The Things You Find On A Country Walk

Firstly back to Thursday ... whilst in downtown Stone we spotted this chap playing a didgeridoo. Elaine chucked some money in his hat and gave his dog some chews that she had just bought for our boys!



On Thursday night an old mate from Australia, who now lives in Wigan, dropped by for the night. We had a good catch up followed by dinner down the local spoons ...

He left the following morning at the ungodly hour of 9.00am!
It was good to have a catch up ...

Friday was the grimmest day for a long time ...


We took the dogs for a short walk but we all got soaked, the dogs hated it ...

As the weather was so crap I had a go at making Sue from NB Festina Lente's recipe for Stilton and Grape flat bread, which actually turned out pretty good if I say so myself!


We popped up to Macclesfield on Saturday to catch up with Elaine's dad and brother, Trev - also pick up some mail and freight.  We took the remainder of the bread with us, it was soon demolished ... a success!!

Today we went for a walk through the Trentham Estate ...


It was quite a steep walk to the monument.  Elaine managed it fine, being dragged up the incline by workhorse Bombo ...

 

We made it to the top and checked out the monument erected to the memory of George Granville, Duke of Sutherland, Marquess of Stafford, K.G ...

We had a few minutes to spare so I quickly tagged it ...

We carried on the walk and came across some deer running around ...

Then it went a bit peculiar when we came across a troop of monkeys!

At first we only spotted a couple, but within 30 minutes we had about 15 of them checking us out!

There were about eight in this tree alone ...

It was quite strange to see monkeys in an English wood in the winter!  The dogs didn't know what to make of them, but erred on the side of caution and just squeaked at them.


On the way back to the good-ship we dropped into The Railway at Norton Bridge for a swift one.  We like this pub ... no food, no frills just a nice warm country pub with a brunette Jayne Mansfield behind the bar, who turns out to be an ex prison officer!  This is her first venture into owning a pub, she took the reins last Thursday.  Really nice landlady and friendly pub ... we might make it our 'local' !! (This is the pub we recently saw Shamus Oblivion and the Megadeath Morrismen in recently).

After that little trip we went back to the boat where Elaine made a lentil and cheese bake with brussels sprouts and roast tatties ... now she is firmly installed in her seat watching the X-factor final ... yawn !!!