Out and about between the showers...

The weather had been very odd since we have been here. One minute it's blue skies and quite warm, the next it's peeing down! Ebi-kun has been getting antsy having to stay in all the time so we went for a drive. We first called round to see an old family friend but she wasn't in but we noticed that there is a new play park near her house, so we stopped for a bit of a play.

Then we took a drive up the Moor where I grew up. Top road has some fantastic views but it's so cold and windy, even in the summer! At the other end of the moor are out crops of rocks, where we would spend the days climbing - no equipment or proper training of course! Different times. Ebi-kun was quite put out that we couldn't go wandering through the farmer's fields for a climb, but these days I don't know who owns the fields and I don't fancy getting an angry farmer chasing us down for trespassing!

After all that adventuring we headed home for flirty cake and custard!

This was my favourite pudding at school. Flirty cake is chocolate shortbread but it is hard, really hard, so hard that when you try and break it with your spoon it flirts out of the dish! Of course, it has to be served with hot custard, at school we had green custard, I'm not sure if it was actually mint but it was most definitely green.

This wasn't green custard, more like posh Madagascar vanilla! And the flirty cake was great but not quite flirty enough.

It always takes me a few days to wind down after we get here so it was good to have a few days with nothing really planned. A bit of shopping and a lot of eating!! Catching up with friends and family.

The next couple of weeks will be more hectic...

The Moor

I grew up in a small village called Biddulph Moor, my mom moved from the moor about 12 years ago but we had a drive up since it was a lovely day. These photos are taken from the car park from where I lived until I was 8 years old. 

This outcrop of rocks is the end of the Pennine chain and I spent many a day climbing up and down, there is a great split in the rock that you can climb down the rock face to get to, which you can sit in and watch the world go by, it was a favourite place to hang out with my friends. Ebi-kun was quite jealous that I used to have this as my playground.

The other direction looks over the valley and the town, it's pretty at night when the town is lit up. When I was little my mm didn't like us going to Bonfire parties so we would sit in the bedroom window with a toffee apple and watch all the fireworks going off over the valley.

The rough looking field on the nearby hill was where I kept my little pony, he was really naughty and would escape into the other fields if he thought the grass was greener. The riding school was a couple of fields over and I spend much of my childhood down there. We would do chores around the stables to get free rides. Happy days.

That tiny dot on the horizon is Mow Cop Castle, which isn't a castle at all but a rather crappy folly!

And for years we have wanted to get this photo, this is one of the roads on the Moor, there is another called Under The Hill. for as long as I can remember there has been a bench next to the sign and back in the day there were 3 old fellas who would sit on it.

We popped down to where we used to live at the cottage to see the farmers next door - they are the gossip collectors and know everything that is going on, I'm sure a film plot could be written based on the gossip that they come out with!