Allowed out … day 16 (an unusual day - everything went to plan!)

Miles today: 201

Miles soda far: 2711

Ruins: 2!

Cream teas: 0 - in fact we have had nothing since breakfast!

MBC (Miles Before Coffee): a frankly ridiculous 75!!

We are on our way home. Eric is peeling off tomorrow to head home to Hertfordshire and Rob and I are going to do one more night somewhere Somerset or Devon way. We were briefly tempted to go to Lands End to bag that in the same trip as John O’Groats but decided the roads to LE were just not as attractive as JOG, so we have opted to try to get lost anywhere west of the thunderstorms in the SE before heading for home on Saturday.

And talking of getting lost … today, despite the complicated route through the Welsh borders, we didn’t!! Rob is justifiably proud of his exemplary route finding and Eric booked us a couple of fabulous ruins to gaze at. In fact it seems the less I have to do with the organisation the more likely it is to go to plan! Though I am claiming the fabulous hotel overlooking Worcestershire’s County Cricket Ground for tonight, which has had Eric in raptures - especially as he is the only one with a room that actually overlooks the pitch!

We even managed to throw in a couple of serendipitous stops - at the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, high over the River Dee and Ironbridge, recently shed of its scaffolding and plastic covering to be revealed in all its renovated glory. So not a bad day all round.

The aforementioned breakfast at our slightly dodgy Lancs/Yorks hotel was as dodgy as the hotel. You can just tell when a place is cutting corners, presumably because it is hard to make a profit in these places. Tired rooms, cheap ingredients, and the fact that Joanna Lumley once stayed there didn’t rescue it at all. Which is a bit of a long winded way of saying that breakfast was crap - cheap meat, soggy fried bread and beans that were definitely not Heinz! And the coffee was actually undrinkable. And the orange juice was, wait for it … sunny delight!!! Awful.

Right, got that off my chest. As predicted we decided to eschew the pleasures of central Manchester and shot by on the M56/6/56 to the far side of Chester, where we picked up the Horseshoe Pass, the highest road in Wales apparently - but to be honest, compared to Scotland and even the Yorkshire Dales, it wasn’t worth the effort. we stopped at a cafe after a couple miles (just for the selfie, we are on a diet after all) thinking it was a long way from there to the top. It turned out to be the summit. So instead of miles of windy fast road, we got 4 miles of good views And not much else. Not a patch on the Highlands, Wales! Got the selfie though.

Horseshoe Pass was not actually our first stop. Had we not stopped at Chester Services on the M56 for coffee, there would have been a mutiny. But 75 miles, before coffee. Really! But on the plus side, a third of the journey done before 11am. Miracles will never cease. We still didn’t get to Worcester until nearly 6.30pm though, but mainly because we had some fab stops today. And we got to them on time!! Rob required that I included that fact.

But at the bottom of the Horseshoe Pass (well close), we discovered we were very close to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal. A marvel of the engineering prowess of Thomas Telford required a gentle stroll as narrow boats faced off at either end for the next turn to cross. That is it is so gloriously unmanaged, only added to its charm.

Avoiding the A5 as much as possible and bypassing Shrewsbury (we haven’t had to do bypasses for a while), we rocked up at Wroxeter Roman City, the fourth largest in Roman Britain - at an unbelievable exactly correct time of 2.30pm. Wonders will never cease. And a brilliant place it is too. Eric in raptures again - he’s had a lot of raptures today.

A very short diversion had us at Ironbridge, where we had previously gone while it was being renovated and left very disappointed. But it is now magnificent in its fully restored glory - cue Eric’s rapture again! Another piece of Thomas Telford - maybe we are just missing Scotland!

And finally, to make sure we hit the obligatory 200 mile mark, we stopped (again at exactly the booked time - really!) at the magnificent Wenlock Priory. Another of the wonderful ruins courtesy of Henry VIII and of course Eric was in rapture for the 4th time of the day! Actually so was Rob - he likes a church!

Perhaps it is obvious we didn’t take this one - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The 3 unwise monkeys!

And so we rolled into Worcester just after 6, without getting lost at all. And as I type what will be the penultimate post, I am overlooking the sacred turf (according to Eric). Apparently he has supported Worcestershire, man and boy. And as anyone who has ever seen the Fast Show, that is … “The hardest game in the world!”

Time for dinner. We might manage the cathedral in the morning - but it is bound not to go as well as today. And lets hope the thunderstorms stay away!