Life in Northern Towns

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...

I discovered Ashbourne in Derbyshire through taking detours back to Manchester when the A40 or M6 had been jammed with traffic.  As I passed through, I noticed the town seemed rather nice and I made a mental note to return here to visit. Getting to Ashbourne from Manchester takes about an hour and a half to drive.  There are several ways to get there and the route I took was the M60, M62, M6, A50, B5030, B5032 and A52.  I think there are better ways to get there, that’s for sure, and Neil was getting queasy on the B road part of the journey.  We parked up in Sainbury’s car park and you have to pay to park for a maximum of 2 hours, but you can get the parking fee refunded in the supermarket. It was a grey and drizzly kind of day - not the best to go visiting towns, to be honest with you.  After parking up, the first order of our day was to get food.  As we didn’t want a pub lunch, we found Billy’s fish and chip shop in the centre of town and thankfu...

The first time I came to Knaresborough was on a school trip to visit Mrs Shipton’s Cave and the Dropping Well where you could, at the time, petrify your handbag on the little waterfall.  The tour guide took great pleasure in telling us 10 year olds about how people used to get hung, drawn and quartered, with their bodies being left on display by the river as a lesson to others.  I’m not sure many of us had pleasant dreams that night, but that piece of knowledge has stuck with me ever since.  This time, we had just visited nearby Wetherby and so decided to go to Knaresborough.  There is supposed to be a B road route between the two towns, but as ever I missed the right road and ended up doing a detour via the A1.  When we got there we found a little car park behind the main shops on Chapel Street - £1 for 2 hours.  Knaresborough is a pretty little town packed full of characterful buildings, dating back hundreds of years.   One thing I did not...

It was our first road trip of the New Year so where do we go?  We’ve been to loads of places in the North over the years, so finding somewhere new to go that’s nice can be more miss than hit.  So to ensure a hit on our day out, I wanted to go to Knaresborough as we’d been there before but I hadn’t written about it.  However, to make that journey worthwhile we needed to visit another town. I dusted off the atlas and found Wetherby, which is about 8 miles from Knaresborough – well, that is if you take the right route. Getting to Wetherby from Manchester is straightforward enough – M60, M62, M1, A1, exit junction 45 and then follow the signs into Wetherby on to the A168 and A661.  I was very pleased to see on the way into town, a sign stating “Historic Market Town” – Wetherby looked to be a promising visit after all.  As for parking, I got a little confused and ended up going through the town.  Luckily we found 2 hours free parking on the edge of Wetherby...

The final stop on the Welsh part of our road trip was Abergavenny , on the edge of the Brecon Beacons.  We had no clue what to expect there and were curious to find out. We parked at the local car park on the edge of the main shopping area – it was £1 for 2 hours, but on a market day it’s better to get the £1.50 ticket for 3 hours. Abergavenny is an old-school sort of town and very down to earth.  The central shopping precinct is a typical, functional concrete mid-20 th century building with many high street names.  However surrounding the precinct is where you will find more interesting shops and some interesting period buildings.  Many of the buildings are in typical Welsh style with painted rendered walls – all of which add character to the town.  The two buildings which stood out for me were the Abergavenny Baptist Church and Abergavenny Market Hall.  Both buildings used dark rough-hewn stone and sandstone in their construction to create a dis...

The base we chose for our South Wales excursion was Hay-on-Wye .  Obviously I’d heard about it due to the annual book festival, but also because my friend is a book fanatic and has visited this place to stock up his library. Getting to Hay-on-Wye from anywhere is a chore as it’s in the middle of nowhere, well, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons close to the English border.  As we were coming from Manchester we had the choice of three routes – the A5 through the west of Shropshire, the A49 through the east of Shropshire or the longer route via the M6/M5.  Unfortunately the first two routes were ruled out for us due to the Creamfields festival in Cheshire, so we had to take the M6/M5 route.  All I’m saying is: don’t be fooled into thinking that driving on a Sunday down the M6 will be a breeze – roadworks plus Birmingham equals traffic hell.  That’s before the random cross country journey that involved finding an alternative route because of a car accident....

All I knew about Chepstow was that it had a racecourse and that’s it.  I didn’t know it was in Wales as its name sounds English, but apparently Chepstow is the English name for the place. We took the scenic route along the River Wye from Monmouth  to Chepstow along the A466.  It’s only 16 miles, though as it’s a winding road it took much longer than anticipated and not good for passengers who get travel sick.  The plus points of choosing this route is that it’s pretty and you pass Tintern Abbey.  Sadly we didn’t have time to stop, but it did look good. Parking in Chepstow is straightforward as there’s a big car park behind the main shopping area which costs £1 for 2 hours. Chepstow is quite a compact town and certainly not as busy as Monmouth, but that could be just the time of day.   The architecture is rather mixed with new developments amongst the medieval and historic buildings.   At the top of the hill there is the Town Gate which dat...