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