Life in Northern Towns

The drive from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Stoke-on-Trent was meant to be 11 minutes (3 miles), but it was more like 30 minutes.  What was really confusing driving to Stoke-on-Trent were the signs for the civic centre and the city centre.  Were we on the right road?  After several detours we found ourselves parking up under Go Outdoors after making a failed attempt at parking in another carpark.  There was a strange smell in the carpark and if we had stayed there much longer I’m sure we would have got high. We were hungry and had a quick wander to see what food options were on offer.  In the end we went to Nom Restaurant , which was surprisingly busy for a wet Wednesday afternoon.  I had a burger which was lovely and Neil had a Pulled Pork Dog.  The food was nice and we shared a dessert.  Thankfully our waiter wasn’t as over eager as the person who seated us – what’s with this over-friendly American style service?  I’m just happy with poli...

For the next couple of posts, I’ve resurrected Life in Midlands Towns . As we’ve visited so many northern towns, we are now struggling to find places to go so we’ve had to branch out. Recently I’ve been travelling to work and have been passing through Staffordshire quite a bit.  About an hour’s drive from Manchester, I thought it would be good to check out a couple of towns there on a day off. The first on the list was Newcastle-Under-Lyme which is just a few miles from Stoke-on-Trent.  The journey from Manchester to Newcastle-under-Lyme in fairly straightforward – M60, M62, M6, exit Junction 16, A500 and A34.  It is well sign-posted and they are fond of the roundabout on the A34.  We had a good run on the M6, but for sanity purposes it’s always good to travel along here outside of rush hour, otherwise you will get stuck in traffic. It was a bit confusing trying to find parking in Newcastle, and after a spin around the town centre we got parked up in th...