10:45.

Having thoroughly enjoyed our time in Cambridgeshire it’s time to head back to the Pennines. Everyone’s sad to leave as our accomodation has been excellent and really restful. Dawn’s mooted the idea of basing ourselves down here for a week and working from the chalet. Maybe next year as the new section of East-West rail will be passing less than a few hundred meters away!

We’re not rushing back. The plan is to stop en-route with our first port of call being Stamford, Lincolnshire…

22:30.

Yep, I know – another crap ‘rolling’ blog. Sorry about that but we were on busy roads when we weren’t stopped so my primary focus was on being the human interface between the satnav and Dawn driving in order to make things easier for her. Having dropped off John and Norah at their gaffe we’re at home in the Calder valley I can catch up on the day.

We did stop off at Stamford, which was an ideal pitstop. If you’ve never been it’s well worth a visit as it’s a very well preserved town with attractive buildings constructed from the local limestone. John and Norah had never visited before so were suitably impressed, whilst Dawn and I had stayed their in a very swanky hotel as part of a wedding present from an ex-colleague of Dawn’s (thank you Martin Yallop!) who then showed us around the town.

This time we discovered somewhere new and ideal in this warm weather. Having parked near the railways station our wandering took us over the river into the centre of town where I spotted that the Millstone Inn was advertising it’s beer garden. Beer, in a garden of a historic pub? Why not? Then we saw the garden, which we all fell in love with as it’s top notch. Forget a few benches and a couple of plastic tubs of geraniums – this is class!

Just out of shot to the right is a little kiosk selling home-made pizzas.

We finally tore ourselves away and explored further. Friday’s market day and Stamford has one of the most extensive markets I’ve seen for a while, its tendrils spread down several side-streets as well as some of the main pedestrianised area. There’s a decent variety too, it’s not just tat and safety ware. There’s fresh fruit and veg, plants aplenty and some original artworks .

Mind you, Stamford is rather more upmarket than some places (Huddersfield eat your heart out) as many independent shops like this demonstrate.

Then there’s lovely buildings like this. The old Almshouses on Station Rd opposite the George hotel.

We eventually tore ourselves away from Stamford in order to revisit Rutland Water and stop for lunch – having packed supplies before we left. The area’s lovely although the Whitwell leisure park area was a little disappointing compared to our previous stop at Sykes Lane (far nicer). The area was far more commercial which is fine if you want to hire bikes or indulge in some of the other activities on offer – or even take a cruise, but the place had a prevelant smell of poo which we couldn’t work out the source of.

Now we’re home, getting used to being back in the Pennines. Oh, and stairs…

Tomorrow temperatures are still expected to be in the mid-20’s so we’ll see what we get up to. The ‘plan’ is to make the most of the late summer and get out for a walk somewhere. We shall see…

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