Jack Barrow

Day 17 to 20 - Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire

After leaving Cheshire I headed into the Peak District. One thing I knew about Staffordshire was that that it forms part of the Peak District so I thought go for the impressive landscapes if nothing else. So my criteria was somewhere where the map shows a camp site in that part of Staffordshire that is within the Peak District National Park. After an exciting drive across the high moors (something I thought you had to go to Yorkshire for) I found a nice little camp site on a smallholding called Heathy Roods Farm (1374 total miles). I had the place to myself and, while it was a bit exposed the Khyam Igloo was well up to it, the place was really quite nicely equipped with a country farmhouse whitewashed and quarry tile feel. Heathy Roods farm was just outside a village called Butterton where the pub was absolutely thronging with people and served a wicked lasagne. (No horses were harmed in the writing of this blog.)

In the morning I moved on to Dovedale in Derbyshire as I'd always planned meeting up with some friends, which was a bit of a rest from the daily moving and hunting down of sites and the like. I left Heathy Roods farm at about lunch time and arrived in Dovedale at about 2pm (1384 miles). Having the rest of the day to sit around, drink Old Speckled Hen and Captain Morgan (thank you Eric) sort of put a break in the middle of the trip. We had a great night, many songs were sung and a few were murdered; songs that is.

The next day I moved on to Nottinghamshire where, I'm afraid, I did do the obvious thing and I went to Sherwood Forest and looked at the tacky exhibition, failed to buy a fridge magnet and saw the big oak tree. I had a go on the archery and found it much more difficult than the composite bow I tried once before. That night I stayed in, perhaps the five starest of camp sites I've seen so far (1442), very high spec with mature planting around the pitches whereas some sites can be a bit open.

That brought me to today when I arrived in Leicestershire, had a fine ploughmans in Melton Mowbray with the proper pork pie and stilton, went to the National Space Centre only to find it closed so I bought some tyres for the truck instead. Tomorrow I will go to Northamptonshire and get new break pads as such is the nature of motor touring when you've clocked up 1534 miles with the other half of the country still to go.

All the pictures are here

Day 21

Things are moving ahead on the plan to go off around the country to write a Travelogue about spending a night in each of England's 39 historic counties. I'm trying to get everything in place ready to head off into deepest England on May 1st. To that end this is my first blog post using the tablet without intervention from any other computer (not to mention without intervention from a spell checker as Android apps seem sadly lacking in that respect).

I've been testing apps for Facebook and Twitter with varying degrees of satisfaction but this is my first attempt at anything like serious writing. When I come to write the actual manuscript it'll be interesting.
In other related news I spent Saturday in Norwich with members of the East Anglian Region of the Frontera Owners Group who did a sterling job of preparing The Truck for what is expected to be something like a 2000 mile journey. The inlet manifolds were in a terrible state and it's running much better now. Still a few minor issues to sort out and I may have to invest in a new battery but hopefully in the next couple of weeks that should all be sorted out.

Watch this space, it all starts to happen from here on. I need to buy a rug for the tent and sort out a few other details and then on May 1st it's off to Oxford for the May Morning celebrations; the Magdalen Choir in the tower of Magdalen College, Morris Men and Jack in the Green all over and the Hurly Burly Whirly Early-in-the-Morning Band on the steps of the Clarendon Building. That should give me something to write about in the first chapter.