Casketeers, Cheshire.

What better way to end the festivities, than a nice long Bank Holiday stroll in the cold and some proper beer? sounds nice doesn't it? well it was, though it all went a bit Planes, Trains and Automobiles, feeling a little stranded and breaking every rule in the Highway Code along the way, when you experience dark winding country lanes, with no pavements, and large heavy noisy vehicles coming at you both ways it seems a bit of a recipe for disaster. All that went through my head on this dark perilous path was that we couldn't have been the first, and we wouldn't be the last to walk it, it was, in truth a silly place to walk, especially as the sun set, but it was the only way, not exactly Captain Oates, but scary none the less. A sheep growled at us as we passed his field, 'I'm on your side fella', I said, but he just clattered at us, unapproving.
Excuse the tiltshifting on some of these photos, I've got a new camera and I'll be damned if I don't dick around with it.

Point and shoot, plastic boots.

Due to it's influx of WAGs, Prestbury council have now installed roadside mirrors so they can check their face-aches whilst sitting at the lights. Pph.

So, anyway, Prestbury was the first destination, a village, or ecclesiastical parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. Prestbury is well known for being one of the wealthiest areas in the country, a magnet for the super rich, though a village allegedly on it's arse thanks to it's multi millionaire famous footballing residents and their talentless, tasteless wives trundling off to the Trafford Centre in their Chelsea tractors and not supporting local businesses. Aside from those c*nts, Prestbury is a pleasant setting, pompous perhaps, but not too uninviting. An olde worldly place sandwiched between Macclesfield and Wilmslow, perched atop of the River Bollin.

Prestbury's Black Boy pub, aka The Gary Coleman arms, where casual racism didn't go out of fashion with Eddie Booth and flared trousers. Good pint of the black stuff, mind.

The plan was to walk over to the nearby small milltown of Bollington, aka The Happy Valley, famous for it's landmark White Nancy which sits proudly on the summit of Kerridge hill overlooking greater Manchester in the distance. Bollington I like, it's a bit out in the sticks, maybe even a bit backward, who knows? but it's quaint, it's twinned with my Grandmothers home land, I'd live there. Though not ideal if you're just on your feet, no stations but a canal, it's popular with walkers and riders and apparently once was in the record books for having more pubs per square mile, they're good at that, with the pub we were looking for brewing in house.

Find me a more inviting sight than this, during the gloom of a freezing cold early January and I'll eat one of my hats. Bollington's bank holiday bus services are as to be expected but bus it we did, I was fucked if I was making that country lane jaunt once again, now it was really dark, we were given an hour and half wait whilst ordering a taxi, perhaps they just had the one, like in the olden days, one milkman, one postie with a cat, one policeman (Terry Waite snr) no bad thing I guess. Of all the random 'slebs you could spot in a place like this, we saw a woman from Australian soap Home and Away, 'Irene Roberts', evesdropping her phone conversation on the way out she thought she was in Bollingworth in Chester, Chester? I bet she was freezing cold. I know I was. We finished off in nearby Macclesfield in a pale ale haze by the fire.