Birthday, to you

We headed for the National Trust’s estate at Longshaw and walked to the top of Padley Gorge, well-known for its ancient oak-wooded valley that hosts some interesting summer visitors. We heard wood warbler [with the help of the Merlin App] and common redstart had also been spotted. Patience was eventually rewarded with excellent views of a pair of pied flycatchers. Wandering down the road to Hathersage after lunch, an attractive little place overlooked by the millstone grit outcrop of Stanage Edge, we spent half an hour on the station. The Edale route between Manchester and Sheffield was busy, with Class 66-hauled stone traffic to and from the quarries at Tunstead, near Buxton, finding paths between the longer distance TransPennine units and the Class 195 local passenger services that link the two cities. After that, it was a dip in the modestly heated but very refreshing and well-run lido at Hathersage, bathed also in low sunlight. The Peak District looks fabulous when the sun is out. It was a great way to celebrate a birthday.

   

Market Drayton

There is a fundamental attraction in visiting a town I’ve not been to before, even, as on this occasion, when the station has long been closed and been replaced by a supermarket. The Wellington to Drayton Railway opened as part of the GWR in 1867 and closed to passengers in 1963 and freight in 1967. I had listened to trains on it in the 1950s, whilst enjoying a farm holiday with the family at Cold Hatton, but even though I marched my mum under a hot summer sun to Ellerdine Halt, I never saw anything pass by. I put it down as an early exercise in learning to deal with frustration.

The Shropshire Union Canal got there before the railway and there are some half-timbered Tudor style buildings, but Market Drayton seemed a little sleepy yesterday, kind of half-hearted and resigned to a lesser role than previously. The centre has its share of a tattoo shops, bookmakers, vaping outlets and empty units, in common with so many market towns around the country today. We found a warm welcome at Ford Hall Farm’s café, but others we sampled in the town seemed underused, uninspired, and when the lights went out and one half of the double-door was locked on the dot of 4’o clock, we knew that afternoon teatime was emphatically over, and that kind of summed it up, really.