Saturday November 4th

Plymouth Travelodge hotel. It’s Saturday morning, 3am, and I’ve woken in a sweat and heard someone clumping around the room above. At 3am. My trip to the loo woke the missus, and we lay chatting in the dark for quite a while trying to decipher the sounds from above. My conclusion was that there were wakeful children moving around, but who knows in these basic but reasonably priced hotels?

We did go back to sleep, but my alarm was set for 6:30am, so it wasn’t long before I was up again. With a five or six hour drive ahead of us, a broken night’s sleep wasn’t in the plan. Still, we did have plenty of time to prepare.

Our first stop, though, was the Tesco Extra superstore, that cornucopia all things grocery related, and a bit more. We had a list of a few basics to buy for the coming week in God’s Country, Yorkshire, plus some exciting things to take for the journey. We also bought some Cornish Pasties in Warreners (“The Oldest Pastie Maker In Plymouth”), which was conveniently located next to Tesco. Handy, that.

Oh, and we bought petrol, knowing how expensive it would be at the motorway service centres. It was £1.53 a litre at Tesco. Make a note of that.

I set the Navi (it’s been promoted from being a Sat Nav, or Twat Nav, to being a Navi) for our destination and watched the system work things out for us. From our location, Plymouth, it would be a drive of 307 Miles (494 Km), to Holmfirth, and would take a little over five hours if we didn’t stop or get held up. I didn’t really need the Navi, at least not until Manchester, but it was good to watch the miles and the time slowly drop on the display.

It being Saturday, and still relatively early, the roads were surprisingly busy, but did lack the usual big trucks. The weather was fairly calm as well, so we were off the A38 and onto the M5 at Exeter in good time. We stopped at Sedgemoor, just south of Bristol for a natural break and a pastie, before negotiating Bristol, which wasn’t so bad, even through the road works.

Remember I asked you to note the price of petrol in Plymouth? £1.53? Well here at Sedgemoor services on the M5, that same petrol was £1.83 a litre. For those with number difficulties, that 30 pence per litre difference, and I have no idea how that can be justified.

North of Bristol we encountered some dreadful rain. We could see it coming, too, and it didn’t disappoint. Then around Worcester, still in the rain, we were reduced to a crawl for quite a while, supposedly for road works, but I didn’t see any.

South of Birmingham, the Navi decided to change the agreed route, supposedly because of heavy traffic. I didn’t hear her instructions at first, partly because of the noise of the rain, and partly because there appears to be a glitch in the Navi software whereby, we can’t increase the nice lady’s voice volume. Anyway, I ignored her and carried on up the M5 towards Walsall and the M6. We had another stop, this time at Frankley Services, just to the south-west of Birmingham. The M&S sandwiches were very nice.

Back on the road, the Navi kept trying to re-route us, and I kept ignoring her, and we crawled up to, though, and past, the junction with the M6. We pressed on, through Staffordshire and Cheshire, before a last stop, at Knutsford this time, for a quick splash and dash.

Here we left the M6 and veered eastwards, onto the ring of motorways surround Manchester. The roads were teeming with expensive cars here, all racing around at speed, which gives some indication that there’s money in Manchester, and the place is living up to it’s perceived reputation as England’s second city. Leaving that particular vehicular hellscape at Ashton-Under-Lyne, we started into the Pennine Hills at Mossley, though villages made of darkened stone, although they were bright with the shops and pubs open. The rain was still coming down, and the hill tops were shrouded in mist, so by the time we had reached the top of Saddleworth Moor, it was foggy, rainy and getting dark, even though it was only about 3:30pm.

Then it was across the border into Yorkshire, down into the deep valley of the River Holme, and into the little town of Holmfirth. We were nearly there.

We did take an alternate route through Holmfirth to Bramble cottage, up steep hills, narrow and littered with parked cars. The oncoming cars were without mercy, dashing around as locals tend to do in these places, and at the very last right turn I had to make, across the traffic, a car sped around the blind bend and we both screeched to a halt. The other car, who had the right of way, simply passed me on the wrong side of the road and carried on with his or her speedy descent of the hill.

The final couple of hundred yards of narrow road, again narrowed with parked cars, was completed at walking pace and with very little room to spare on either side of the car. But then Bramble Cottage appeared through the rain, and we had arrived, just about seven hours after we had left Plymouth. The two hours on top of the Navi’s estimate was down to the driving breaks, and to the on-road delays, but for all that, I was happy to get there before 4pm.

I was knackered, though, and my bed beckoned, especially as it was pretty much completely dark by the time we’d unloaded the car.

There will be more about Bramble Cottage in a later post, as I get a chance to sort through the photographs.