The day started a bit flat

Day 5

What a joy. I woke up to find breakfast was already being prepared. Great to have a decent shower, too.

We decided to attempt to dry out Henry’s magneto with a hairdrier.

I’m not sure if it was down to our efforts but he did start following our ministrations.

Then we noticed that he had a flat tyre!

On with the spare and Graham and I set off to the nearest tyre fitters to fit a spare inner tube, fix the puncture and keep that tube as a back-up.

The fitters stood staring at Henry with dropped jaws and shaking heads. They had no idea how to remove the tyre.

We headed off to find another tyre firm and this time we were lucky. In no time at all we had the new one fitted but they could not find any fault with the old inner tube.

It seems unlikely that in Graham and Chris’ genteel suburb of Leyland there was someone determined to cause us grief by letting a tyre down. It will remain a mystery.

While we were out I also bought a collapsible fabric dog crate for Paddy to keep her out of mischief when we visit Lyn’s sister who has a male Sheltie dog! More of that in a few days time.

We were heading off towards Cheshire/Shropshire at around lunchtime and the sun was shining. Hooray!

Bidding farewell to our hosts we set off with some trepidation as it was going to be a bit of a trek through Wigan, Warrinton, Widnes and other conurbations that probably began with a ‘W’.

We decided to stop at a campsite in the grounds of 18th century Belmont Hall near Great Budworth in Cheshire.

The one warning we had was ‘The turn-in is a bit tricky but please don’t go down Pole Lane’. True to form we turned down Pole Lane that, in parts, was about the same width as Henrietta. A young lady in a tiny hatchback was coming towards us and we reached an impasse – she couldn’t reverse (funny that as the female of the species reverses so well on the dance floor!) Richard had to reverse Henrietta (blind) up the lane until she could find a place to let her by. Grrr!

We reached the end of the lane and pulled onto the verge at a T-junction to consult the map. I left Henry’s engine running as I was worried about restarting (mistake number 1). I ran up the road to a house with a wide entrance (where the aforementioned young lady should have reversed) to ask where the campsite was and we decided to do a circuit rather than go back up Pole Lane (mistake number 2). By this time Henry had stopped!

It took 30 minutes before he roared back into life so we set off on the circuitous route and discovered the road was closed! Ultimately we went through the lovely village of Great Budworth.

and found ourselves back on the right road and turned successfully into the grounds of Belmont Hall. The angled entrance was about 20 feet before Pole Lane!

The small site was set in beautiful parkland, the manager was very accommodating and we duly settled down for a couple of beers before heading off for the local pub where we had been assured an excellent meal was to be had.

That was when we realised that we had left the motorhome steps at the bottom of Pole lane. Doh! We'll pick it up in the morning (wrong)

Paddy had a chance at last to stretch her legs in the park.

The pub was great and served a really good meal. It was also dog friendly and thankfully there weren’t any overly amorous dogs in there. The barmaid was a Barrovian so we felt at home. It was dark when we emerged and made our way back to the motorhome where Paddy’s(?) snoring disturbed Richard’s reverie – again.