Thursday 16 August 2018 – A Bimble from the Bells of Peover

The last of Andrew’s ‘Deepest Cheshire’ evening walks of this season (doesn’t the time fly past!) took place, starting from the Bells of Peover pub, from the outside of which the seating that we’ve found convenient in the past has been removed. No matter, we congregated in the beer garden after finding somewhere to park in an overflow area. The place was heaving with diners, having become more a restaurant than the pub as we new it back in the 1970s.

The famous five – Andrew, Richard, Jenny, Sue and Martin, were joined on this occasion by Sue’s old work associate, Manu, for whom a walk involving stiles and tree trunks took her slightly out of her comfort zone.

We set off in bright sunshine despite some ominous moisture on the garden furniture following a recent shower.

The weather had cleared, leaving us to enjoy a bright evening in pleasant countryside – not too hot and not too cold.

Here’s the view in an area named Foxcovert.

After a while, the sun dipped below the horizon and we found ourselves on recently adjusted paths to protect the privacy of the owners of some new homes. The path did however pass through the garden of a large property between Sandy Lane and Heath Lane. It goes to the rear of the house, past an ornamental pond with plastic swans in residence.

At the front of the house a fleet of sheep have been deployed to mow the lawn (or are they just pretending?).

An old willow tree observes the goings on in lofty silence.

At the end of Heath Lane, we turned left onto Townfield Lane before walking carefully along the wide verge of the boy racing venue known as the A50 road, where the intelligentsia seem to think that all the ‘50’ signs refer to the number of the road and not to the speed limit. 

The Drovers Arms in Allostock started life as a farmhouse and spent many years as a hostelry, before closing in 2010 and subsequently being acquired by Equiport as a venue for the manufacture of horse rugs and riding jackets. At least it’s not a derelict shell like some former pubs featured on these pages.

Here’s what it looked like in 2009.

From the Drovers Arms it’s a pleasant stroll back through fields beside a busy stream to our starting point, where the ancient St Oswald’s Church, dating from 1269, stands next to the Bells of Peover (so named after a former owner, not by virtue of its proximity to the church).

An excellent little outing, concluded as darkness was falling. Thanks go to Andrew for organising this series of walks, and hopefully there will be some more to enjoy next year. I’ll also be arranging some winter evening walks in the environs of Timperley and Altrincham.

Here’s our route – 6 km with minimal ascent, in a very leisurely hour and a half.

Comment notification in Blogger

Back in May, Google’s Blogger product stopped sending emails to bloggers notifying them of comments received. This meant that we had to go into the Blogger dashboard to view comments, and for new postings we could receive comments by email after sending a dummy comment and ticking the notification box.

Today I found the following advice on how to fix the issue, and it does seem to work for me.

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“For anyone using Blogger: if you haven't been receiving email notification of blog comments this is how to fix the issue.

1. Go into Blogger - Settings - Email
2. Delete your email address in the box for comment notification
3. Click SAVE SETTINGS
4. Add your email back and click SAVE SETTINGS

You should receive an email where you confirm that you want to subscribe to receive email  notifications of comments.
If you use any comment moderation, you need to repeat the same steps under Settings - Posts, Comments, Sharing
AND, if you have been using the Email Post To (under Settings - Email), you need to copy the addresses, delete, SAVE SETTINGS, paste them back and SAVE SETTINGS. The recipients will receive an email where they can authorize receiving the posts.”

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We have a spare 40” Samsung LCD TV if anyone wants one. Six or seven years old but it should work fine. Let us know (martin@topwalks.com).