would be doing, which gave us time to get Bertie packed and nip to a supermarket on our way to Cannock Chase. Lunch was then had in a large layby where decidedly dodgy activities were afoot, with various people hanging around shiftily in front of one particular set of bushes, before wandering off across the road into the undergrowth. They were all alone and none of them was dressed as you would expect for a turn around the Chase (particularly the one in a pencil skirt and stockings with lines up the back). Meanwhile, many users of the layby stared intently at us as they passed. 

With the clock about to strike 1pm, Mick dropped me just a little further along the road, and off I headed, almost immediately leaving Cannock Chase and heading to the village of Bednall. 

I'm not sure if it was the sunshine and warmth that caused me not to mind at all that I was, for much of the time, crossing and walking around field after field, but I think it helped that they were massive arable fields and I was often on higher ground, giving me relatively far-reaching views. That's not to say that there weren't trials: freshly ploughed fields with rough margins; overgrown sections (one ridiculously so) that have left me with tingly, nettled legs; a dog that leapt clean over a 6' fence and only came to a stop when it met with the end of my walking pole; and a horse that chased me across a field ... only for me to realise as I exited that I'd missed a turn half way across (I didn't go back). I also expect that some parts would have been far more arduous had ground conditions been wet. 

The final 3.5km were along a canal, about half way through which Mick phoned to alert me to a problem. He'd decided to head out to meet me, but found access to the tow-path to be closed. Whilst he was scouting around for a way to access it, I paused, as I just happened to be at a bridge where I had my last opportunity to escape the tow-path before the closure. Poring over the map and aerial images whilst Mick explored, I suggested that maybe he could try the pub car park, and sure enough, there were some steps onto the tow-path. That was a relief - I wouldn't have relished a detour around on roads.

Soon after Mick met me, he pointed across the canal and said that Bertie was but 100m away, on the other side of the water. Having not a packraft with us, and with no convenient passing boat to beg a lift across from, we walked the long way around.  

Leaving Bednall, this turned out to be the tamest patch of nettles on my route today, but being so early on, it didn't bode well. 

Deer. Not farmed, just loitering here en-masse.

Thankfully the walkway was sound, it was just the railings that were slouching

 

If you're going to have a park home around here, then I can't fault this for a location. 

I bet no one has walked via that 'public footpath' fingerpost for quite some time.

At least the line of the footpath was obvious in this field. 

My route goes straight on. This area was choked with Himalayan balsam, laced with brambles and nettles, giving slow progress for a couple of hundred metres. 

Path

Path

That's better

Where boat hulls go to die 

Friday 18 September - Staffordshire Way (Pt 3)

I had a vague thought of going out to look at another section of the Staffordshire Way today, but it wasn't until Mick asked me what my plan was, at 0840 this morning, that I finally looked at a map and did some measuring. Mick offered to drive for me, to facilitate a linear route, but I didn't think the benefit I'd get would warrant the number of miles and amount of sitting around that Mick would need to do (mainly because beyond Rugeley the route goes along a canal (and I know what that towpath is like), through the Shugborough Estate (I was there last week) and across Cannock Chase (with which I'm familiar)). So, I drove myself to Abbot's Bromley and set out for an out-and-back. 

Because there are so many long distance routes that criss-cross each other, it can be difficult to follow the exact route of the Staffs Way just from looking at the map, so last week I downloaded someone's recorded gpx file. Whoever recorded it managed to stay true to the Way for almost its entire length, one of the minor exceptions being in crossing the first field S of Abbots Bromley. I decided to see if I could follow the line of the RoW as shown on the map. 

Red = gpx file I'd downloaded. Blue dashes = route as marked on the map. There doesn't seem to be a lack of clarity of the true route of the Way here. Note that it most definitely crosses the stream.

Purple dotted line = outward route; Pink dotted line = return route; solid red = the downloaded gpx file

As you can see, on the outward leg, I crossed the stream. There was no bridge, so having already got a wet foot on a boggy bit, it was no hardship to get them wet again just a few paces later. Finding a stile at the bottom of the field, I thought I was on the right track, until I then saw that I could have just continued along the other side of the stream and crossed a different stile. Both had official Staffs County Council waymarks, and neither is on a RoW as shown on the map. 

Unremarkable fields took me to Blithfield Reservoir, which is a place I recall from numerous previous outings on the Staffordshire Way, albeit many years ago now. However, I almost always used to just walk across the dam (only once being challenged for trespass). There's also a perfectly good track that runs below the dam, but there's not a RoW the whole length of it, so the Way takes an indirect route through yet more unremarkable fields. This is the most frustrating routing that I've yet come across on the Way - the track along the dam is tarmac, and would not be negatively impacted by passing footfall, yet either no-one has tried to obtain a permissive way across it, or it has been refused, denying walkers the view across the huge reservoir. There is no view from the line of the Staffs Way. 

Frustrating routing of the Way at Blithfield
 

The worst field I had to cross today was this one:

The RoW had not been reinstated and the maize is now at full height. Fortunately, enough other people had gone through to give a trod to follow, whilst continuously brushing through the plants. 

I was only about 400m from my turn-around point when I got to this field:

My route went straight across, and as it was relatively freshly ploughed, I decided I didn't need to go across it only to come straight back. 

I opted to take roads from Colton to Stockwell Heath on the way back, thus avoiding the maize field and the next ones with long grass and no trodden line. Rejoining the Way I had some excitement as a whole herd of sizeable bullocks had appeared in a field that had been empty less than an hour earlier, and they were most interested in what I was doing. Some arm waving and stern words (when the gentle explanation of what I was doing didn't placate them) saw me safely through. 

At Blithfield Reservoir, I had every intention of trespassing down the track below the dam (the dam itself being blocked at the NE end by a spikey-topped set of gates), but the farmer was present and using a section of it to corral a herd of cows, so back around the fields I went. 

Back in the final field before I got back to the car - the one where I'd tried so hard to follow the line of the RoW on my outward leg - I stayed on the east side of the stream, but rather than walking straight through the boggy section, I tried to jump from tussock to tussock. Unfortunately, the second tussock wasn't as firm as I'd expected and I lost my left foot deep enough such that the only way I could extract myself involved putting my hands in too. I was most relieved when my shoes came out still attached to my feet, and it was a bonus that there was a stream a few feet away where I could wash the worst of the mud off before I got back to the car (where I had no spare shoes to don). 

I then discovered that there was no exit out of the field on the line of the Staffs Way as marked on the map. 

I've covered 40km on the Way in the last week, of which 20km has had merit. I intend to cover another chunk next week to find out if the merit/no merit split will edge up over 50%. 

 

Other photos: 

The first of three consecutive broken stiles, only just outside of Abbots Bromley (the two women you can see ahead of me in this snap really struggled with the next two). 

The two women in the snap above told me that money has been allocated to upgrade the Staffs Way. I hope this is true, and work may already be underway as I came across quite a few new stiles. 

Not many people use this 'path'. 

They'd not been present on my outward leg and I had to have stern words when they got too close for comfort (that being within 2 metres of me)

A view! Such a shame the route doesn't go over the dam, which would be the saving grace of this 8km section.