From Thor's Cave to Manchester

We’ve had a busy last few days, but I’ll try to be quick.

On Friday, we visited briefly with the head teacher of St. John’s Primary School in our local village (which is called Keele and is the town our University here is named for). The school was having what they call their Heritage Festival at the church right up the hill from them. This is not a festival like we would think of it, but rather a church service where people bring extra bounty to the church to share with the less fortunate. She invited us to come visit the school on Monday.

After that meeting, we headed to the bus station for the day’s adventure. We took one bus to the big City Centre in the town of Hanley, then took another to Leek, and then a third to a tiny town called Waterhouses. As the name might indicate, it is a little settlement by a little river. We were hoping to rent bikes at a ‘cycle hire’ on the Manifold Valley Trail, but it was closed. Luckily, we had called the week before, and Lisa still had the number for another place in her phone. By a second stroke of luck, that place was closed as well (a slow time of year in Waterhouses!) but the owner lived on site and he told us to come on down and he would let us have some bikes.

We saddled up and headed north on the Manifold Valley Bike Path in the edge of Peak District National Park in eastern Staffordshire. It is a lovely jaunt through the woods along an old railroad bed. By far, the most amazing thing to see on the trail is a place called Thor’s Cave. We hiked up and got some pics and videos up there that you can check out along with the ones from the valley floor…

CLICK HERE FOR THE PICTURES FROM THE MANIFOLD VALLEY AND PLAYING AT OUR LOCAL PARK

Well, after all that bikin’ and hikin’ we were ready for a chillout weekend. We caught the train in Crewe and went through Chester to the town of Frodsham in Cheshire. It was a pretty easy trek except that the mile walk to our hotel turned out to be straight uphill, and partially on a road without a sidewalk. Just as we came to that part, we asked a passerby if we were still on the right trail, and he insisted on carrying us the rest of the way in his motorcar. This is just another example of how nice the people are around here. They won’t hear of you being distressed or unhappy with their country.

It turned out to be worth the work to get to the Forest Hills Hotel. It was on top of the mountain we had partially climbed, and had amazing views. But is also had a Spar! What’s a spar? That’s how you say Spa over here. We had a giant heated pool, big spar hot tub, sauna and steam room, all inside a giant wooden room. It was decadent. Lisa even got to do the weights in the gym, but I stuck to the sixteen ounce curls at the poolside pub. They also gave us a big buffet breakfast before we took a cab back to the train station in the morning. We checked out a bit of the ancient Roman settlement of Chester on our way home, got some excellent Thai food (the Pad Thai came wrapped in a pancake), and made it home for a restful Sunday evening.

We had our tour of the school on Monday morning. They have almost 200 students from age 3 to 12, and it had several similarities to Mountain Pathways. It was sort of in between public school and Montessori. They were separated into grades, but they also sat at tables instead of desks, and they all wear uniforms. The kids were pretty impressed with their playground, but the head teacher is looking to make it better. She asked us to come and present an assembly for their whole school after their mid-term break in a few weeks, so we’ll keep you posted on that.

Tuesday, we forgot the camera again as the kids and I rushed out the door to catch the train to Manchester. We didn’t expect much as we haven’t heard great things about the UK’s second largest city, but it is really nice. We spent several hours in the Manchester Museum on the campus of the University of Manchester. It is in a beautiful building and has an amazing collection. We really loved the mummies in the Egypt section, and their natural history stuff is unbelievable. They also had a stuffed albatross in the bird section. I knew they were big, but had no idea how big. That got us talking about Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ so we’re reading that today. We got to ride in the top of a double decker bus, which Savannah had been wanting to do, but mostly gave Sawyer and I flashbacks of riding to and from the car park at the Ryder Cup.

Of course, we had curry Tuesday night after Sawyer’s Tae Kwon Do class. Did I mention it’s two meals for six pounds at the Sneyd Arms on Tuesday? I highly recommend it. We’re hoping to get tickets to a production of Jesus Christ Superstar up near Liverpool this weekend, and we’ll be in London the last half of next week, first for Savannah to see Selena Gomez at the Apollo, and then to tool around until Sunday. We’ll let you know how all that turns out!