Saturday was an odd day, I woke up at about 9am, hungover with no plan in place as to what we were meant to be getting upto.
All I knew was Havoc was gonna be out and Dodge was 'christmas shopping' (hope he hasn't forgotten my present). So, a couple of texts to the Romiley Wino and we had a plan, head over to Crewe to check out something I spotted a few weeks back then onto the college and finally down to Stoke. Sorted.
We arrived at the Crewe target at about half eleven only to be greeted by a large expanse of empty ground, a few piles of rubble and some rough looking fellas with large machinery. It was gone, whatever IT was, I never did find out.
Nevermind, onto the next target, the college. It is still open. Not closed. Active. In-use or, to put it another way, still on the list...off we went, heading South.
The last time I was in Stoke was a Wednesday afternoon about ten years ago, I remember commenting to a friend at the time, 'why does everyone look so unhappy?', he looked up from his cheeseburger, 'you're in Stoke, mate'.
Ten years later and the place looked worse than ever, maybe the weather didn't help, there had been a constant drizzle since we got off the motorway and the clouds overhead were threatening worse to come.
We headed for our next target, Tams Pottery, or we thought we had, but as ever, Havoc's lack of a map, pertinent information and a general idea of where were meant to be was ever present. So, a good hour of driving round asking people led us nowhere nearer to our target.
We actually bought a map in the end. Paid for it, even.
Tams Pottery, is a big old place, and after finding access, getting soaked on the way in, we spent a good twenty minutes or so inside before setting off the alarm, nobody told us there was an alarm, which meant running, which is always, always bad. We got soaked again on the way out.
I took a grand total of FIVE pictures inside. Five.
We sat in the car and discussed the plan for the rest of the day. God, it was grim. Stoke is full of dereliction, every corner you turn you're confronted by something that's been boarded up, but we were soaking wet and fed up, we decided to have a drive round, see if anything jumped out at us, we headed....actually, I have no idea which way we headed, I didn't even know where I was in the first place, but we ended up at a place called Trentham.
We actually stopped to have a look at a big old mausoleum (which may not actually be a mausoleum, it's empty, whatever it is) by the side of the road opposite Trentham Gardens. Havoc then pipes up 'Trentham Hall is empty', so we headed across the road, just as the clouds parted and the sun came out.
The first view of what was the family wing of Trentham Hall wasn't that inspiring, we approached from the back, although the clock tower kind of stood out. It was only when we headed round to the front of the building that we realised what a great looking place it really was. We found an access point and headed inside.
To be quite honest, there isn't a great deal to see inside, it's being used for storage although there are some cracking period fireplaces, Thomas the Tank Engine and cupboards full to brimming with mosquitoes!!
Despite the lack of stuff inside it's the outside that really grabs you, I can't emphasise how much I really, really liked this place. I can imagine myself sitting on the lawn on a sunny summer's day sipping tea and eating sandwiches.
Anyway, we spent about ninety minutes mooching around the estate (including the boat) before heading back over the Cheshire border to civilisation.
It was one of those days in UE that, despite your best efforts, it just doesn't go your way.
I'm only going to put the pics up from Trentham, because we didn't have to run away from alarm when we were there. And it wasn't raining.
TnM :->
