Despite the miserable weather we ploughed on, over the
county border from Derbyshire to Staffordshire.
Uttoxeter is 14 miles from Ashbourne and it takes about 25 minutes, driving
via the A515, A50 and A518.
Before this visit I had very little knowledge of Uttoxeter
apart from the many signs I’ve passed over the year on the A50, the film
director Shane Meadows is from here and the Starbucks drive through at the
Uttoxeter service station.
We parked up behind the little precinct and wondered why
there was a queue at the ticket machine.
Apparently people were waiting until 3pm to get a free ticket for
parking, which is always good to know as these things aren’t always widely
signposted.
As we walked through the little precinct, the song “Ghost
Town” by The Specials went through my head.
It was a rather bleak concrete place from the 60s with lots of empty
units. There was a handful of shops still open but mainly charity shops.
When we made it out onto the main shopping street, things
improved. Firstly the street is pedestrianised
which always helps. Also the architecture
is definitely market town, with many buildings dating back at least a couple of
centuries. The butcher’s shop on Market Street had a little brown plaque
stating it was from Elizabethan times – you could tell with its Tudor wooden
beamed structure. At least the town
planners have kept the newer developments behind the main shopping streets to
retain the character of the place.
Luckily for us, there were a quite a few charity shops to
explore in Uttoxeter. I’m always a fan
of good second hand charity book shops and the Katherine House Hospice had a
particularly good one – plenty of books, well organised and reasonably priced. I bought Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” here, which
is a gripping read by the way. In the
other charity shops, Neil was also having some luck with vinyl records and CDs
and picked up some stuff – even some sheet music which happened to be in good
condition.
On the mobile phone front, Neil was getting tetchy as the
signal for O2 was pretty patchy, whilst on Vodafone there was a better
reception. Thank goodness for tethering
is all I can say.
There were a few independent shops in the town too, but it
must have been a slow day for them as the place was virtually empty as the wet
weather kept most people indoors. The
only place which was experiencing shopping action that day was the local ASDA.
The main thing I really took from this place was the Staffordshire
version of the Midlands accent. It’s not
as strong as you’d find in Birmingham or Wolverhampton, but it still has that burr
which is captured beautifully by Shane Meadows in his films and TV programmes. It’s fascinating how accents change with
geography and the first time I’d spotted this accent was on a previous trip to
Leek about 20 miles north west. I do
think it’s one of the most interesting things about the UK how accents can be
so radically different over relatively short distances, for example there are
only 30 miles between Liverpool and Manchester but the accents are poles apart.
I’m sure Uttoxeter on a race day feels like a different
place, but on the day we went we found it to be a dull but functional place. I’m sure it’s a nice place to live – the
countryside on the door step, but within easy reach of Stoke, Derby and
Stafford. I wouldn’t be that excited to
visit here again, but as ever with certain places the weather can really temper
your experience of a place.