Road trip in White Peak

A few days ago we’ve been on a road trip for hubby’s name day (he is named after a saint and on that saint’s day is his name day).

I wanted to use the guide I bought from TK Maxx a few weeks ago and hubby likes driving and exploring new places, so a road trip was perfect for a few hours out. We had to work and we left the house quite late for a day trip.

We’ve decided to take the shorter loop on the White Peak, the southern part of the Peak District. The tour started in Leek, a market town in Staffordshire. Leek is bigger than I anticipated, is an ancient town, from 1214. This town is famous for its double sunset, a phenomenon that can be observed if there aren’t any clouds around the summer solstice, more details on wikipedia.

The Church of St Edward the Confessor was founded in 1042 and it’s a Grade II listed building.

The church was closing when we arrived and we couldn’t visit it. We went to the Brindley Water Mill, another attraction in Leek. The mill is a working museum and there are corn grinding demonstrations. As we wanted to see more things, we didn’t visit it this time.

On the way to the museum we passed by these deliciously looking blackberries.

I thought hubby is taking a nice picture. I couldn’t wait, so I can grab a blackberry, but my greed is now in the picture for all to see.

This is the water stream used for the water mill.

We went back to the town centre where we parked and we had a stroll on the streets.

The buildings are beautiful, there is a hotel built in 1626, an old pub. There was a market with fruits, veggies and household items. We had to stop at the bakery to get some desserts for the picnic.

We left Leek and we head up to Rudyard, only a few miles away. We parked at the Rudyard Lake Steam Railway and went on a walk to find the perfect spot for the picnic.

On a bridge I saw stairs that lead to a pasture. We decided we can make the picnic there.

We had a home-made mini loaf of bread and olives marinated by us. But the humous was bought from Sainsbury’s, as I didn’t find the time to cook before leaving home. The desserts were the ones we’ve got from Leek and they were really delicious. I love independent bakeries found in towns, they have lovely desserts, better than the ones from the supermarkets.

We had our lunch and we went back to the railway.

Next stop was Rudyard Lake. Rudyard Kipling’s parents met here and named him after the lake.

The beauty of driving on backroads is that we can see beautiful things (mostly me because hubby is very busy with his driving). Usually I admire landscapes and houses and green fields, but sometimes we can see things like this stream passing through the middle of the road. We saw Mow Cop, but that will be in another post and the last stop was the Bleeding wolf.

It looks like it’s a few hundred years old, but in fact the pub was built in 1936. That is impressive.

This is where our journey finished, only half-way through the loop. I had no idea there will be so many things to see in small towns and villages. It was lovely and I can’t wait for our next road trip.